Living Wittily

WWJD. What Would Jesus Do? A Principle to Live By or a Faded T-Shirt Theology?

The question "What Would Jesus Do?", shortened to WWJD as a concession to our 21st Century surrender to the acronym, goes back to the novel In His Steps, by Charles Sheldon. The novel began as stories Sheldon wrote for his Sunday Evening Services, they were then published in serial form, and finally as a novel in 1897. The book was a bestseller for over 60 years, selling around 8 million copies.

There's something attractive about such a simple approach to Christian discipleship. But to ask ourselves 'what would Jesus do', is at best an interesting experiment. To have any informed view of what Jesus would do in any given situation you need to know the Gospels, deeply, intimately and in a way that makes us familiar with the habits of speech and behaviour of Jesus, as remembered by those who wrote our Gospels.

That's just for starters. Many of the classic devotional writers speak of Christians dwelling in Christ, and Christ dwelling in us. Paul's frequent appeals and encouragements are a call to live within the sphere of the risen Christ, to breathe the atmosphere of the resurrection, to know the reality and daily experience of Christ dwelling in us, and we in him. In John's Gospel the older word 'abide', is the Johannine equivalent of Christ remaining in, living within, abiding with Jesus' followers. Hence Jesus' command, 'Abide in me as I in you.' 

So the question 'what would Jesus do' was never intended to be a subjective playing of spiritual hunches, even less a sentimental picture of Jesus not always rooted in the Jesus of the Gospels. To know the mind of Christ, another of Paul's phrases, is a process of discernment, and as nearly always, Paul's words are to a Christian community. What would Jesus do is a question we ask each other, as together we try to find the Jesus way to act, speak, behave and live out our lives as the living evidence of what Jesus did, and was known to do.

Then there's the teaching of Jesus. It may be that the far more searching question is "What did Jesus say?" The teaching of Jesus is far too easily cherry-picked, or toned down, or is one of the last places we turn to for wisdom about what to do. Forgiving times without number, which is what 70x 7 means both rhetorically and literally; turning the other cheek goes against every instinct of self respect and self-preservation; not worrying about clothes, money, food - goodness these are our top anxiety drivers in our consumer driven and market obsessed ways of organising human community. 

Then there's the call to take up a cross, to expect and accept persecution, to live with Matthew 25 as a manifesto of how to treat the hungry and thirsty, the homeless and the stranger, the prisoner and all the other folk for whom life is a struggle, an endless loneliness, a journey into fear without seeing an exit. What would Jesus do? Read the Gospels and learn. What did Jesus say? Read the Gospels, again, and again. "Forasmuch as you did it for the least of these...you did it for me." 

Add to all of this another question: "What did Jesus feel?" Our feelings often reveal our emotional intelligence. Christian faith and life is deeply rooted in our emotions, feelings, what older writers called the religious affections. Jesus looked on the crowd and had compassion. Jesus was angry at their hardness of heart. Jesus looked at him and loved him. Jesus said, "It is I, be not afraid'. And to all who would follow him he said "Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden", meaning folk who have had enough, who can't do this any-more, who are emotionally exhausted and are physically out of energy.

The clue to 'What would Jesus do' is very often discovered in Jesus' inner reaction to people and the situations they find themselves in: the weeping woman at his feet, a Samaritan woman miniding her own business till a Jewish teacher spoke to her, a Jewish Rabbi so nervous about being seen talking with Jesus that he came to see him at night, a Roman Centurion broken hearted about a dying servant. And as a more detailed example, an anti-social outcast living in a cemetery, self-harming and lonelier than a human being could bear, and for the first time since who knows when, he was asked for his name. It takes deep emotional intelligence, the habit of compassion, and the desire to understand, to ask such a man such a question.

So, "What would Jesus do?" It started as the serial stories of a social Gospel activist minister in small town 1897 America. Somehow it caught on and keeps coming back, on T-shirts, car windows and bumpers, subway posters (not so much now). It was intended to clarify and make more straightforward the process of discerning what God's will might be for any of us in the more difficult situations. 

