Verses from the Psalms

The aim was to read four Psalms a day. It should have taken 38 days, maybe 40 if the very long Ps119 is given three days ; it has taken 62 days. Indolence and forgetfulness played a part.

‘How long shall I take counsel in my soul Ps 13 v 2
‘I will bless the Lord, who has given me counsel, my heart also instructs me in the night seasons’ Ps 16v7

Straight away we plunge into the dynamic between God and man. In the New Covenant, God has taken out our heart of stone and replaced it with a heart of flesh and put a new spirit in us AND His Holy Spirit. So when we go ‘inside’ to take counsel with our own soul, we find the God, the Holy Spirit, witnessing with our spirit. Really the distance between us is not even paper thin.

‘I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness’ Ps 17v15

If you’re thinking death and resurrection, then this verse lines up nicely enough. But if you’re thinking literally, it’s more of a puzzle. ‘Behold,’ says St Paul, speaking about the resurrection, ‘I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep but we shall be changed; in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet…the dead will be raised incorruptible.’ But there’s a lead-up to this crescendo: ‘And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit’. Take a look in the mirror in the morning. Takes some faith…O yeah, faith.

‘Incline Your ear to me, hear my speech’ Ps 17 v6 (v Is 55v3)

Here we go again, the dynamic. ‘Listen to me’ we say but somewhere along the line we hear an echo ‘Listen to Me’. It really is a two-way street this true Christianity.

‘You are my hiding place, You shall preserve me from trouble You shall surround me with songs of deliverance’ Ps 32 v 7

Evangelicals will say (correctly in my opinion) that the whole Bible is the word of God. But if heaven is like a warehouse of the bible books and verses, the personal delivery system from heaven is more impressive. The Spirit may pick up a verse and deliver it to your heart faster than Amazon or Deliveroo. The Bible is like a restaurant where all the food is on the menu but along comes the Holy Spirit in disguise, as the waiter with some recommendations. ‘That one tonight, Sir’ or ‘With the lamb, this wine, Madam’. Or it might be, from this Psalm: ‘Hide in me today, John, let Me sing you some songs of deliverance.’

‘The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord’ Ps 32 v5

Faith, fact, and feeling. I remember being unduly irritated by the silly diagram of Faith as a train engine, pulling two carriages, fact and feeling, in that order. It still irritates me. But darn it, here’s one of those verses where your feelings may well let you down, and facts (I write this in the wake of the Syrian and Turkish earthquake) will divert you. The best thing is to keep munching on this verse, then we might be of some use in every circumstance, like Jesus, who had every reason to doubt the accuracy of this verse, harassed as he was all the way from his home church, where they were about to murder him, to Jerusalem, where the plotters finally got their act together and crucified Him. But even on the cross He was talking of Paradise. Faith trumps facts and feelings.

‘O Lord make haste to save me’ Ps 38v22,40v13 memories of All Saints

Only a quick note: the church I was taken to as a child (which successfully inoculated me against Christianity, or so I thought) had a really good choir. You know, frilly collars, unemotional faces, and angelic sound. I can still hear the bass soloist pouring out the words of the liturgical responses ‘O Lord make haste to save us’ with his rich voice, and the accompanying pipe-organ making the whole building reverberate with its deep thundernotes.

The place of jackals

‘You have severely broken us in the place of the jackals’ Ps44v19

Tempting to write more than I should. If you’ve been there with the jackals and been broken, you know two things. You may be functioning externally quite well, but inside you’re like a dying star collapsing into a black hole. You have no strength to climb back out. But the Lord comes, recovery comes. The Jews suffered annihilation at the hand of Hitler’s Nazis but, unbelievably, just three years later, in May 1948, the newly formed Israel celebrated its restoration to the world map ending 2000 years of exile. It is a profound mystery. If you’re being broken, take some strength from this.

‘All your garments are scented with myrrh and cassia’ Ps 44 v 8

On more than one occasion, women felt impelled to soak Jesus’ head or feet or body with scents, spices, or perfumes. It’s an interesting phenomenon. Even the three Magi from the east brought gold, frankincense and myrrh. The word Messiah literally means ‘anointed one’ and the earthly oils used to anoint kings were pictures of the true anointing oil of heaven the Holy Spirit. Now we are ‘entwined with Christ’, ‘in the Messiah’ the ‘Anointed one’, guess what, we share in His anointing. We’re used to the doublet ‘he who has ears to hear’ or ‘eyes to see’, maybe we should add ‘noses to smell’. No, we should.

‘Make me hear joy and gladness; that the bones You have broken may rejoice’ Ps51v8

We’re back to recovery from brokenness. The Bible is full of this. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to …heal the broken hearted’. It’s a common human cycle. Falling over, getting back up. On an individual level but it can be scaled up to whole nations. God does it. He loves us.

‘You number my wanderings; put my tears in a bottle’ Ps56 v 8

Such a poetic phrase. It has inspired me to attempt to write a children’s book.

‘Through our God we shall do valiantly; It is He who treads down our enemies’ Ps 60 v12

That partnership repeating. We’re not expected to overcome difficulties or battle away on our own. He treads down our enemies. First base is handing over the conflict to God. Second base is letting God direct us. First base is all-important. Why is it that it still takes me a while to remember to run to first base?

Early will I seek You

‘O God, You are my God; early will I seek You’ Ps63 v 1

Best time of the day. Don’t be surprised if God plays hide & seek. Some days it’s as if you’re surrounded by divine love and presence, other days you’re walking through a fog with no indication of where to go or anything to see. Sensory deprivation. In the hills, in the fog, you get your compass out and walk according to a bearing. Spiritually? There’s a great passage in 1 Samuel when David is having an acutely bad day, it simply says ‘he strengthened himself in God’. No details. Do you know how to strengthen yourself in God? I preach the gospel to myself.

‘Let the peoples praise You O God
Let all the peoples praise You
Then the Earth shall yield her increase
God, our own God, shall bless us
And all the ends of the earth shall fear Him’ Ps67 v 5-7

No point in being grumpy or wallowing in self-pity. Better to praise God. It might just unlock whatever is overwhelming you, fear, helplessness, anger, frustration, defeat, rejection…and so on. I like Watchman Nee’s statement: ‘The Christian life is like wiping your tears whilst holding onto the plough’. The tears are real, but so is the plough.

‘O God, who is like You?
Who has shown me great and severe troubles
Shall revive me again
And bring me up again
From the depths of the earth’ Ps 71 v 19,20

Again. And again.

‘Thus my heart was grieved
And I was vexed in my mind
I was so foolish and ignorant
I was like a beast before You
Nevertheless, I am continually with You
You hold me by my right hand
You will guide me with your counsel’ Ps 73 v 21-24

Coming to terms with our own wilfulness is painful. It leads us off course, grieves our hearts and vexes our minds. Sins of commission or omission. But this verse holds out hope that once we have admitted our state of mind, God will guide us once more. He’s always the father of the Prodigal, waiting for us to come to our senses and return.

You number my wanderings; put my tears in a bottle

‘Men ate angels’ food
He sent them food to the full’ Ps 78 v 25

Quoting Deuteronomy Jesus said ‘Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’. Bread sustains our physical/biological life but it’s the word of God that sustains our spiritual life…which is life in fact! The phrase in this verse that struck me was ‘to the full’. Sometimes all we need is a quick snack. But there are times for banquets, when God opens up new vistas, or fresh revelations.

‘For the Lord God is a sun and a shieldThe Lord will give grace and glory’ Ps 84 v 11

Psalm 84. One of my favourite Psalms. I can’t remember why this verse stood out. Read the whole Psalm, it’s good ‘un. Maybe ‘grace AND glory’. Some of us content ourselves on grace OR glory. Nope. It’s both.

‘Preserve my life, for I am holy
Save your servant who trusts in You’ Ps 86 v 2

O dear. I am holy. That’s like a left hook to the polite, reserved, and modest British jaw. We spend far too much time in mock humility. The fact is that in Christ we have been made holy, all of us are ‘saints’ not just the special few, like the Catholics suggest when canonising their best. We align holiness and sainthood (both the same word in Greek) too much with ‘goodness’. That’s the fruit not the root. The idea of holiness is rooted in the concept of being set aside for a particular purpose. God has placed us in Christ. By that fact alone we are holy, set aside. St Paul says we are ‘His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them’. True humility is receiving, welcoming, and believing the word of God, then there’s a chance we might actually display the fruit of holiness.

‘Those that are planted in the house of the Lord
Shall flourish in the courts of our Gid
They shall bear fruit in old age
They shall be full of oil and green’ Ps 92 v 13,14

I read this verse on or about my 65th birthday. Am I still middle-aged? That feels like disappearing youth! But the prospect of being full of oil and green, like an old tree, still pushing out bright green leaves and good quality fruit – I’ll take that.

Psalm 100 the whole Psalm

Enough said.

‘The trees of the Lord are full of sap’ Ps 104 v16

As Psalm 92 above.

