Living Wittily

Thank You - Say It With Roses.

A while ago now I started to read Mary Oliver's poetry. It started when I was looking for something else. Now I think of it, quite a lot of my more enjoyable discoveries have come while looking for something else. Which is an important life lesson; always be ready to receive the unexpected as a surprise, not a diversion, as a gift, not a nuisance. 

 

I don't remember what it was I was looking for - probably a poem by someone else. But I've never forgotten and always been grateful for discovering the poetry of a woman who teaches us over and over, to pay attention to beauty, to see what is there as a gift, to look generously and thankfully at trees and rivers, flowers and birds, clouds and rain, to look at the world - and see the whole blessed thing as beatitude.

 

I try to do that. In any case long before Mary Oliver, Jesus was telling folk to do the same. So yesterday, in the gardens at Drum Castle, we went to see the whole blessed thing. And it reminded me again of Mary Oliver's gift to those who read her poems - see what you look at, pay attention, stop long enough to wonder, then say thank you. 

 

 

Roses

Everyone now and again wonders about

those questions that have no ready

answers: first cause, God's existence,

what happens when the curtain goes

down and nothing stops it, not kissing,

not going to the mall, not the Super

Bowl.

"Wild roses," I said to them one morning.

"Do you have the answers? And if you do,

would you tell me?"

The roses laughed softly. "Forgive us,"

they said. "But as you can see, we are

just now entirely busy being roses."

Mary Oliver. 

It's Not What We Think We are, It's What We Think, We Are.

Every week I do a set of TFTD for our church community. This one seems to have a particular resonance for the times we are living through. I'm posting it in case it's of some help in trying to do some mind decluttering of some of the rubbish that often accumulates without us noticing. 

 

Thought for the Day June 20-26

Text for the Week: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.” (Philippians 4.8) 

Monday

““Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true...think about such things.”

Our culture is suffering from truth decay. Accusations of lying, dishonesty and deceit are thrown around by our politicians. Gossip and innuendo destroy reputations on social media. The Bible calls us to truthfulness in the inward parts, to integrity, and trust. Those who follow Jesus the Truth are called to think about, practice and speak “whatever is true.”

Tuesday

 “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is noble…think on these things.

Respect. That too is a way of seeing people and thinking about life that can be in short supply in lour abrasive in your face world. The word noble means honourable, worthy of respect. It is a noble thing to speak with kindness and consideration – it’s a way of showing respect. So when you see someone, anyone, take into account that they too are made in God’s image, and their worth and dignity is worthy of –respect.

Wednesday

“Finally, brothers and sisters…whatever is right…think on these things.”

We are citizens of heaven. We are called to live for the common good of all who share life with us. Our words, actions and thoughts are to take account of what is right in God’s sight. What is just, merciful and shows love for our neighbour. Those made righteous in Christ are called to make right what is wrong, and to help repair what is broken. Look around, think about it, is there anything we can make right?

Thursday

“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is pure…think on these things.”

“Who can come near to God, those with pure hands” says the Psalmist. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” In Proverbs a pure heart is contrasted with “the thoughts of the wicked”. To think purely is to have singleness of heart about what is right, good and true. “Purity of heart is to will one thing,” wrote the Danish Christian Kierkegaard. So, seek first the Kingdom of God and the rest will follow.

Friday

“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is lovely…think on these things.”

It’s hard to look into the soft geometry of a rose and stay in a bad mood. Or to stand looking at a sunset and hang on to our anger. Or to listen to a skylark without feeling there’s something downright right with the world! Or for that matter, to remember those acts of kindness from folk that made all the difference to us when we felt unloved and unnoticed. It’s lovely when these things happen. Think about it…often.

Saturday

“Finally brothers and sisters, whatever is admirable…think on these things.”