But for it to have the kind of impact that actually does clarify and concentrate the demands of following Jesus 'in his steps', the question pushes much more deeply into who we are as Christians, our identity as disciples.

How familiar am I with the Jesus of the Gospels so that I at least have a well read and well thumbed handbook of what Jesus actually did as I consider, What would Jesus do, here, and now?

The question "What would Jesus do?" presupposes we are serious about following Jesus and have committed our life to him. To be in Christ, and to know Christ in us, is the essential spiritual context out of which comes the call and the urgency of obedience in doing what Jesus does. 

What did Jesus teach? That's the biggest clue to what Jesus would do! Most of the time, and in most of our life situations, Jesus has already left guidance in the manifesto of the Kingdom of God. The written memories of those first followers, from the stories to the parables, the Sermon on the Mount to the Farewell Discourse, his actions and his explanations, these already push us towards the answer to our puzzlement about what Jesus would do. Read, mark and learn.

What did Jesus feel and think also takes us deeper into the call to discernment. Being like Jesus in our responses to people grows out of the Christ in us and we in him experience. And to learn the mind of Christ there is the need to dwell in prayer, in the Gospels, and in a community of folk equally in love with Jesus and asking about what obedience looks like for us today.

I still think it's a helpful question, "What would Jesus do?" But under-writing such a question are fundamentals of Christian discipleship. To dwell in the Gospels, to abide in Christ as he abides in us, to hear and do the teaching of Jesus, to seek the deepening of our responses of heart and mind to people and situations in the light of Jesus' ways of being and doing. 

What would Jesus do? My answer to that question, day by day, presupposes a loving trust in Jesus, the urgent and creative  experience of God's love shed abroad in my heart, a desire to abide in the One who abides in me, and a deepening of understanding, compassion and commitment in the face of all those other peoplke who move in and out of my life. 

 

TFTD: Isaiah in Comfort Mode.

Monday

Isaiah 51.1-2 “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was only one man, and I blessed him and made him many.”

Time and time again Isaiah tells his people to listen, just listen. Shut up for a minute and listen! Instead of complaining about how things are now, think back, remember what God has already done, who God has shown himself to be. When God makes a promise God keeps it, and he has promised blessing, righteousness and shalom.

Tuesday

Isaiah 51.1-2 “Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth. When I called him he was only one man, and I blessed him and made him many.”

Same verses as yesterday, but listen – again! Those who live in Aberdeen know about granite, and the huge historic quarry at Rubislaw which provided rock for use all over the world. Isaiah is telling his people, and us, we are cut from ancient granite! The Psalmist knew about God the Rock, and the rock solid dependability of God and his promises. Listen…look…and trust. God’s love endures forever; likewise his promises.

 Wednesday

Isaiah 51.3 “The Lord will surely comfort Zion and will look with compassion on all her ruins; he will make her deserts like Eden, her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the sound of singing.”

Comfort is Isaiah’s speciality. His is the audible reassuring voice of God to people who are struggling with faith, life, and with themselves. God looks with compassion on us at those times when we are familiar with ruin, loss, and the sadness that comes from being and feeling alone. The Psalmist also trusted God in the dark, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Listen. Those promises again! Gladness, thanksgiving and singing are not extinct – they will come again.

Thursday

Isaiah 51.4 “Listen to me, my people, hear me my nation: The law will go out from me, my justice will become a light to the nations.”

Listen. Pay attention. Get it into your head. In a broken and dangerous world, God’s justice will become a light to the nations. These are words spoken in a time of empires, and the seeming unbreakable strangle-hold of political power over people’s lives. Comfort is more than emotional support; it is promised help from a credible Helper. However dark our world is growing, (and there are deep shadows across many places), God’s laws of righteousness and justice are not so easily ignored. Faith and hope are rooted in the truth of who God is, Sovereign, Creator, and Redeemer.

Friday

Isaiah 58.5. “My righteousness draws near speedily, my salvation is on the way. And my arm will bring justice to the nations.”