‘He satisfied them with the bread of heaven

He opened the rock and water gushed out’ Ps 105 v40,41

Anyone interested in rugby during the 1970s will have been in awe of the Welsh rugby side. And Cardiff Arms Park ringing out with Bread of Heaven (Cwm Rhondda) sung in parts, at top volume, all the verses memorised putting Swing Low and Delilah to shame. It was also our school hymn when schools had school hymns. Before I overindulge in nostalgia I should remember the drudgery of school assemblies and how I eventually refused to sing, defiantly staring at our Buddhist headmaster beating out Christian bible readings and hymns that he didn’t believe in. I wasn’t a Christian, but the hypocrisy was too much. Later, in the 6th Form, I joined the rugby team and, as most of us were also in the school choir, we English rugby boys learnt the parts to Cwm Rhonda. When I capitulated to Christ in the January of my Upper 6th year (Year 13 to more recent ears) the school hymn took on a new significance. Tears fall from my eyes when I think of the spiritual decline in Wales since the Welsh revival in 1904. A revival, that amongst other long-lasting effects, taught the hardened rugby players, miners, and hill farmers of Wales the words of Bread of Heaven. When God opens the hard rock of our hearts fresh water gushes out. The miracle of encountering Christ and how he transforms us from the inside out is poured out in hymns and songs. I can still hear Cardiff Arms Park singing ‘Bread of heaven, bread of heaven, feed me ‘til I want no more, feed me ‘til I want no more’.

‘Tremble O Earth at the presence of the God of Jacob
Who turned the rock into a pool of water
The flint into a fountain of waters’ Ps 114 v 7,8

It’s the same transformation. ‘So and so is such a kind person’ we might hear someone say. But the kindest person may be like ‘flint’ to God. Impervious, tough, self-reliant, and rebellious, refusing to acknowledge that even their kindness has been created by God. When I heard the gospel for the first time (not in the church I had been brought up in) I sat at the back of the church trembling, physically trembling, as it dawned on me that the resurrection and much else besides, might, after all, be true. That left me with an awesome decision, but also a sense of excitement at the implications of taking that step of believing…which I did, ironically, whilst repeating the Creed in the church that had inoculated me against Christianity. I had long since abandoned repeating the Creed as I didn’t believe it, but as I opened my mouth that morning, to say ‘I believe in God…’ I believed.

‘The Lord is on my side
I will not fear
What can man do to me’ Ps 118 v 6

A good verse to repeat over and over. Eat it. Chew on it. Come back to it. Man put Jesus on the cross but man could not raise Him from the grave. Man can do a lot to make us suffer but God is also at work. The Bible is a curious combination of acknowledging fear and yet saying ‘do not fear’. Fear is real but it needn’t dominate. I’ve known fear crystallising into panic attacks, uncontrollable anxiety and fear, but deeper down, deeper than ‘panic headquarters’ is the Lord. It’s true. He has the last word.

‘Though I walk in the midst of trouble
You will revive me’ Ps 138 v 7

That’s what life is like sometimes. It sometimes feels as if we’re surrounded by troubles we cannot ignore or escape from. That’s the hope, not that the troubles will subside, although that is included, but the greater hope, that the Lord will revive us. It’s not just the absence of trouble we need, but a revival of life. The kiss of life, an inner renewal. New batteries for the remote!

‘You have covered my head in the day of battle’ Ps 140 v 7

This spoke to me powerfully. Here, we’re on the offensive. We’re taking the battle to the opposition, to external enemies, the circumstance, or the obdurate internal self. I’m not quite sure what ‘covered my head’ means but when I read it, all I can say is that it re-configured my attitude from the passive ‘He will restore me after trouble’ to a more active participatory stance in whatever battle is on.

‘Teach me to do Your will
For You are my God
Your Spirit is good
Lead me in the land of uprightness’ Ps 143 v10

That could be the prayer of one’s whole life. Especially, perhaps, for a teacher! How much have Iearnt? I loved the poetic ‘lead me in the land of uprightness’ that invisible kingdom, the land of uprightness, that pervades every evil war-torn, disease-racked, poverty-induced, slave-ridden sub-section of our world that attempts to set up an alternative power structure to heaven, to the kingdom of God, and may appear to succeed for a while. But it is those who are, despite all that, led in the land of uprightness that win the day. We press on.

‘The Lord lifts up the humble;
He casts the wicked to the ground
The Lord takes pleasure on those who fear Him
In those who hope in His mercy’ Ps 147 v 6,11

If you’re like me you’ve discovered the truth of both sides of that same coin.

‘Let the saints be joyful in glory’ Ps 149 v 5

Fittingly, we end with (i) saints (ii) being joyful (iii) and submerged in and caught up in glory. No more need be said.

The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head

What did Jesus mean?

Whatever He meant, if we think we can escape Scot free from having nowhere to lay our heads…we’d better think again. I hope I can explain.

Probably since reading the New Testament seriously in my mid-teens (often when I should have been attending to my homework I should add!), I’ve thought of this statement by Jesus as describing his lifestyle whilst ‘on the road’, preaching.

Jesus may have had a house in Capernaum ‘he came and dwelt in Capernaum’ Matthew 4 v 13 having been rejected in his hometown, Nazareth.

He grew up in Nazareth attending the local synagogue on the Sabbath from childhood for religious services, weddings, funerals, bar-Mitzvahs, and so on. But once He stood up and said ‘The Spirit is upon Me…’ (Luke 4) he was bustled out of the synagogue, the congregation wild with anger, took his to the top of the hill above the town ready to hurl Him to his death on the rocks below…probably with His horrified mother, brothers, and sisters watching on…astonished! Extraordinary behaviour from their neighbours and friends.

So he moved to Capernaum, ‘And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum’ Mt 4 v 13. How long He was welcome in Capernaum is uncertain. All went well until, in the synagogue, he healed a man with a withered arm on the Sabbath. The scribes and the Pharisees that were present were ‘filled with rage’ and began to plot against him.

In one town, Nazareth, all was well until He spoke. In the next, Capernaum, all was well until He healed on the Sabbath.

And leaving Nazareth, He came and dwelt in Capernaum

Switching from Jesus to Abraham for a few paragraphs:

If we are true believers, we are ‘of the faith of Abraham’.

Maybe in his childhood, the scripture doesn’t make this explicit, but at some point, God spoke to Abram (later Abraham) ‘Get out of your country, from your family, and from your father’s house to a land that I will show you’ Gen 12 v1.

His father seemed to have the same vision, to leave Ur and travel to Canaan, but he settled in Haran a few hundred miles short of Canaan.

We are not to settle just short. Just as Abram had to leave his father’s house. His family. From whom he had received everything. It is the same for us. Sometimes we have to, whether we are rejected, like Jesus at Nazareth and Capernaum, or whether we set out alone, like Abram at Haran.

In Israel, there were three feasts that the men, if possible, had to attend in Jerusalem each year: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.

In English evangelical or ‘charismatic churches’ whether found in ‘streams’ or historic denominations, like the CofE or Baptists, or independent churches, see the first two feasts, Passover and Pentecost as part of the New Testament, but not Tabernacles. Not yet, that is.

In simple terms, evangelical and charismatic churches would see Passover fulfilled in Christ; the original Passover, enabling the Jews to escape from Egypt under Moses in the exodus, acting as a ‘model’ of the true ‘Passover Lamb’ – Jesus. As John the Baptist cried out, ‘Look! It’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’ pointing at Jesus. Through the true Lamb of God being sacrificed and His blood being shed, we too make our exodus from the slavery of sin into redemption and freedom through Christ.

The Day of Pentecost has two New Testament passages that explain how the New Testament (or New Covenant – the terms are synonymous) only functions when the gift and baptism in the Holy Spirit is received. In John 7 Jesus cried out ‘If anyone is thirsty, come to Me and drink…out of His heart shall flow rivers of living water’ This He said concerning the Spirit whom those believing in Him would receive’ and then in Acts 2 ‘When the Day of Pentecost had fully come…they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and speak with other languages as the Spirit enabled them’. True Christianity is infused and propelled by the Holy Spirit. Many evangelical and denominational churches rejected and still reject this forcing those who receive the Spirit, as Jesus promised, to experience for themselves the truth of the verse ‘the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head’, His experience has become theirs.

But what about Tabernacles? Tabernacles is fulfilled in Christ s much as Passover and Pentecost, and therefore it should be as integrated into our faith and church experience as much as Passover and Pentecost. When the Jews celebrate Tabernacles there are some features that survive to this day.

1. They meet under a roof with overlapping branches with gaps that lets the light in

2. Food and drink, and, ceremonially bread and wine, is passed round

3. They remember the time in the desert, when they lived in tents, temporary dwellings.

They were together. In our very individual-based culture, ‘freedom’ is a treasured value, including freedom of speech, the freedom of assembly, and freedom of worship – freedoms that were hard won. But the New Testament speaks of three baptisms: 1. Baptism into Christ – God taking us out of Adam and planting us in Christ (e.g. Romans 6 v 3) 2. Baptism in the Spirit – Jesus is the Baptiser in the Spirit. We are plunged into the Spirit (Acts 2) 3. The Spirit baptises us into one body. This is a Holy Spirit operation (1 Cor 12 v13)

It is the last of the three that we resist; the flesh demanding its illusory rights of independence when our life is the life of Christ. But if we yield and have faith in this truth, we will find ourselves closely knit, grace flowing from one to the other, together under a roof with holes letting the light in i.e. the presence of God. We become a replica of Jesus, ‘the word became flesh and tabernacled among us’ John 1 v 14 but not as single operatives.