“Whatsoever is of good report” as an earlier translation has it. What do people talk about that they think is good – like Captain Tom’s fundraising walk, or people like E who trains guide dogs to help others, or S who does shopping for a 90 year old recovering from a knee operation, or K who regularly phones to encourage folk who are struggling. None of these folk talk about what they do – but the people who are helped do. Think about that, says Paul, and have a go at doing what is admirable!

Sunday

“Finally brothers and sisters…whatever is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things.”

What we think about is a big clue to what goes on in our hearts, what’s important in our lives, and where our priorities, anxieties and hopes are invested. Paul is encouraging us to build our virtues – integrity of character, respect for others, upholding right, purity of motive, time for loveliness, support for goodness. Virtue doesn’t just happen. We make choices often enough they become habits, which become traits of character, and these begin to shape our identity. Fair enough – our identity is that we are citizens of heaven, children of God, followers of Jesus.

But how? Remember Paul’s words at the start of his letter to the Christians in Philippi. God finishes what God starts!

“In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (1.5- 6)

God is love. Just that.

1 John 4. 7-16 God is love. That's it. The text for today.

Comprehending the incomprehensible,

re-educating our minds to wonder,

following a logic that defies our usual categories,

being humble enough to admit love is always gift and not our doing,

taking the risk of letting a love into our lives that won't leave us alone, or unchanged,

admitting that in the end, the end is to discover ourselves held no matter what,

by a God so profoundly personal that our deepest fears and highest hopes and longest longings are understood.

Or something like that.

Blessed Because God Says So.

I'm glad Culpepper doesn't like the word "Happy" as a translation of 'makarios'. "The translation 'happy' expresses one's response to being blessed, but misses the objective fact of being blessed." To be on the receiving end of God's promises is to be in the best place possible, which is within the realm and orbit of the Kingdom of God. That's a fact of Kingdom existence which is established by the fact of God's say so! How I feel about that promissory fact is significant, but what makes me feel that way, God's surprising promises, is what makes these sayings Beatitudes. My subjective happiness isn't the point; God's objective promises are precisely the point. To inhabit the space promised by the beatitudes is to be in a good place.  

That point established, Culpepper gets to work arguing for a biblical theology of blessing. God is good, that is a given from the start. Quoting Tertullian with approval,

"Now this very fact, that he begins with Beatitudes, is characteristic of the Creator who used no other voice than that of blessing either in the first fiat or in the final dedication of the universe..." (86)

Abraham's call was so that all the peoples of earth would be blessed; Numbers 6.24 "The Lord bless you and keep you", Culpepper points out, is the oldest extant piece of scripture, found in an amulet from around late 7th C BCE. Blessing is what God is about, and these beatitudinal blessings are embedded in covenant promises made by a faithful God. So, the Beatitudes may well make us happy, and people may even call us happy, but the cause of that happiness is plunged deeply into the very foundations of God's goodness. To be blessed is to be rooted and grounded in the love of a faithful God. 

Each Beatitude contains "a present reality and a promise." Blessed are...because they shall..." This isn't a series of conditional promises, but a string of connected realities attached to surprising outcomes which are already promised and underwritten by the faithful goodness of God. These are the blessings that prevail in the Kingdom of God. The poor and the meek, those who mourn or are merciful, the pure in heart and the hungry and thirsty for food and justice - they each have God's blessing now and will be rewarded in the future.

The Beatitudes are about a reversal of values; not the complacently self-confident but the pure in spirit have the keys of the Kingdom of God; not the arrogant and powerful but the meek will inherit the land of God's promise; not the double minded and deviously successful, but the pure in heart shall see God. For as Kierkegaard has it, "Purity of heart is to will one thing", to seek first the Kingdom. They are the ones who shall see God, and want to.  

The term "Kingdom of God", we are told, appears nowhere else in the NT but 31 times in Matthew. Culpepper supports the suggestion that the Beatitudes, and the use of the term the "kingdom of heaven", are challenges to the Imperial realities of Roman Empire and occupation.