Reassurance has to be more than promises that keep receding into a distant future. Isaiah was aware of God moving in the contemporary history of his people. Looking on our own fractured and fractious world, his words come down the centuries to us as a reminder that for people of faith, God is here, now, and active. Justice includes peace, compassion, the harmony of peoples, that catch-all word of God’s peaceful benediction, shalom. Pray for it. Work for it. The Lord says, “My salvation is on the way.”

Saturday

Isaiah 51.5b “The islands will look to me and wait in hope for my arm.”

For a land loving people like Israel, the islands were far away. But not so far that God is out of sight or out of mind. The furthest reaches of God’s creation look and wait in hope. So should we. Hope is a deeply human longing for the coming of that which is on the side of life. Such hopeful waiting gives energy and purpose to the life we live. We are living through a time of hope recession, a growing sense of anxiety is felt about the way the world is. Isaiah’s words are to people feeling exactly the same. 

Sunday

Isaiah 51.6 “Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail.”

Isaiah often contrasts the shortness of human life with the enduring and steadfast love of God. Life is transient, passes quickly, and is gone; God is eternal, the sustaining Creator, and the One whose salvation lasts forever. And it is this God who calls us to hope and trust in his promises because, his “righteousness will never fail.”

A Prayer for the Week: Eternal God, we look to you, the Rock from which we were hewn. In a changing and worrying world, lift up our hearts to the One who is the renewable energy of hope, hold us firmly as we trust in your promises, and raise our eyes to see that, beyond our limited horizons, your righteousness draws near speedily and your salvation in on the way. In the name of Christ the Redeemer, Amen

How I Discovered Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony and Why It Still Comes Back to Haunt Me!

I first discovered the music of Beethoven while listening to a lecture on New Testament Ethics. In other words, by accident. 

While in my final year at Theological College my gran died, and I missed two lectures the day of her funeral. The Principal of the College, R E O White, dictated the two lectures on a reel to reel tape recorder - this was in 1975 - so that I wouldn't miss out on class learning.

At the end of the second lecture, his voice gave way to a piece of music I had heard before, but never listened to. It was The Shepherd's Song of Thanksgiving after the Storm, from Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Following immediately after a couple of lectures on the ethics of Jesus, it came as a welcome benediction and unrehearsed surprise. REO (as we called him) had recycled the tape and recorded over the music. It was one of those moments that sets up inner reverberations that stay with the heart throughout life. Beethoven has a long half life once his music is properly heard.

I decided to buy the LP (1975 remember) next day, and got a double album with Symphonies 5 and 6. Ever since, I have listened to Beethoven's music, at least the more accessible works, and I like most people I have my favourites. I mention all this because I was listening to that same symphony this morning while working on the latest tapestry based on a George Herbert poem. And there is a connection.

The storyline in the symphony is about arriving in the country, feelings of wellbeing, a rippling brook and the sounds of nightingale and cuckoo. The peasants are feeling joyful, and have an impromptu dance with much merrymaking, until the storm comes. The music becomes sombre and threatening, then erupts in a full orchestral thunderstorm. When it passes we have the shepherds song of thanksgiving after the storm, and in music that is warm, gentle and melodic, the world of composer and peasants is recomposed.

It's that musical sequence of contentment, human happiness and the sudden interruption of the storm with its potential for ruin and damage to crops and property that connects in my mind symphony and poem, Beethoven and Herbert. The tapestry I'm working on is an attempt to show through a variety of images George Herbert's poem The Flower. The poem itself is an exploration of the poet's spiritual experience of growing and declining, blooming and withering, spiritual wellbeing and spiritual anxiety, and thus the changing fortunes of the soul under the changing weather of an often inscrutable providence. In other words, the joy of the garden in spring and summer, declines in autumn and all but disappears in the squalls and storms of winter. 

Over the years I have developed an interest in the inner conversation that takes place between the written word, music, and image, and all of these in the context of being a theologian. So God comes into this too, how we think of God, and those experiences in which God comes to us. Many of my tapestries are worked over a few months when I am exposed to the words of a poem or other ways of writing about the world, God and that part of us we call the soul.

So this morning I was trying to work a panel showing a Spring sky, and playing with Herbert's lovely poignant lines:

"Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart

could have recover'd greennesse?"