Does this mean endless ‘fellowship meetings’ with coffee and donuts or church picnics?? No. Heaven forbid. Was Jesus like this? No. He was among the people, tax collectors, fishermen, radicals, the rich and the poor, men and women, children, believers and unbelievers, lawyers and politicians, lepers and the demon-possessed, the sick and the well, Jews and Gentiles. Our fellowship is in spirit…and sometimes we’ll meet. One moment he was a baby in a feeding trough, and on another occasion feeding 5000. In public view one minute and insignificant, or hidden, the next.

We cannot settle a few hundred miles short of the Promised Land, in our own Harans

But when we meet, as Paul said to the Corinthian church, ‘whenever you come together, each of you has a song, a teaching, a tongue, a revelation…’ in other words it’s a meeting with God who, as Paul had previously taught, has poured out His Spirit and distributed His diverse gifts: words of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healings, miracles, prophecy, discerning spirits, tongues, and interpretation, therefore ‘whenever you come together’ these things are the norm. God the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit are at work…we are not in charge. Leaders facilitate Tabernacle-style meetings and living. Leaders in plural. Elders. The New Testament knows nothing of one-man (or one-woman) leaders. Or a pope. Or anyone rising up to ‘run’ the meeting, or the church. It’s only a spiritual oxymoron that thinks they are better at running meetings than the Spirit of the Living God.

The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

We cannot, must not, settle for either for a ‘Passover-only’ Christianity, or a ‘Passover + Pentecost only’ Christianity. We cannot settle a few hundred miles short of the Promised Land, in our own Harans. We must press on.

Lastly, we press on for what?

‘To Him be glory in the church in all generations’ Ep 3 v21.

A Flayed Crow in the Hall of Judgement

A Ted Hughes poem…he seemed to have an affinity with crows…A Flayed Crow has foothills, then up, then the summit

All darkness comes together, rounding an egg.
Darkness in which there is now nothing.

A blot has knocked me down. It clogs me.
A globe of blot, a drop of unbeing.

Nothingness came close and breathed on me – a frost
A shawl of annihilation curls me up like a shrimpsfish foetus

Am I the self of some spore?

I rise beyond height -I fall past falling
I float on a nowhere
As mist-balls float, and as stars

A condensation, a gleam simplification
Of all that pertained
This cry alone struggles in its tissues.

Where am I going? What will come of me here?
Is this everlasting? Is it
Stoppage and the start of nothing?

Or am I under attention?
Do purposeful cares incubate me?
Am I the self of some spore?

What feathers shall I have?

Is this the white of death blackness,
This yoke of afterlife?
What feathers shall I have? What is my weakness

Good for? Great fear
Rests on the thing I am, as a feather on a hand.

I shall not fight
Against whatever is allotted to me.

My soul skinned, ad my soul-skin pinned out
A mat for my judges.

 Ted Hughes, Cave Birds

‘Whenever’ - a powerful word that!

At the time of writing, I’m enjoying watching Totems, a Cold War spy series on Amazon Prime. It’s in French with English subtitles. Without the subtitles, I might have been able to follow the gist of the storyline, but the subtitles bring the whole thing together.

If I was writing in sub-titles to this post, it would be this: to evangelical churches – do you believe the bible is the word of God? Good. It is. To charismatic stream churches – do you believe the bible is the word of God? Good.

But do we obey it?

The apostle Paul writing to the church in Corinth wrote these verses:

‘Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation. Let all things be done for edification’ 1 Cor 14 v 26

This verse was written after quite a long run-up, Paul teaching how the Holy Spirit is the ‘operating system’ in the life of individual believers and churches and how the Holy Spirit coordinates the various spiritual ‘software’ bits or ‘apps’ downloaded in each believer, known biblically as the variety of the gifts (e.g. prophecy) and ministries of the Spirit (e.g. prophet), the charismata, hence charismatic churches.

The first mention in the letter by Paul of the Spirit sets the scene:

‘I was with you in weakness, in fear, in much trembling. My speech and preaching was not with persuasive words of human wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that our faith should not be in the wisdom of men but the power of God’ 1 Coir 2 v 4,5

If you’re interested in theology, or psychology, or team leadership, or business…or philosophy, or you’re a great musician, that’s great. Plunge yourself in, enjoy. But none of these things are of any use to the body of Christ unless you have learnt how to rely on the new operating system of the Holy Spirit. Zero use.

Look back at the last time you ‘came together’ as a church. Was it like 1 Cor 14 v 26?

If not, why not? Intriguing, isn’t it? History? Tradition? Faulty teaching?

Don’t be an evangelical oxymoron…

I’ve benefited hugely from good leaders, good preachers, and good ministers. I could listen to some all day long. But the CofE church I grew up in didn’t obey 1 Cor 14 v 26, the Baptist church I went to was moving in that direction, the Charismatic church I went to in Exeter, more so, and others since then…but all had a ‘backstop’ of a leader, often paid, as an essential ingredient of what’s required for the body of Christ to operate. Just look at the Job Section ads in various Christian magazines.

It's subtle. If that leader is a true bible-believing leader he or she will not rest until 1 Cor 14 v 26 is considered as the ‘Normal’ in their congregation. Anything else is…well, off-beam. Isn’t it?

‘Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation. Let all things be done for edification’ 1 Cor 14 v 26

If that’s not ‘Normal’ in your experience the church has slipped back into relying on man’s wisdom – often, literally, one man’s wisdom:

‘I was with you in weakness, in fear, in much trembling. My speech and preaching was not with persuasive words of human wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power that our faith should not be in the wisdom of men but the power of God’ 1 Coir 2 v 4,5

If this was true for the apostle Paul how much more so for us! Come back to your true operating system, the Holy Spirit. Like the disciples who left their nets to follow Christ, leave your cleverness or natural abilities behind and switch to the Holy Spirit. Paul was a well-educated trilingual man, versed in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. A confident leader co-ordinating the arrest of Christian believers as part of the thought police of his day – the Pharisees. But when it came to his ‘ministry’ he left that all behind and switched to the Spirit of Christ.

…don’t be a Triumph Herald 13/60 running on reserve

Church meetings should never be predictable. Congregations are not passive. ‘Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be’. Who knows what the Spirit will bring that day? And ‘whenever’ isn’t restricted to Sunday meetings. ‘Whenever’ means just what it says. If, for example, a deacons meeting might have to decide about any number of practical ventures but even that is approached from the Spirit, not your practical or planning abilities. The first deacons were selected on the basis of whether they were filled with the Spirit and faith…individuals who had switched operating systems.

Two illustrations to close. A Triumph Herald 13/60 and a Jazz/Blues band.

My old Triumph Herald 13/60, a wonder car, had a metal lever in the boot. If you were running low on petrol you could push the lever over – the car had a spare tank. But many churches today are running on their spare tanks, their natural abilities. They are well led, well organised, have methods and programs, lively worship bands, and impressive ministries to the poor and youth, and worldwide mission. But the truth is, it’s so easy to drift from the church as a living organism – the body of Christ filled with the life of God - to a man-made organisation with a CEO pastor. Better to switch to the main tank and keep the main tank full. ‘Be filled with the Holy Spirit’ Paul wrote to the Ephesians…and us if we’re evangelical/charismatic believers.

Jazz and Blues bands can play for hours without a note of music in front of them, not because they have memorised every note but because all the music they need is inside them. In New Orleans, the bars are full of musicians who play all day long. As one leaves another joins in. Every so often one might go crazy and blow the roof off with an extemporary solo they have never played before or had been heard by anyone else. All full of enough music to keep it going but willing to let someone ‘speak’.

That’s how church should be. All full of the Spirit and every so often it might be you who brings a revelation or a song, a prophecy, or a miracle of healing…fresh bread.

A good eldership overseeing a congregation will be modelling this to the congregation but not seeking to dominate the meeting otherwise they’re not elders, they’re evangelical oxymorons.

Don’t be an evangelical oxymoron or a passive pew warmer.

And don’t be a Triumph Herald 13/60 running on reserve, switch to the main tank.

And pastors…start trembling like the Apostle Paul who learnt to rely on the presence of the Holy Spirit.

‘To Him be glory in the church through Christ Jesus to all generation’ Eph 3 v 21

Grace, mercy, and peace.

Epiphany

Old enough, they said
To wear shorts to school
Scant protection from
Arctic blasts, gnats, and grazes
Old enough though. Six.

Old enough too
To be weighed down:
Fears of the Foad gang
And dislike of Gypsy Tart
Or four-syllable words

That curious cigarette paper
On which lay black
Hymns, Psalms, and prayers
And ‘Epiphany’
I’d just learnt ph = eff

So, in secret
I sounded out my first
Four syllable
Uninterested in its meaning
Eee-piph-phanee
Eee-piph-anee

Later, years piling on
It became a date
The Magi have come
But somehow still
Shrouded in mystery

Later still, shaving
And loving,
Weighed down once more
I climbed inside the word
And the word inside me

In a moment
Extended for minutes
Standing in the dark
Face upended to the stars
The shroud fell away…

Which End of the Pencil - Part 3 of 3

Part III Spirituality and Sharpeners

A quick reminder from Part I: I have found the following interacting model the most useful in differentiating between body, soul, and spirit:

Body – the five senses that inform us about our environment, what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, and the various organs that maintain our organic and physical life

Soul – is part mind (our ability to think and have thoughts), emotions (how we feel), and will (our ability to make decisions). M.E.W. for short.