"Proclaiming the kingdom of heaven was also a means of subverting Roman oppression, because the establishment of God's kingdom implied the end of all earthly kingdoms. In God's kingdom, the great ones are not tyrants, (Matt 20.25-27) but the poor in spirit."

There follows a careful exegesis of each saying in which Culpepper explores the lexical and grammatical evidence, draws in further biblical connections from both Testaments and beyond, and probes the theological consequences of his readings. Each saying is placed in its setting within the Sermon on the Mount and also the rest of Matthew's gospel, and compared with a wide range of biblical material. The links of words and ideas in the Beatitudes, with what Matthew is saying and doing in other parts of his gospel are especially rich in intra-textual insight, and show just how thoroughly Culpepper has tilled the soil of the Matthean field.

For example, the saying about peacemakers is a stone hewn largely from Isaiah, the burden of the saying is woven through numerous NT texts, the rabbis are also included amongst the peace witnesses, then its connections with reconciliation in Matthew and a reminder of how this saying would sound in the ears of the Zealots. It's a rich and lucid page and a half of comment that enables the reader to grasp the full consequences of peace-making - "Becoming children of God promises both intimacy with God and a likeness to God." (5.48) 

There is significant guidance for the preacher, stimulus for those seeking the spiritual meaning of Jesus words for their own life in the Kingdom of God, and a gathering of useful information written up by an author who cares about this stuff. I'm not sure there is more we can ask of a commentary.

This treatment of the Beatitudes compares favourably with such shelf companions as Davies and Allison, Hagner, Luz, and France. Where I think it scores highly is that Culpepper uses the first three as constant conversation partners.

However, R T France appears nowhere in the index or bibliography - that surprises me because France was an acknowledged Synoptic specialist with a widely respected commentary on the Greek text of Mark, and a substantial volume on Matthew in the NICNT series. My guess is that Culpepper has done what an increasing number of commentary writers have done - selected several of the most important peers in the field, and engaged them thoroughly. And that's OK. But I do wonder at such a significant omission.    

When Flowers Become an Argument

"Not even Solomon...

if God so clothes the flowers...

How much more..."

There are times when the words of Jesus have the complex simplicity of a children's talk.

Three flowers contradicting anxiety and all our hoarding of resources "just in case..."

Three flowers celebrating unselfconscious beauty at our back door.

Of course the whole argument presupposes "your Heavenly Father."

Your Heavenly Father clothes, knows, sees, gives.

The Lord's Prayer is our daily renewal of that life transforming presupposition.

"Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven",

in my mind and heart, in my neighbourhood,

in my thinking and my motives, in my decisions and actions,

in my words, and in all of these gathered into this prayer,

"Your Kingdom Come."  

 

 

 

Culpepper on The Sermon on the Mount 1. Avoiding the Evasions.

From Augustine to Aquinas, Luther to Zwingli to Calvin, Kierkegaard to Tolstoy, and Bultmann to Bonhoeffer to Windisch to W D Davies to Guelich to Betz, Christians have wrestled with the stringent demands and far-fetched promises of the Sermon on the Mount.

I still have a 35,000 word typewritten exegesis paper I wrote over 40 years ago as my probationary studies in my first years of Baptist ministry here in Scotland. For three years off and on I read and made notes, typed (with a typewriter), edited and retyped (no delete or cut and paste) until it was ready to present as evidence I was continuing to engage with biblical scholarship and theological study and reflection. I also still have the assessment, feedback and comments. The examiner suggested it should be the basis of a publication on the Sermon on the Mount. That never happened.

What did happen was a lifelong wrestling with a text that grabs you by the ankles every time you read it and give it the slightest chance to tackle. I've kept reasonably up to date with scholarship, but that's the easier part. I go back to several of the classic texts, not least Bonhoeffer's discipleship. The big commentaries on Matthew and Luke keep coming, and the occasional dedicated monograph like Pennington's recent Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing - these add information, perspective, context and theological reflection. 