I played the Pastoral Symphony while stitching. If the definition of a classic is music which has perennial power to move us, which never goes stale, and contains more truth, beauty and goodness than we can ever exhaust however many times we listen to it, then, yes, Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is a classic - but we all know that! The Flower is one of Herbert's most important and personally revealing poems. This is someone who understands the destructive power of storms, the menace of darkening skies, the elemental forces that are beyond human control, and that can make or break us.

One of Herbert's other poems has the ominous title, 'The Storm'. Here too Herbert is in confessional mood and mode, but he also displays that underlying defiance which is not bad faith, but the persistence of belief that behind the storms, and around the poet, is a love beyond understanding, but which won't let him go.

The last two lines of The Storm are a quite wonderful portrayal of the poet and God clearing the air, and setting things right between them again:

"Poets have wrong'd poore storms: such days are best;

They purge the air without, within the breast."

So a Spring sky can't all be sunshine and blue - there must be clouds, and storms! Beethoven says so, and Herbert said it first! What I find fascinating in the intersection of music, poetry and visual art, is the mystery of what goes on in a mind and the spiritual perceptions and affections, when three different forms of knowing and creating come together. Rather than analyse and try to explain that, there is the far less ambitious call to allow ourselves to be spoken to, addressed, and at times inwardly adjusted in ways we can't always discern. 

So George Herbert and Ludwig van Beethoven, Renaissance poet and Romantic composer of music. That's not a juxtaposition I would have set out to make, but now it seems entirely congruent. Or so it seems to me. And there's still the challenge of that Spring sky!     

TFTD: Why Paul Wouldn't End an Email, or an Epistle, with "Cheers!"

This week's TFTD follows on last week's reflections on putting on the whole armour of God. It's too easy to stop at 'the good bit' and not read how Paul ends the letter. The endings of Paul's letters are never casual. They are carefully worded towards encouragement, and well worth our taking time to read to the end. 

Monday

Eph. 6.18 “And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

It’s impossible to over-pray, seems to Paul’s point! Having described the Christian’s armour and the seriousness of spiritual struggles, Paul urges the Christian community to pray in the Spirit. Life in the Spirit is about living a life of trustful dependence on the power and grace and leading of the Holy Spirit. To pray is to speak our hearts and minds, and have these same words, thoughts and feelings interpreted by the Spirit. Any prayer anywhere, diversity of need finds voice in a diversity of prayers.

Tuesday

Eph. 6. 18b “With this in mind always be alert and keep on praying for all the saints.”

In this one verse Paul uses the all-inclusive vocabulary four times. “Pray on all occasions…all kinds of prayers…always alert…praying for all the saints.” Prayer is not so much a good option as an absolute necessity; not something we do when it suits us, but a way of living, thinking and seeing the world. “Be alert”, keep your eyes open, be faithful, and keep your heart open to the needs “of all the saints.”

Wednesday

Eph. 6.19 “Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains.”

This is one of those moving moments of confession from Paul. He’s human like the rest of us. It’s hard for an anxious person to speak fearlessly, and Paul makes no secret of his own struggles with self-doubt and fear of failure.  When it comes to mission, the words of our prayers have a way of putting words into the mouths of those for whom we pray, as they try to live and speak faithfully for Christ.

Thursday

Eph 6. “Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.”

Paul’s fears were real, and he acknowledged them, not as failures of faith but as reasons to go on trusting and depending on the God who had saved and commissioned him as ‘an ambassador in chains”. While it’s true that we are saved by grace, and have new life in the Spirit, Paul’s prayer request is a reminder that we have the treasure of the gospel in jars of clay – fragile, and maybe even cracked!

2 Cor. 4.7 is the bonus verse this week! “We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God, and not from us.” By prayer we hold up those for whom we pray, before the grace that is sufficient and the peace beyond understanding, and the love from which nothing can separate.

Friday

Eph.6.21 “Tychicus, the dear brother and faithful servant in the Lord will tell you everything so that you also may know how I am and what I am doing.”