Spirit – a deeper part of the person designed to have communion with God, ourselves, and others

We are all a combination of all of these parts working together. Think of anyone you know, and you’ll probably be able to identify their centre of gravity. The analytical thinker, the one who is more emotionally driven, another who is ruled by their senses, or the spontaneously wilful. And then there are those who seem to be spiritual.

Why a picture about running? Read on…

Here’s what the Bible says about spirituality:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you
I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh
And give you heart of flesh
I will put My Spirit within you
And cause you to walk in My statutes’ Ezekiel 36v26

Jeremiah prophesied much the same in his passage foreseeing a ‘new covenant’ - in fact the term ‘New Testament’ refers to this ‘new covenant’ that Jesus spoke at the Last Supper: ‘After supper, he took the cup and said ‘This is the New Covenant in my blood’. The passage sheds a great deal of light on the details of this ‘new covenant’.

So…we all have a spirit. But it may be poor condition - stony and not ‘alive’ in the sense that God has made it for – communion with God. But Ezekiel promises us some sort of heart transplant, and to give us a new spirit, and the Holy Spirit.

That is true spirituality. Christianity properly understood is a spirit-Spirit operation.

It is a divine-human relationship not a set of moral or ecclesiastical rules. It’s not how any prayers you say, or worship music, or bible verses, or baptism, or ‘ministry’, helping others, or church attendance. You might do all of these things but doing these things won’t make you a Christian. The only question is whether you have opened your heart to His heart operation.

That is true spirituality. Christianity properly understood is a spirit-Spirit operation.

Back to unsharpened pencils. Imagine a new pencil lying on the desk in front of you. There is no end and no beginning. They are inseparable. But to make the pencil fulfil its function you must take a blade to one end and sharpen it.

The Bible speaks as much about God coming to us as about us seeking God. It’s like that in any friendship and relationship, it’s difficult to pinpoint who starts a friendship, it often seems to be simultaneous.

If we think of God coming to us, we might think of God seeking Adam and Eve in the garden. He didn’t stay away ‘in heaven’ disapproving of their sin, He came looking for them. Or we might think of Jesus named ‘Emmanuel’ God with us who said things like ‘It’s not the well who need a physician but the sick. I did not come for the righteous but the sinners’. But if we think of man seeking God, we might remember Moses at the burning bush, or the disciples leaving their nets to follow Christ, or Blind Bartimaeus crying out ‘Son of David have mercy on me’.

The deepest form of meditation then is between you and God, between God and you.

My heart was grieved
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant
I was like a beast before You
Nevertheless, I am continually with You
You hold me by my right hand
You will guide me with Your counsel

Some pointers from my meditations on these verses.

You might have noticed this starts with my/our condition. You can’t commune with God unless you open your heart with all its griefs, sorrows, longings, hopes and dreams. It’s difficult not to feel foolish and vulnerable. But true meditation will bring you to the point where there’s only one word in the universe that matters ‘Nevertheless’.

That’s the turning point, the hinge.

It sounds close to madness to say God has spoken to me. Decidedly un-British!

We don’t mind being called ‘children of God’ but here the picture is us becoming like a little child and offering up our right hand. If you’re meditating you might act this sort of thing out, put some flesh on the bones. And then we reach the summit. It’s the true place, the true destination which is, in fact the true starting point – my spirit communing with His Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit as I not only hear His counsel but yield to it knowing it is from God who is love.

Now you have started.

It sounds close to madness to say God has spoken to me. Decidedly un-British! Un-CofE! But what else is spirituality if not that? The interaction between His Spirit and mine?

In my limited experience, what often happens is a deep sense of peace arrives, sometimes unexpectedly. Or it may be a conviction to put something right. Or to contact someone. Or a fresh attitude is formed inside. Or something finally makes sense. Or we’re reminded that Christ took all our griefs and sins on the cross, that we’re forgiven. Very occasionally it is something very specific.

I will share one such experience.

I had injured my right knee quite badly. If I ran for a hundred yards or so the pain would be unbearable. Sometimes walking in the hills, the same pain would reduce me to limping and very short strides. My early morning routine for many years has included reading the bible and prayer. One morning, I was praying but not specifically about my knee. All I can say is that I heard a voice (not audibly, but inside, like a strong thought, it’s hard to describe) that said just one word ‘Run!’ I think it was repeated twice. It was said with authority, like a command, but not threateningly. A day or so later I found a path to try running. I ran for about a quarter of a mile, free from pain. Then two miles. Then five miles, ten, and, in the end, half-marathons. I’m still running twenty-five years later.

The Psalmist’s heart was full of grief. His mind was vexed. But, in the end, He was trusting God to guide him with His counsel. Whatever our hearts are full of, meditation (slightly different to prayer, which is mostly to do with asking) can lead us to a place of trust: that all we have is freely given, including God’s counsel.

Which End of the Pencil - Part 2 of 3

Breathe Deeply

Before dealing with breathing head on, let me fire one warning shot across the bows.

Whilst I have no doubt that meditation can have many benefits for ‘you’, that is not, I believe, the ultimate purpose of meditation. In the West we have arrived at a highly developed sense of values that uphold freedom of the individual, the rights of man. At the extreme end lies ‘it’s my life and I’ll do with it what I want’, the cult of personality, and self-centred, ‘self-for-self’ framework within which we expect to experience happiness and an integrated personality. I am as much part of and affected by this cultural scene that would manipulate everything ‘for me’ as if I always need something more. If this article feeds into the idea that meditation is about gaining something purely for ourselves, I will have yielded to the all-pervading consumerist culture that inevitably leaves us dissatisfied with our lot, always needing more, but, If I can, somehow, tilt us away from a ‘striving’ mentality and more towards ‘grace’ an understanding that all we have is freely given - it will have been worth writing.

When Jesus challenged an educated man, a lawyer, about the commandments, he replied ‘First….love the Lord your God with all your heart…and, second, love your neighbour as yourself’ Mat 22 v 34-39

Here’s my very amateur starting point on meditation: everyone does it. It’s a universal human experience.

Imagine you’re in a cinema: before you know it, you become completely unaware of those around you, unaware, really of yourself, you have been absorbed into the film. It’s difficult to know if you’re in the film or if the film is inside you. Or you find yourself daydreaming. One moment you’re engaged in a conversation and the next your mind has wandered and landed on something quite unrelated. Like in the cinema you find yourself transported somewhere else.

Of course, where you go can often seem to be trivial, just a series of jumbled-up gibberish tumbling through your mind but sometimes we are gripped by a thought so that we become deeply quiet, our heart rate slows, and we become aware of a peace that has eluded us for maybe weeks, months, years even. We leave these times refreshed and renewed, ready to face whatever circumstances we are in, with the love of God in us and a new capacity to love ourselves and our neighbours.

Are not these experiences meditation?

Meditation is daydreaming with a purpose.

The question is, can we meditate deliberately? Routinely? Can we include meditation in our daily routines just as much as getting dressed, having coffee, or brushing our teeth?

The second question is what to meditate on.

The answer to Q1. Is a definite ‘Yes’ we can include meditation as part of our daily routine.

The answer to Q2 is more open-ended: a criminal might find meditation very useful in planning a bank-robbery or a preacher a sermon, or a surgeon before an operation. Meditation is not in essence morally good any more than weightlifting, it’s a means to an end.

But if we have Jesus’ vision of a humanity restored to its true purpose and fulness, we’re unlikely to indulge in using meditation for nefarious purposes…in fact, it can be a good antidote when our emotions take us places normally reserved for violent and illegal rage…like if someone puts just a little too much milk in your tea…Arghhh! Count to ten!

Meditation is daydreaming with a purpose

If the image of meditation is more East than West, more Buddhist than Christian we might be surprised to find that the Bible often speaks about meditation and what to meditate on: Isaac went out to meditate into the field; the Lord spoke to Joshua ‘…meditate in the Book of the Law day and night’; meditate on God, meditate on creation, in God’s word, ‘whatever things are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtue, praiseworthy…meditate on these things’.

I should also mention Peter on the roof ‘…he fell into a trance and saw heaven opened…’. St Paul, also, whilst praying, ‘fell into a trance’. The Greek word translated ‘trance’ is ‘ekstasis’ from where we get ecstasy. But this is misleading, ek-stasis, translated ‘trance’ really means ‘to stand outside oneself’, this may or may not be associated with an emotional reaction whereas we understand ‘ecstasy’ to be an experience of sheer pleasure. I would argue when you are lost in a film or lost in your thoughts you are in some sense in a ‘trance’ – standing outside yourself - and are meditating. The word trance is too closely associated with handing over the control of one’s mind to hypnosis…that’s another subject!

OK breathing. And deliberate meditation.

Step One: find somewhere without undue distraction. Sit comfortably or lie on the floor, prostrate or on your back. Some like calming music in the background. (NB sometimes a very noisy environment can work just as well).

Step Two: slow your breathing down, breathe deeply, in out…not too deeply to feel lightheaded.

Step Three: meditate on something; daydream with purpose. the biblical list is a good hunting ground. I’m currently meditating on the following verse from Psalm 73. I’m on day three. I can see this lasting a few more days.