But what long term exposure to the scholarship on the text does not do, is adequately explain why so many who do the exegesis of Matthew 5-7 end up domesticating the text, toning down the demand, blunting the edge of words meant to cut through our moral complacency and comfort zones. Culpepper acknowledges this unseemly rush to compromise right at the start of his own exegetical account of these troublesome and disruptive sayings of Jesus. He wryly observes that "The history of interpretation can be viewed as a succession of ingenious evasions and responses to these evasions." (81)

Culpepper himself quotes Tertullian who claimed the Sermon is Jesus' "official proclamation of the Christ",  an allusion to the practice of Roman officials who upon taking office, announced the rules of their administration." He recalls Bonhoeffer's more astringent approach which he describes like this: "The Sermon does not call us to interpret it, to study it, or to debate it: it calls us to obey it. Obedience is possible however, only in the context of fellowship with the crucified." (83) 

Now over the years I've preached on the Sermon on the Mount. Twice I've taken a congregation through it section by section. The Beatitudes and the Lord's Prayer have been recurring texts in my sermons. But I'm still left wondering if I have given the words of Jesus the same exposure and weight as some of the celebrated Pauline texts.

I was forced to think about this by one of Culpepper's sharp comments. He notes Jesus "went up on the mountain...the disciples came... he opened his mouth and began to teach them." 5.1 But then Culpepper jumps to Matthew 28.20 the end of Matthew's gospel where Jesus again goes up on the mountain, probably the same mountain, and commands his disciples to "teach all nations to keep all I have commanded you."

Why had I never linked those two mountains like this? Culpepper is suggesting that the Great Commission has at its heart the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, communicating and demonstrating the ethos, principles, rules and values of the Kingdom of God. Jesus' own way of being, is to be spoken, remembered and written, and from then on to be taught as the distilled essence and essential demonstration of human lives transformed in the Kingdom of God.

Oh I know the Great Commission and the good news is more than this; but it is not less than this; and often enough the church's witness has been demonstrably less than this. 

My next reflection on Culpepper's commentary will be about what he makes of the Beatitudes.    

  

Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden....

Yesterday afternoon the sun was shining through the rain, and the rain was glinting in the sunlight. It was a day of weather ambiguity, too warm for a fleece, too wet for a rain jacket, and not a day for the rain risk averse.

 

Then there was the green.

 

Ferns, blueberry foliage, tree leaves, and grass - green, wet, lush grass almost visibly growing in wet sunshine. "If that is how God clothes the grass of the field....how much more..."

 

Ever wondered what images Jesus would have used if he had been born in Scotland?

 

It would have heightened the argument about God making the rain fall on everyone, the good the bad and the ugly, so we should likewise be inclusive in our love for neighbour, and as frequent and pervasive in our love of our neighbour, aye, and even our enemies, as rainfall in Scotland :)

 

Sweet the rains new fall, sunlit from Heaven
Like the first dewfall on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.

Three Roses and a Grace for Trinity Sunday.

"May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Cor 13.14)

 

I still think that's an astonishing distillation of Pauline theology, -

 

the last verse of an explosive letter,

 

love laced with rhetorical sarcasm,

 

reconciliation argued by a man angry with those who

undermine the bases of peace and grace,

 

and those two chapters on giving generously as mirroring the way God in Christ is.

 

Photo taken from our garden, 4 years ago.

To Repair the World - A Prayer for Today.

This tapestry was created to explore the beautiful Jewish idea of "tikkun olam" - to repair the world.

The overall idea of the design comes from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem God's Grandeur, and especially the last two lines:

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

The cruciform lower central panel is made of raised stitching with a precisely stitched cross-beam in dull colours, picking up Hopkins' vision of a world in which  "all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil..." Above the industrialised stitching, the suggestion of a stained glass window, with the much slighter cruciform shape with arms up-reaching.