Transparency mattered to Paul. People should know what he is about, how his health is, what he needs, how the work of God is going. No PR stunts, no self-marketing, no selective narration of the facts of his story. That as it should be, not least our own transparency with ourselves, an honest acknowledging of how it is with us. Paul saw the Ephesians as a community who would understand him, and therefore pray for him. To do that well, Tychicus is to put them in the picture about Paul’s situation.

Saturday

Eph. 6.22 “I am sending him to you for this very purpose, that you might know how we are, and that he may encourage you.”

This verse is pure Paul! Sending messengers to keep the gospel network pinging with news, and hoping that by the prayers of the Ephesians, his role as an ambassador in chains might even go viral. By which is meant, when a community pray together with one heart, and identify with the work others are doing for Christ, and share the news with other communities, then prayer becomes a chain reaction of faith at work, love demonstrated, and hope encouraged. Paul understood how the spiritual dynamics of prayer work to sustain dynamic communities of the Spirit.

Sunday

Eph. 6. 23 “Peace to the brothers and sisters, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Grace to all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.”    

Peace, faith and love, but the greatest of these is love. Three times Paul emphasises the relation of love to faith, and of grace to loving trust. We love because he first loved us, and Paul prays for grace to fall upon all those who pledge, and intend to live a life of undying love for Christ. Of course we fail and fall, our love is inconstant and the rhythm of sin and forgiveness, complacency and passion, wrong desire and right desire, is real enough for each of us. Hence Paul’s prayer, which we can take as a personal benediction tumbling down the centuries from Paul to us, here and now:

“Grace also to me, and love with faith from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, so that I too may go on loving our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.” Amen.

International Women's Day - Six Women to Celebrate

Julian of Norwich, anchoress, theologian, author of Revelations of Divine Love, the first theological book by a woman written in vernacular English.

 

Dorothy Day, Catholic social activist, critic and protester, voice of the poor and provider for the hungry, vocal and relentless critic of the Vietnam War.

 

Helen Waddell, medieval scholar, translator of medieval latin lyrics, faithful critic of the Church of England, and the first and last word on the arts of kindness and generosity to others.

 

 

Denise Levertov, her father a Hasidic Jew who became an Anglican priest, British born naturalised American, and one of the foremost poets in America during the second half of the 20th Century

 

 

Marian Evans (George Eliot!), polymath, intellectually ahead of most of the men in Victorian male dominated literary circles, who wrote some of the most accomplished novels in the English language, and took a man's pen name to be taken seriously and bypass the dismissiveness of a patriarchal age!

 

 

Cicely Saunders, founder of the Hospice movement, Christian who moved from nursing, to social work, to medical clinician, to pioneer of palliative and end of life care, and whose vocation was to ensure accompaniment, support and comfort for the dying and their families.

 

     Six women whose lives and work, whose words and legacies, helped shape my view of the world, my self understanding, and the importance of equality, dignity, opportunity and acceptability as basic values that arise out of valuing each other. On International Women's Day, we celebrate them and are grateful for the gift they are and the legacy they each have left.

"These are thy wonders, Lord of love, / To make us see we are but flowers that glide:"

Every year I step out the front door around the beginning of March, and this happens. For two or three weeks, when the sun shines, there is this concerto in purple, the floral equivalent of Vivaldi's Spring. This year they are of special interest, because I'm currently designing and working a tapestry based on some lines from George Herbert's poem 'The Flower'. (Full text below - probably best to read it before the rest of this post.)

While the poem deliberately avoids naming a particular flower, I've been intrigued trying to figure out which flowers might be candidates that inspired Herbert's wondering question:

             "Who would have thought my shrivel'd heart

Could have recovered greennesse?"

However, at the time Herbert wrote, the crocus as we know it was still to be introduced to the English Garden, and therefore would probably be unknown to him as a perennial corm. Still, its spectacular resurrection every Spring makes the crocus a telling example of the metaphor Herbert exploits in his exploration of the rhythms of spiritual life. Soon after the flowering of crocuses, the flower fades, the greenery wilts, shrivels, and the plants go "quite underground" where "dead to the world," "[they] keep house unknown."