My heart was grieved
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant
I was like a beast before You
Nevertheless, I am continually with You
You hold me by my right hand
You will guide me with Your counsel

Step Four: stopping. Sometimes meditation can take more than an hour – think back to watching a film or reading a good book. My experience is that generally, the deliberate form can finish quite naturally after a few minutes. No need to berate yourself, better to trust that you can meditate for longer, and may well do at times. Think coffee and biscuits v. three-course meals…you can do both.

Next I want to double back to ‘spirituality’…Part III.

Which End of the Pencil? Part 1 of 3

A mini-series on meditation, spirituality, and sharpeners

Part I – Human Beings?

In the space of maybe 72 hours over Christmas, I had three, no four, conversations about Meditation.

The odd thing was that three of these exchanges were not initiated by me, one of the four was a follow-up. Odder still I had written a potential blog titled ‘A Meditation on Time’ which I was sitting on – still am.

Meditation – it seems – is in the air.

Current images associated with meditation do include the Yogic levitator or at least sitting cross-legged in an Eastern meditative tradition, collectively or individually, repeating a rhythmic mantra. Or, maybe, a Christian mystic. A Franciscan brother, perhaps. But things have moved on. Or should I say, ‘gone mainstream’? Now, ‘spirituality’ is a word that is used as an all-encompassing paradigm within which meditation is a subset, a practice rather than the thing itself.

There’s no shortage of self-help books and podcasts that advocate meditation as an antidote to the frenetic lives that erode any sense of calm. Mindfulness speaks so powerfully to a generation that has learned to take mental health seriously - even if the catch-all phrase ‘mental health’ is ill-defined.

Equally, a more detached Western form, clinging on, some might say, to the wreckage of The Enlightenment, Rationality, and Empiricism, you have the evidence-based research and medico-scientific version espoused by Dr Mosely in his Just One Thing series on Radio 4:

In the Meditate episode of his Radio 4 podcast Just One Thing, Michael Mosley explores how an ancient and seemingly simple practice can have such big benefits:

How meditation can help your mood, memory and immune system

If you’re short on time and struggling to unwind, meditation could be the solution.

Just a little bit of practice a day has been shown to improve sleep, mood, boost your immune system, and even physically rewire your response to stress and pain.

This more ‘spiritual’ approach to living presupposes we know what we mean by using the term ‘spiritual’.

Many moons ago I asked a Year 10 tutor group ‘What is a human being?’ After much lively discussion, the consensus was that we have an outer life – our bodies - and an inner life, but no label for the inner life was agreed. It was more that we ‘live inside’ our bodies.

St Paul wrote these words:

‘We do not lose heart even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is renewed day by day’ 2 Cor 4 v 16

Some might say ‘soul’ others might say ‘spirit’ some might say something like ‘inner man’. The bible uses a range of terms to describe the inner life, soul and spirit are well known, but heart, liver, and bowels also get a mention!

The simplest biblical breakdown is spirit, soul, and body. The Buddhist version is similar: Form (body), Sensation, Perception, Thoughts, and Consciousness.

The problem we have in the West is that we use ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ interchangeably

The problem we have in the West is that we use ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ interchangeably and generally without too much idea of what either really consists or means. An alternative word is ‘self’, the idea that we are individuals, defined by our ‘self’ as distinct from others.

I have found the following model useful:

Body – the five senses that inform us about our environment, what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch and the various organs that maintain our organic and physical life

Soul – is part mind (our ability to think and have thoughts), part emotions (how we feel), and part will (our ability to make decisions)

Spirit – a deeper part of the person designed to have communion with God, ourselves, and others – unhurried communication

All three work together, potentially, to form our ‘consciousness’ of what is the true state of things, a deeper knowing and sensitivity to the world and people around us…and God.

Why call this a mini-series on Spirituality and Sharpeners?

A true pencil is sold unsharpened. It has no beginning and no end. In fact, both co-exist…until you decide which end to sharpen. That is a clue to the title. More to be revealed in Part III after an excursion in Part II Breathe Deeply.

If we are to understand meditation it is useful to know who is meditating. The answer is…an intriguing combination of body, soul, and spirit, a living human being.

Grief - a personal perspective

I thought I knew what grief was.

My father ‘Daddy’ died when I was just 12 years old. I didn’t have any notion in my mind that he was dying. My mind denying me the thought? Divine protection?

The decline was traceable. He had diabetes and eventually it affected his balance. I remember him sitting behind the wheel of the car before getting out and walking back into the house. Somehow, I knew that was the last time he would drive. Then he slipped into a coma. And, in retrospect, I know the look of death in someone’s eyes, the life disappearing, and the laboured breathing, but at the time it never occurred to me that he was dying.

I remember him being taken out of the house by two burly ambulance men and taken to the hospital from where he would not return.

I remember my sister or my mother telling me he had died. I was fiddling with the coal fire in the lounge. I collapsed into grief as it overwhelmed me engulfing me in its tidal wave power. And yet some part of my mind could not accept the truth…the American Colonel had surely been taken to some intelligence facility and would return. But really I knew. At the funeral, it was the sight of the Stars and Stripes’ draped coffin passing through the curtain that broke me.

I knew grief. It is stronger than us. We are helpless in its grip. It does a thorough work. Later it lifts, even if we struggle with the guilt that it should. At some point the sun shines again, food tastes like food, and maybe you want to listen to music or laugh at a joke or get angry over something trivial. It’s subsided. It’s over.

That’s grief.

But. But it’s only in recent days that I have discovered a different form of grief.

You are living a life ‘without __________ in the world’ and it’s hard.

St Paul paints a stark picture of the position of the Gentiles in Ephesus:

‘…at that time, you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world’

If you can replace ‘God’ with someone else’s name ‘…having no hope and without __________ in the world’ then you know this form of grief: it’s the absence of someone who is still alive.

You are living a life ‘without __________ in the world’ and it’s hard. So hard.

There seems to be no relief. No one can take their place. And, whatever the reason for the absence, the only thing you can do is yield the pain to God who knows all things. Knowing Christ carried this grief in His body on the cross, that He wipes our tears, however many weeks or years we must endure these feelings, as we become, like Him, ‘a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief’.

My heart was grieved
And I was vexed in my mind.
I was so foolish and ignorant
I was like a beast before You
Nevertheless, I am continually with You
You hold me by my right hand
You will guide me with Your counsel

Ps 73 v 21-24

There is an important distinction between the first and second kind of grief. The first is disabling. It leaves you unable to function normally and in its early stages, if you are not weeping uncontrollably, you are silent and stunned. I didn’t experience anger, though I understand that is common, just deep sadness and disorientation. The second kind of grief can be distinguished from the first in that there must have been some function of the will in arriving at the position of absence: my father didn’t choose to make himself absent i.e. die. At times you are fine but simple things crack, a place, a song, a place open your heart and the absence is all there is.

Finally, Jesus said it is ‘blessed are you when your mourn; you shall be comforted’. Whatever else this means, suppressing mourning, trying to ignore it, or avoid it, or worse, looking for some form of comfort to numb the pain may seem to make sense at the time, but all we are achieving is delaying the day when we face the reality that our heart is grieved and our mind vexed. Only then can we move further on through the verses in Psalm 73 and allow ourselves, as much as we did to grieve, to be held by our right hand and guided by His counsel.

Sore Afraid

the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid

Don’t open your lips, please
Don’t extend your hand
Nor even end my fear
I’m clinging on
Can’t you see?
To my staff, to this world

No, don’t sing
Don’t bring the glory down
Heaven can’t fit inside me
I am lost now
Shorn like my sheep
Naked to your
All baptising love

I cannot fully return
To the world
Of tousled sheep
And scraggy babes
Surrounded as I am
By this thin disguise

My staff a reminder:
Then a conductor’s baton
Of heavenly choirs.
More than wood
Infused as I am with
Joy inexpressible

Rogue Heroes

9.8 million of us watch Rogue Heroes.

Until yesterday my reaction to Rogue Heroes was probably typical: so much appealed, the sense of adventure into the unknown, the hostile environment of the desert, the danger of the wilderness quite apart from the Nazis, the escape from ponderous, misguided, and unimaginative authority structure bogged down in Cairo to actually achieve something out of all proportion to their numbers…the stuff of legends and heroes. It has a certain visceral appeal.

And then yesterday happened: it started to speak to me, as if it wanted to teach me something, make me see something. It almost switched from being a TV adaptation of history to being a parable of sorts.

Victory forged in the desert.

The biblical examples poured in, with a twist.

Moses, a murderer had escaped to the wilderness, the desert. Once a prince living in luxury in Pharoah’s palace was exiled to herding a flock of sheep in the desert for forty years. But it was in the desert that he encountered the burning bush. God. The Exodus was forged in the desert long before the Jews caught sight of Moses with his stick, or Pharoah refused to let the Jews depart.

David, again used to a palace existence playing music for Saul the king, was chased out of the palace into the desert, the wilderness, ending up in the cave of Adullam with those in debt and trouble. But in this nomadic stage, a new Israel was born to replace Saul’s kingdom.