 

Like most of my designs, this one was worked out on the canvas, in the doing. It took around 3 months from bare canvas to completion. I'm posting it today because its central message of hopeful realism and hopeful imagination is the core and content of our prayers - that God will help us to heal the world through peaceful persistence, intentional reconciliation, generous kindness, and love that doesn't take hate for an answer. 

 

Here is Hopkin's astonishingly evocative poem:

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

 

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

  

When the World Around Us Acknowledges the Creator.

I have never doubted that the presence of God the Creator is discernible in the world around us. Obvious examples are when a lovely sunset can move me to wonder, or a hazy horizon can evoke the kind of longing that feels like an ache in the heart. When I go for a walk in the country, through a wood, across a field, up a hill, the movement and purpose begin to feel like a pilgrimage, that is, a walk that starts as a keep fit discipline, gives way to a more contemplative mood.

The Bible is full of this stuff. Jesus clearly understood the rhythms of the seasons and harvest, the survival tricks of the birds, and noticed enough of the fauna of Galilee to know how fully clothed flowers have a beauty all their own that leaves royal robes looking second rate - "not even Solomon in all his splendour is arrayed like one of these..." Quite so

Today I went to a favourite place. It's been a long week, full of intense exchanges with various people - a funeral service speaking about my teacher of 50 years ago, and my friend for just about as long; a visitor who stayed with us bringing the riches of conversations about art, theology, dealing with grief and fundamental changes in life, news of people's sudden illness, and yet more news of folk I know contracting Covid. So yes, a favourite walk and a camera would be just fine, thank you.

Jesus wasn't the only one who paid attention to birds and learned wisdom from their ways. Along the path we walk there's a small loch where two swans are expecting cygnets any day soon. We watched them build the nest, and the cob throwing together his watching place, a roughly made raft guarding the only waterway to the nest. There are waterhen, coots, mallard, heron and even the occasional cormorant on vacation. The industry and determination to build, brood and bring their young into life is part of that instinctive drive we call life. 

Whatever else we make of the creation stories in Genesis, it's impossible to miss the impetus towards life, fruitfulness and more life. Be fruitful and multiply was said to the first humans, but that urge to produce and reproduce is part of the great symphony of our world, a symphony as yet unfinished, and of a new world every year. There is a profound mystery in the surge of the seed, the protective stubbornness of a brooding swan, the  blizzard of blossom petals and later seeds cascading from the trees.

So yes, I look at the world around me and discern the movement of God in the waves across wheat fields still green, and hear the music of the wind through the trees, playing variations on a theme of Creation. And yes I look at a pearl bordered fritillary and simply wonder that it is there at all, and then wonder at this delicate miracle, resting in sunlight to absorb energy before continuing its exhibition of winged ballet.

In preparation for a recently published essay, I did some work on natural theology, the belief that God reveals Godself through the created order, that is, God's fingerprints and footprints can be seen all over the place. Amongst other arguments for a theology of nature and a natural theology is the way the prophets speak of God's actions and purposes revealed in the world around.

When Isaiah wanted to give pictures of hope, and clues to what God was about, he often turned to the natural world for illustrations. Trees in the field clap their hands, mountains are made low and valleys lifted up, the desert blossoms, there are springs erupting in the desert. Sir George Adam Smith wrote one of the great commentaries on Isaiah. Here are his words about what was going on when the psalmists and prophets knew God was moving and new things were afoot. 

“When psalmist or prophet calls Israel to lift their eyes to the hills, or behold how the heavens declare the glory of God, or to listen to that unspoken tradition which day passes to day and night to night, of the knowledge of the Creator, it is not proofs to doubting minds which he offers; it is spiritual nourishment to hungry souls. These are not arguments—they are sacraments.”

Those words were new to me. But they describe with passion and precision exactly what can happen when you go for a walk, pay attention to the world around you, imagine the Creator's presence in his own creation - spiritual nourishment for our hungry souls, sacraments by which grace takes us by surprise.