Herbert has known times of "recovered greennesse" but also the inevitable aftermath of flowering - withering and shriveling down to the "mother root." The poem is a complex interrogation of the ways of God with a human soul. There is the longing to be past and finished with the inevitability of change, with its rising and declining, of faith and doubt, of gratitude and complaint, of contentment and resentment. There is also perplexity that try as he will to grow towards flowering, even when well watered and plenty of sunshine, nevertheless the cycle of the seasons of the soul relentlessly brings change, inconstancy, and impermanence. So for Herbert there is the added disappointment of unfulfilled longing, and frustrated desire for a settled intimacy and secure sense of loving and being loved.

There is so much more to this poem, most of which evades analysis and is more easily apprehended in readers who recognise in Herbert's experience much of  their own spiritual struggle. I mention this here because like all of Herbert's serious readers, I recognise in myself something of Herbert's ache and longing towards God, and how regularly and at times inexplicably, the spiritual life is a struggle of life and death, growth and decline, the heart now all "greennesse" and soon all "shrivel'd".

Twice Herbert pulls himself together with a good theological talking to.

"These are thy wonders, Lord of power, / killing and quickning, bringing down to hell".

There is in the being and actions of God that which is inscrutable, a mystery of divine purpose that human reason will never penetrate or reduce to a comfortable conformity whereby God does what we want or expect.

But Herbert is too good a theologian, and too fine a pastor, to leave it there. The last stanza reconfigures the basis of the divine human relationship by qualifying the nature, scope and purpose of the "Lord of power."  

"These are thy wonders, Lord of love, / To make us see we are but flowers that glide:"

In Herbert's poetry God's love is a cantus firmus, the underlying and integrating rhythm and beat of Gods ways with the world and with each Christian soul. There is warning and severity in this poem, as Herbert acknowledges there are experiences of divine anger and withdrawal, of personal anguish and inner dying. The life of the soul is mirrored in the flowers' dying in autumn, the apparent death of winter, and these before the promised resurrection of spring and the full flowering of summer. Christian sanctity and growth towards God requires a four seasonal cycle, bgoing on for the years of a lifetime.

 Herbert's choice of metaphor, a flower's fortunes through the annually recurring seasons, allows him a level of frankness in expressing his own spiritual vicissitudes and inner frustrations. The veil of metaphor also preserves some distance between Herbert's own disappointed affections and longings, his "shrivel'd heart", and the Lord of power who is also the Lord of love.

Within the story of his soul's struggles there is a sub-text of complaint that surfaces here and there in the poem, Herbert doesn't always know with which one he is dealing, the Lord of power or the Lord of Love. He is at the mercy of both the power and the love of God, but that word mercy is the theological key to the poem, and to many other poems in The Temple.  

This poem would require a much longer exposition to begin to do justice to its lyrical power and spiritual integrity. As I live with it and read it each day, it helps to frequently come face to face with a cluster of purple crocuses, a sacrament in colour, bearing witness to Herbert's hopefulness and wonder at "recovered greennesse." And travelling towards Easter with this poem, the slow work on a tapestry based on that phrase begins to take shape.

Incidentally the second photo is of irises, also from our front garden, though in North East Scotland they are some weeks later in flowering. Irises were certainly around in the gardens of Herbert's time, and they have a long history as symbols of resurrection. I don't think Herbert had any flower in particular in mind, at least no such hint is given in the poem. That is the strength of the image he has chosen, the changing seasons in a seventeenth century English garden provides a scene of ubiquitous examples of the soul's progress come rain or shine, frost or wind.

The Flower, George Herbert

 

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean

Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;

         To which, besides their own demean,

The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.

                      Grief melts away

                      Like snow in May,

         As if there were no such cold thing.

 

         Who would have thought my shriveled heart

Could have recovered greenness? It was gone

         Quite underground; as flowers depart

To see their mother-root, when they have blown,

                      Where they together

                      All the hard weather,

         Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

 

         These are thy wonders, Lord of power,

Killing and quickening, bringing down to hell

         And up to heaven in an hour;

Making a chiming of a passing-bell.

                      We say amiss

                      This or that is:

         Thy word is all, if we could spell.