Victory forged in the desert

And Jesus. If we charismatic Christians had written the script it would have read something like ‘And Jesus came to John to baptised in the Jordan. As He came up out of the water, the dove fell on Him as the Holy Spirit anointed Him with the power to be the Messiah. The next day he went to preach at Nazareth and a man with a withered hand came in and Jesus healed him. The next day a thousand more came and by the end of the month, he was walking into Jerusalem as King’. But we know that the first work of the Spirit in Jesus was to drive (the Greek word ‘balo’ is the same word used for driving out demons) Jesus into the desert to face the devil. After the wilderness came the ministry AND the discipling of the twelve and the others.

We should not be surprised if we find ourselves in a desert, a dry place, a wilderness. It is here we get our specialist training. That’s the first point.

The second is this. The twist. It’s not a solitary hero that emerges from the desert. The Hollywood Jesus is handsome, taller than the disciples, and dressed in white, while the women and the apostles wear duller clothing. He has a perfectly groomed beard and walks and talks like a refined John Wayne; his six-shooter replaced with resurrection power, and he’s quick on the draw. I love this Jesus, of course!

Man of sorrows acquainted with grief

But the Jesus of the New Testament had nowhere to lay his head. His family thought he was insane. He suffered constant opposition. Many who followed him for the miracles turned away at the cost. He was as Isaiah had prophesied ‘A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief’. And all the time it was with others who shared the same existence and faced the same foes. This ‘band of brothers’ could only function due to the constant giving and support from the women in His travelling band. Christianity was born as a mobile Adullam cave!

If you’re in a desert, maybe you need to ‘see’ Rogue heroes differently. It’s dry and hot, and relentless. It’s a wilderness with little comfort. But there’s a divine purpose hidden from view.

the gospel isn’t just for impressive people, it’s for everyone

I sit on my settee watching. So impressed. Thinking I’d like to be that courageous, that skilled, that resilient, that purposeful…knowing I’m not! I’ll always be impressed by impressive people. But the gospel isn’t just for impressive people, it’s for everyone.

So, watching Rogue Heroes with different eyes, whatever the past may have been to land us in the desert, in the wilderness, I know Someone who seems to meet His people there and join us to others…see this verse from Jeremiah. Note it’s not singular, it’s plural.

‘The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness’ Jeremiah 31 v 2

The Last Supper - Jesus’ Last Will and Testament

‘Likewise, after supper, He took the cup and, when He had given thanks, He gave it to them saying, ‘Drink ye all of this; for this is the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me’

If, like me, you were taken Holy Communion Services as a child, you may recognise these words from the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, 1549. The rhythm of the words is forever written into my bones.

Printed at the time of William Shakespeare, the old Elizabethan language is matchless and strangely hypnotic.

That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Good because the words become so attached to your person they can be recalled at any time, with their associated reverence and the mood that falls as they are recalled; a certain peace that seems to be within the words as they are spoken. But a bad thing because hypnosis removes all conscious participation in the drama of the Last Supper. Detached from history it can become almost ‘a nothing’, a pointless ritual of repetition, a sleep-inducing drug.

The Last Supper was many things, one of which was the reading of Jesus’ Last Will and Testament, just hours before His arrest and crucifixion…in a code that the disciples could only break after the Resurrection.

‘This is the blood of the New Testament, in My blood’

The prophets of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel had all prophesied two main events to come to pass sometime in the future:

• One day the Anointed One (translated as ‘Messiah’ in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and ‘Christ’ in the Greek of the New Testament) would be born

• A new covenant or testament – the words are synonymous – would replace the Old Testament

The terms of the Last Will and Testament, the ‘New Testament’ that Jesus announced and would come into effect upon His death just a few hours after the Supper had ended, are not shrouded in mystery:

‘Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah – not according to the covenant I made with their fathers when I…led them out from the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, though I was a husband to them. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbour saying, ‘Know the Lord’ – they shall all know Me from the least to the greatest.’ Jeremiah 31 v 31 – 34

‘I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes…’ Ez 36 v 27

The prophets of the Old Testament called the people back to (i) believe the promises in the Old Covenant and to (ii) obey the Law. The Old Covenant promises are written in Genesis 12,15, and 17, given through Abraham, and the Law was added later through Moses. But Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel looked beyond the Old Testament to the inauguration of a New Testament - which Jesus as the Messiah announced at the Last Supper.

It’s a Spirit joined to my spirit operation now

As beneficiaries of that Last Will and Testament, as New Testament believers or ‘Christians’, we should, at least be aware of the terms of the New Testament, or New Covenant. How odd it would be if a rich person was to die, and you were informed that you were a beneficiary, for you not to be keenly interested in the contents of the Will. Not only does self-interest kick in, but it is also your ‘right’ to receive the benefits of the Will as directed by the person who had died. It is, after all, what he or she wanted you to receive.

How odd, then that New Testament believers often have never read the terms of the New Testament inaugurated when the King of Glory died.

Leaving aside for the moment – that the New Testament is made with the House of Israel and Judah…which, at first sight, excludes all Gentiles, let’s look at the promises contained in the New Testament:

1. The Law is written on our hearts not on tablets of stone. It’s internal not an external set of commandments

2. Everyone in the New Testament ‘knows the Lord’ – it is no longer God up there, remote and beyond knowing, in heaven whilst we live our lives on the Earth

The heart operation alluded to in Jeremiah 31 is spelled out in more detail in Ezekiel 36. There’s a heart transplant:

3. Our hearts of stone, which were incapable of living the life of Christ, are replaced by hearts of flesh.

4. We are given a new spirit

5. And the Holy Spirit

6. The result is that we walk in His statutes…like Christ

The challenge of prophets is first to redirect us back to the promises of the New Covenant. To believe and have faith in God that He has done what He promised He would do.

And then to obey. But this obedience is not a dutiful conformation to a set of external commandments – specifically the Ten Commandments inscribed on stone tablets – but to trust that as God is writes His laws on our hearts our lives are transformed from the inside out.

We mustn’t turn back to the Old Testament, where we attempt with everything in us to obey the Law, be determined to be good, pray, go to church, read out bibles, and love our neighbour. A new way has been opened to us. He comes. His Spirit is joined with our deepest part, our new spirit, our new hearts of flesh. It’s a Spirit joined to my spirit operation now. We must have faith that God has done what He has promised.

All because Jesus was willing to go to the cross, for us.

I don’t know How God does what He does but the challenge is to believe that He has. And that this work goes on all day, every day, 24/7. I can’t stop it. I can’t stop God! That’s a ridiculous statement but one I continually need to acknowledge.

We mustn’t turn back to the Old Testament

He has given me a new heart, a new spirit, he has placed His Spirit in Me. He is writing His law in my heart. Against all the odds, His life leaks out of me.

Do we fail? Do we struggle? Do we need to return to the covenant? Of course. That’s why taking Holy Communion regularly isn’t a bad idea…it serves to remind us that the Will, the New Testament, has been read, that we are its recipients, and before long we are on our knees thanking God for His grace and undeserved love poured out, to Christ, for His willingness to suffer on our behalf.

What can we say?

Defeated we find victory in Him.

The Last Supper sustains us for all time.

As New Testament beneficiaries we: ‘take and eat, this is My body, which is given for you, do this in remembrance of Me. ‘Likewise, after supper, He took the cup and, when He had given thanks, He gave it to them saying, ‘Drink ye all of this; for this is the blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Do this as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me’

Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers - Part III Name Changing

I’ve known three people who have elected to change their names. Maybe four.

Firstly, a friend who had been away from school for a few weeks, I presumed either on holiday or ill, returned with a new surname. I knew him as Anthony (Tony) Nurse. On return he explained it wasn’t working for his dad, a doctor, to be called ‘Doctor Nurse’. The second was a man who had a sex-change operation. I can’t remember his first name, but maybe Bernard had become Barbara. And, lastly, a lady who needed a fresh start after a troubled past, changed her name, twice.

Biblically, God changes the name of Abram to Abraham, Sarai to Sarah, Jacob to Israel, and Simon to Peter. Also, in Isaiah 62 God says of Israel ‘You shall be called by a new name which the mouth of the Lord shall give’ and in Revelation ‘To him who overcomes…I will give…a new name’ Rev 2v17

This post is not a study on the meanings of the new names or explore why they were given. We may know for example that ‘Peter’ means ‘a rock’, but the point of the post is to try and imagine the day after Abram was re-named Abraham, or Sarai, or Jacob, or Simon:

‘Abram, would you mind moving your sheep?’
‘It’s Abraham now, not Abram.’
‘Oh? Who says?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Tell me later. But get those sheep…’

Hard enough for the recipient, Abram in this instance, to tell family, friends, and on. Hard for those around to take it seriously for a while. Over time, of course, everyone adjusts.

Biblically, the name is more than simply a name, and more than a humorous nickname. Names carried meaning and growing into the new meaning was what was at stake.

‘When Abram was ninety-nine years old the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” Then Abram fell on his face. And God said to him, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations…’ Gen 17 v 1-27

Abram means ‘honoured’ or ‘exalted father’ but Abraham means ‘father of a multitude’ to reflect the covenant promises God made with Abram – see Gen 12/15/17. Abram and his wife, Sarai, were too old to have children, so for Abram and Sarai to use those names for themselves privately, but more so publicly, was to invite derision:

Then God said to Abraham, ‘As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. And I will bless her and also give you a son by her; then I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of peoples shall be from her.’ – Genesis 17:15-16

Making that transition requires a deep change of mind, of identity, and of faith for a future that is certain and yet unseen. Abram’s previous history is not obliterated, or untrue, or forgotten, or denied, but the new name represents a new identity. The previous identifiers are no longer at work. The future is defined by the new name. It takes time to fully adjust, and there may be crises that test one’s resolve and faith in the new name, but the new name is a reality that cannot be shaken.

One of Jesus’ disciples was a ‘zealot’, a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘freedom fighter’, depending on your conviction, but he laid this identity at the feet of Jesus who transformed him into an apostle of the gospel of grace

So it is for anyone who places their faith in Christ.

You could explain this bluntly: Jesus is Lord and you have realised this. He is risen from the dead and all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. It follows then that your ‘identity’ is not something that you control anymore, He is Lord, and you are His servant. All our identifiers lie at His feet. We kneel before Him.

The problem with stating Christianity like this is not that it isn’t true, but that it presents ‘Lordship’ in the same vein as the autocratic dictators we roundly condemn in the world.

Following on from Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers Part II we see that, in fact, the person who places their faith and trust in Christ, does so because they see God’s love in action, principally in the cross, the crucifixion. That on the cross Jesus took all our sins and us as a substitutionary and inclusive sacrifice, and we have been raised ‘in Christ’.

To extend the picture with one further sentence: we were ‘in Adam’ and inherited our sinful nature from Adam, as if we had eaten the fruit in the garden. But now we are ‘in Christ’ and inherit everything that is in Him. Our previous identity is dead and buried. Our new identity, in Christ, is our true identity.

Our previous identifiers might include our nationality, or sexuality, or political affiliations, our occupations and so on. Just as Abram’s history was not obliterated, untrue, forgotten, or denied, the same is true for us.

But the critical transition is into the new name, the new identity. We leave our previous identifiers behind, Christ defines our life, indeed, He is our life (see Part II). That is partly why to say ‘I am a sinner saved by grace’ is incompatible with the gospel, and a contradiction in terms.

It is, of course, factually correct to say you were ‘in Adam’ and therefore a sinner, but now you are ‘in Christ’ and have become a ‘son of God’ in Him. That identity redefines our – to use the list above – our nationality, our sexuality, our political affiliations, and our occupations.

…we are citizens of heaven…

In very broad terms our nationality is redefined – we are citizens of heaven and our allegiance to the nation in which we have been born, and benefited from, is not forgotten, but is laid at His feet, for Him to use in our lives as He decides. My experience of this is limited. I was born in England, but my father was American, and my mother was English. During my childhood and teenage years, I alternated between wanting to be American or adopt dual citizenship, I spelt certain words like ‘centre’ as ‘center’ and so on. I became a Christian three weeks before my eighteenth birthday. I cannot explain it but receiving Christ changed my heart and my attitude and I have remained British. I love my links to America, but my first allegiance is to the Crown not the Stars and Stripes. Christ redefined my nationality.

Our sexuality is redefined by Christ. As in all other areas of life, He defines our sexuality. Our sexuality is no longer based on our opinions, preferences, or social norms. The Spirit of God ‘writes His laws on our hearts and causes us to walk in His ways’.

Political affiliations also are laid at His feet. He may return you to a life in politics, of course. But He will shape not only our intellectual persuasions but also our attitudes. We may oppose a particular policy but the way we garner support is radically altered. We find the means do not justify the ends, and our revolutionary zeal will not justify oppression as it once might have done. One of Jesus’ disciples was a ‘zealot’, a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘freedom fighter’, depending on your conviction, but he laid this identity at the feet of Jesus who transformed him into an apostle of the gospel of grace.

Lastly, our occupations. You’re introduced to someone you haven’t met, and you start talking. It won’t be long before you are asked ‘And what do you do?’ Of course, you may well answer this as ‘I’m an optician’, ‘actor’, ‘IT consultant, and so on. But inside you know your eternal occupation/identity is as ‘a son of God’. And, like Jesus, you say ‘I only do what my father in heaven is doing’. You are not defined by your 9-5.

It is from this community of redefined disciples, each of whom is adjusting to life ‘in the Name of Jesus’, that some emerge as leaders. Any one of them carries with them a history, their personal history, which is now placed in His hands. Saul/Paul laid down his defining pathway as a militant Pharisee at Jesus’ feet and was redefined as the apostle to the Gentiles, Peter, also, the rough fisherman from Galilee, grew into his new identity in Christ…not without some reversals at times (an encouragement to us all!), Mary Magdalene, who’s life had been devastated with seven demons, now released…the list is long and extends through the centuries to this day. All wounded in some way by sin, failure, weakness…all wounded healers in Christ.

Reluctant? Maybe due to a residual sense of unworthiness, but more likely a knowing that you are inadequate for the task, have no aptitude…and yet, inside, somehow you know that this is the next step and that the key is, like everything else, to trust God for the adequacy and the ability.

Remember Abram and Sarai, all hopes of having children long since evaporated. Physically incapable. And completely inadequate to be a ‘father’ and ‘mother’ of a multitude of nations. Your calling may not be as dramatic, but it will have features that, to you, are of the same order.

That’s it. My thanks to Rob Bell for his podcast that mentioned ‘Reluctant Leaders’ and to N.T. Wright for his phrase ‘Wounded Healers’. It’s entirely your doing that I felt compelled to write these three posts!

And if you are teetering on the edge - whether to take that step towards a leadership role, lay it all at Jesus’ feet. It’s not a bad place to start.

Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers - Part II

I should declare my hand. I consider the Bible, New and Old Testaments, to be the word of God.

I used to doubt its historical accuracy, had a problem with the miraculous, and thought, even if the person of Jesus had lived, his disciples had a vested interest in inventing the resurrection. But someone asked me how I came to believe in gravity and other scientific theories and whether I had inspected the evidence for my theories about the bible with as much rigour. One thing led to another, and my previous views were turned upside down.

I believe it’s historically accurate and is more than a collection of outdated ancient literature. But, if it is the word of God, its relevance for any age is beyond doubt. The debate about the bible is for another time! But I thought I ought to come clean before you decide to read on!

________________

The bible is a record of how heaven and earth are not disconnected and how God who created the world is in the world, not a distant irrelevance but very close…and how He will not conform to our image of how God should act. For example, God seems to select the wrong types of individuals for leadership again and again…and yet it works.

Moses, the murderer, hiding in the desert, is chosen to lead the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land – and he succeeds. St Paul, the persecutor of the church, who had ‘made havoc of the church, dragging off men and women, committing them to prison’ Acts 8v3 becomes the apostle appointed by God to bring the gospel to the gentile world.

God, it seems, often chooses the reluctant and the wounded to lead and heal. None of us is excluded or written off by God.

Welcome to Part II: A theological starter & mains before returning to reluctant leaders and wounded healers for pudding.

The Menu:

Starters: The inclusive death of Christ.

Main: Divinisation – the Eastern Orthodox doctrine.

Pud - Name changing (saved for Part III)

Starters:

Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics have written some stirring and fantastic hymns, over the past 400 years which reflect their faith in what has been known as substitutionary atonement: ‘And Can it be’ being one of my favourite Charles Wesley hymns! Putting it (very) simply, when Jesus died on the cross, He took our sins and died for us, in our place, taking the punishment we deserved so that we could be forgiven and restored to God. Religion, the attempt to please God by obeying commandments, is replaced by a relationship with God, restored through Christ.

But can anyone show me a hymn or a song that celebrates the inclusive death of Christ? That, when Jesus died on the cross, He took ‘us’, not just our sins, with Him on the cross. To quote just one verse: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me’ Gal 2v20

They’re coming! The hymns and the songs are coming. When the revelation of the substitutionary and inclusive nature of the cross, artists, playwrights, songwriters, poets, authors, preachers, will not be able to keep silent.

Mains: Eastern Orthodox doctrine of ‘divinisation’ or ‘theosis’

Evangelical believers, and Roman Catholics, will quite readily subscribe to the view that Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine.

Christianity is not a religion of self-improvement but the creation of a new race

But the problem with limiting our understanding of the cross to be a substitutionary sacrifice, is that the ‘sinner’ remains a sinner albeit wonderfully forgiven and free from condemnation. A common phrase heard amongst those who believe in substitutionary atonement is ‘I’m a sinner saved by grace’. The future, then, becomes one of ‘sanctification’; a process whereby through the power of the Spirit, the sinner is made progressively more like Christ.

But this is not New Testament teaching. This is polishing a turd.

Christ did not die so that we could be rehabilitated, but so we could be crucified with him.

Christianity is not a religion of self-improvement but the creation of a new race, Jesus being the forerunner, the first.

To quote C. S. Lewis: ‘I have called Christ the ‘first instance’ of the new man. But of course, He is not merely a new man, one specimen of the (new) species, but the new man. He is the origin and centre and life of all the new men…other men become ‘new’ by being ‘in Him’…to become new men means losing what we now call ‘ourselves’. Out of ourselves, into Christ, we must go…millions and millions of ‘little Christs’, all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented – as an author invents characters in a novel – all the different men that you and I were intended to be.’ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Collins.