 

         Oh that I once past changing were,

Fast in thy Paradise, where no flower can wither!

         Many a spring I shoot up fair,

Offering at heaven, growing and groaning thither;

                      Nor doth my flower

                      Want a spring shower,

         My sins and I joining together.

 

         But while I grow in a straight line,

Still upwards bent, as if heaven were mine own,

         Thy anger comes, and I decline:

What frost to that? what pole is not the zone

                      Where all things burn,

                      When thou dost turn,

         And the least frown of thine is shown?

 

         And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write;

         I once more smell the dew and rain,

And relish versing. Oh, my only light,

                      It cannot be

                      That I am he

         On whom thy tempests fell all night.

 

         These are thy wonders, Lord of love,

To make us see we are but flowers that glide;

         Which when we once can find and prove,

Thou hast a garden for us where to bide;

                      Who would be more,

                      Swelling through store,

         Forfeit their Paradise by their pride.

Put on the Full Armour of God

Monday

Eph. 6.10-11 “Finally be strong in the Lord, and in his mighty power. Put on the full armour of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

Like a General marshalling his troops, Paul insists that each individual must rely on those on either side standing firm as a supportive presence. Paul is calling the Christian community to be steadfast and immovable in the strength of the Lord. The struggle against evil, injustice, and all that ruins God’s creation and creatures, is not finally dependent on our strength, but on the mighty power of God, made real through the energising of the Holy Spirit and the living presence of the risen Christ.

Tuesday

 Eph. 6.14a “Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled round your waist.”

“Stand your ground…having done everything, to stand…, stand firm, then.” Three times in a sentence or two that command. Stand! To stand for truth is to refuse the lie, to recognise and call out untruth, to stubbornly insist that words matter, to believe that lies erode trust and corrode communities, and must be exposed and opposed. Christians of all people know the importance of truth and trust as the currency of human relations, and a key principles in Christian living.

Wednesday

Eph. 6.14b “Stand firm…with the breastplate of righteousness in place…,”

The breastplate of righteousness is the protective barrier covering the vital organs of lungs and heart. Christians breathe the oxygen of righteousness, imparted by Christ and practiced in Christ-like living. Likewise the believer’s heart hungers for justice, and longs for purity. The heart is covered by the protective breastplate of God’s righteousness, which is imparted and experienced as gift, and lived as the identity marker of the Christian in every struggle.

Thursday

Eph. 6.15 “Stand firm…with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace.”  

Paul, for all the controversy that surrounded him, was an apostle of peace and peaceable-ness, of forgiveness and reconciliation. Those who find peace with God through Christ, are sent out into a world of jagged edges and broken communities as peacemakers, peace-builders and peace advocates. Feet fitted with readiness for gospel peace means that, like the soldier commanded to stand firm, the Christian community stands on, and stands shoulder to shoulder for, the gospel of peace, as messengers of God’s peace and practitioners of reconciliation.

Friday

Eph. 6.16 “In addition to all this take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.”

This is battlefield vocabulary. The shield of faith is held by each soldier, linked to those beside and behind, providing protection from the worst the enemy can do. The Christian community is a fellowship held together by the love, grace, power and promise of God. Faith is trust that “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.” (Eph.2.6) Whatever flaming arrows of doubt, temptation, suffering, or persecution are fired at us, they hit the shield of faith, and are blunted and extinguished by God’s faithful love and gracious power.

Saturday

Eph. 6.17a “Take the helmet of salvation…”

Take the shield of faith and take the helmet of salvation. These are imperatives. This isn’t a polite suggestion! Paul isn’t saying it might be a good idea! Grab your shield and get your helmet firmly fixed in place. These are life-saving fixtures of the soldier in combat. The brain thinks and co-ordinates the body, and for Christians, our salvation includes the transformation of the mind and having the mind of Christ. The helmet of salvation signifies a mind renewed, the conscience cleansed, a new way of thinking and acting, because “God has made us alive with Christ…”

Sunday

Eph6.17b “Take the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Every piece of armour is defensive, except the sword. In Hebrews the Word of God is described as “sharper than any two edged sword”. It’s no coincidence that when Jesus was tempted and under attack, he quoted Scripture to the accuser. The Scriptures are light for the path, bread for the journey, water that refreshes, fire that cleanses – but in the battles of the soul, the Scriptures are a sword that slays the lie, that repels temptation, that allows us to fight back in the power of the Spirit and to stay faithful in the service of Christ.

……………………………..

Whoso beset him round with dismal stories,
do but themselves confound, his strength the more is.
No lion can him fright: he'll with a giant fight,
but he will have the right to be a pilgrim.

                                                                            John Bunyan

"Save us from weak resignation, to the evils we deplore..."

What are we to make of starving people being shot, and trampling on each other in the stampede for food to feed their dying children? In trying to take in the reality of human suffering and our capacity for inhumanity towards others, I refuse to say 'there are no words'.

Yes, there are words! Words are the building blocks of truth. Words are a sign of our humanity. By our words we seek to give meaning, and frame reality by naming what must be named with a combination of courage, compassion and moral maturity.

So yes! There must be words. There must be speech capable of addressing such outrageous events as unfold on our phones, computers and televisions, and doing so not to add to the sum total of hatred, but to defy despair, to cry for peace, to contradict with moral force the cruelties of war. There must be words: to pray, to lament, to negate the urge to violence, and then words to rebuild hope and words to bridge the chasms of our fears with reconciling intent.

Throughout his life, the Jewish philosopher A. J. Heschel carried within him the burden of his people. Some of his most powerful writings and most searing words, are the outflow of his responses to Jewish suffering. His writings, his words, relentlessly express his belief that from the tragedy of his people must come a safer world for children, a commitment to care for the weak, and an accepted responsibility to work for the freedom of the oppressed and the healing of the nations.

Here is Heschel, from an essay collected in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity:

"There is a pressing urgency to the work of justice and compassion. As long as there is a shred of hatred in a human heart, as long as there is a vacuum without compassion, anywhere in the world, there is an emergency.

Why do people rage? People rage and hurt and do not know how to regret, how to repent. The problem is not that people have doubts but rather that people may not even care to doubt.

The charity we may do is terribly diminutive compared with what is required. You and I have prayed, have craved to be able to make gentleness a certainty, and have so often failed. But there are in the world so many eyes streaming with tears, hearts dumb with fears, that to be discouraged would be treason.

We have lost the ability to be shocked. The malignity of our situation is increasing rapidly, the magnitude of evil is spreading furiously, surpassing our ability to be shocked. The human soul is too limited to experience dismay in proportion to what has happened in Auschwitz and Hiroshima.

We do not know what to pray for. Should we not pray for the ability to be shocked at the atrocities committed by man, for our capacity to be dismayed at our inability to be dismayed.

Prayer should be an act of catharsis, of purgation of emotions, as well as a process of self-clarification, of examining priorities, of elucidating responsibility. Prayer not verified by conduct is an act of desecration and blasphemy. Do not take a word of prayer in vain. Our deeds must not be a refutation of our prayers.

Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods."

(Quotations from 'On Prayer', in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity, Abraham Joshua Heschel (New York: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux,1996) pages 260-62.)

When it seems impossible to find words, sometimes we are helped by using words that have already been found to deepen understanding, offer wisdom, guide the conscience, and appeal to those deep springs of moral and spiritual value that prevent our humanity from being resigned to inhumane and dehumanising words, attitudes and actions. Like those words of Heschel. 

Please don't say there are no words. There are, if we search our hearts more thoroughly and make space there for those whose tragedy is better acknowledged by our words however stuttering and inadequate, than by a silence that sounds like "resignation to the evils we deplore." 

Faithful Hope and Defiance of Despair.

 

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 downtown Aberdeen, part of the city now run down by neglect and a world that has moved on, a site that is apparently still unattractive to investors, space that's just too much hassle to reclaim, repair and restore.

 

Except. 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!"

 

Today, in the light of a ruin in havbited by sparrows, I hope in God for the return of peace and safety for the people of Ukraine, Gaza and Israel, and the other troubled places of our fractured planet. 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.