This is consistent with the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of ‘divinisation’ or ‘theosis’ which views a Christian as a man, but a man saturated with the life of God, a union of the human and the divine. Not that the one human person, man or woman, has become God but that he or she is, as C.S. Lewis stated is ‘in Christ’.

As Peter wrote we become ‘partakers of the divine nature’ 2 Peter 1 v 4.

Life, looking forward, is not to be seen in terms of sanctification, as if sanctification means transforming the ‘sinner’ into a ‘saint’, but, L-plates on, learning to live as a person who is now ‘in Christ’ as a ‘mini-Christ’, as a ‘Christ as me’ person in the world. If that seems strange, consider the human body: every cell in my body is alive. But with who’s life? John Stevens is quite unaware (no comments!) of what each cell is doing, acting seemingly independent of me, but this is an illusion. The life of each cell is the life of John Stevens. It doesn’t have any other life.

It is the same for us ‘in Christ’. It’s not that ‘Christ in me’ means that it’s 5% Christ and 95% of Jesus, or some other ratio, somehow ‘inside’ me, as if we are two people vying for one body! The truth is that, as St Paul put it, ‘It’s no longer I who live but Christ’ Gal 2v20 and ‘Christ our life’ Col 3 v 4.

That gives us something to chew on, to digest, to come to terms with. And if you’re anything like me, struggle to believe when the evidence is…rather thin at times!

Time for pudding.

Pud: Part III, Name changing

There’s always room for pudding…first, a short break.

There’s always room for pudding…

Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers - Part I

God, Almighty God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, runs an odd recruitment agency:

‘So, Moses, tell me, can you speak Egyptian?’
‘Yes, but…’
‘But?’
‘No confidence…I stammer…’
‘Experience of leadership?’
‘None. I just lead sheep around the desert. I rarely speak to anyone. Like to keep myself to myself, you know…’
‘Leading sheep around the desert? I’m returning you to Egypt to lead My people through the desert to the Promised Land?’
‘Pardon?’ Moses pauses and God remains silent. ‘I can’t go back. I murdered someone…’

I heard the phrase ‘Reluctant Leader’ the other day whilst listening to a Rob Bell podcast and walking around the Downs. It made me think. ‘Wounded Healer’ is a phrase I came across some years ago in N T Wright’s excellent book The Challenge of Jesus. So, I suppose this post is an exploration to see what sort of leaders could emerge in the future in the world of politics, sports, science, education, economics, and, in particular, the church.

At the time of writing this post, I have been watching The Elon Musk Show on BBC iPlayer. What a remarkable, pioneering leader, a visionary in whom the future was conceived years before he became well known. And yet the Reluctant Leaders and the Wounded Healers considered here, are of a completely different order. They are poor in spirit, running low on vision, blind even, and failures, but it is their lack and their suffering that, strangely, turns out to be their route to leadership.

I hope I can convey some of this…

Reluctant Leaders

Rob Bell was arguing that the best leaders are often ‘Reluctant Leaders’: Moses, Gideon, Samuel, and Jonah all argued their case before God and did their level best to avoid leadership. Moses complained that he couldn’t command the attention of a crowd, Gideon was full of fear, Jonah…

You may or may not interpret the thoughts you may have been having about leadership as ‘God tapping on your shoulder’, but you can’t seem to silence the voice inside, and you know a decision is pending. I’m referring to ANY role that requires leadership…it could be a sports team, a building site, responsibility in a science laboratory, a composer, a librarian…a mother, a father.

It’s unlikely to be a role of biblical proportions, but, whatever it is, it feels daunting to you!!

On the other hand, it could be that God is calling you as an apostle at this time for God’s people.

Moses had no vision for the deliverance of the Jews. St Paul, as Saul of Tarsus, had no idea that he had been called as an apostle before the foundation of the world in Christ until God distracted him on the road to Damascus. God, it seems, has His way of getting our attention.

The New Testament is so counter-cultural, marinaded as we are in our meritocracy

But whatever it is, bidding farewell to the relative safety of where we are, and taking a leap of faith, will be required. Moses had carved out a reasonable existence since murdering the Egyptian. He had escaped into the desert, maintaining a safe distance between himself and Pharoah. And he knew his way around the desert.

But God had pinned him down. First by distracting him with the curious sight of a non-burning burning bush and then out-arguing him.

Wounded healers

And I quote from NT Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus:

‘’…read Paul again; read John again; and discover that we are cracked vessels full of glory, wounded healers…we are discovering the true meaning of what the Eastern Orthodox Church refers to as ‘divinization’…true divinity is revealed not in self-aggrandizement…but in self-giving love…’

And this is the trick. Floored as we are at times by our failures, weakness, brokenness, inabilities, restrictions, fears and limitations, and scars from life, we are completely floored…by grace.

I remember my astonishment, at 16 or 17, discovering that the word ‘gospel’ simply means ‘good news’ and not the first four books in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And I argued strongly: ‘the gospel can’t be true – it’s too good to be true’. The concept of a free gift of eternal life, a free gift of righteousness, and the gift of the Spirit was brand new to me. It shocked me and refined ‘religion’ or what I had understood Christianity to be.

But Jesus said, ‘Freely you have received, freely give’.

The New Testament is so counter-cultural, marinaded as we are in our meritocracy.

That’s grace. A gift to be received, not a reward for good work, or being good.

Whatever has been done or suffered in the past; however damaged and cracked the wounded healers may be, and however undeserving they are, they know they have been filled with glory, things from above, which enable them to bring to bear the kingdom of God in any sphere of life, whether secular or spiritual; there are no boundaries.

Either way, irreversible change is inevitable.

The Future?

Such leaders of the future are already here: reluctant, cracked vessels, full of glory.

Meanwhile, some may be engaged in an argument with God, like Moses, or at least with themselves. If that’s you, I pray you’ll lose and quickly!

In Part II of Reluctant Leaders and Wounded Healers we’ll look at the inclusive nature of the death of Christ on the cross and what N T Wright referred to as the Eastern Orthodox doctrine of ‘Divinisation’ and how present-day ‘identifiers’, a hot potato and a chief debating point at the moment, are redefined in the gospel, and redefined in future leaders.

Rearrange

Cats chasing lizards on the sandstone
Politicians after your vote on the megaphone
Heat-seeking girls burnt to the bone
Lying in the sun ‘til the day is done
Our time wasted again on our mobile telephone

It’s what we humans do, nothing can change
We cannot stop, we rearrange
A picture here, a dinner date there
A cherry in my lemonade, lemon in my marinade
But of ourselves we are unaware

 And all the while there is the One
Ignored, unknown, the loving Son
Hands outstretched upon a cross
Bearing our pain, His searing loss
It’s time to kneel and weep some tears

 Hold His hands, let Him rearrange
Our remaining years

The Truth Doctor

It is the uniform that beguiles
A golfer wearing a bowler
A Constable in rugby boots
A violinist breathing through a snorkel
Disturbing the equilibrium

And yet anticipation crackles
Time’s come to disturb
To wreck the rut
And escape across the tracks to
The wrong side

To visit the Truth Doctor
The one unfooled by illusions
Who sees past solidity,
Past interlocking crystals,
Into the space within

We arrive, our five senses
Taking us for a ride to
A world where particles will not
Be confined in solitary places
And Dali clocks drool over the edges…

The Truth Doctor has a friend
The Ghost in the Machine.
Facing one another
They play catch, then wrestle
Ultimate realities, at ease, fighting

In a mist, in the chill of dawn.
We stand by, like umpires
Allowed to judge the Judge
The Ghost is felled and, weeping,
We count …7,8,9, Out!

But the Truth Doctor, laughing and
Folded in pain, erupts and roars,
His words filling the Earth
“Three, Two, One...
We watch as Death loses its sting

McClaren, Rohr, and Bell - a Trinity for our Times?

Brian McClaren, Richard Rohr, and Rob Bell – a trinity for our times?

In terms of personal appeal, sorry Brian, but I struggle more with finding your centre of gravity than with your friends Rohr and Bell. In recent months I have read, and enjoyed, Falling Upwards by Richard Rohr and I have listened to a stack of Rob Bell podcasts called appropriately The Robcast.

Early most mornings I’ve been out walking for a good hour or so and Rob Bell’s energetic verbal delivery has been in my ear.

To some questions:

John, why are you listening to Rob Bell and reading Rohr if you think they are mildly heretical?

We read in Luke’s gospel that Jesus matured through his childhood and early adult years ‘And the child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom and the grace of God was upon Him’ Luke 2 v 40. After Jesus’ baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, he taught and discipled the twelve apostles and many others.

The descent of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove was decisive. We read then that the Spirit ‘led Him into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and afterwards He ‘returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee and the news of Him went out through all the surrounding region’.

I listen to Bell and Rohr, (not so much McClaren, maybe he’s like a rare cheese I haven’t developed taste buds for yet?) because they seem to have a handle on what it means to ‘become strong in spirit’ and ‘to be filled with wisdom and grace’ – in other words that have much to say about the human condition and the processes involved in progressing towards spiritual maturity, what it looks like, what might hold it up, the signs of progress and so on. And at different stages of life.

I haven’t found such a clarity and grip on spiritual maturity being taught in the Evangelical/Pentecostal/Charismatic churches and literature I have stumbled across.

The problem I have, though, with this McClaren, Rohr and Bell trinity, is that Jesus’ discipleship and training programme was far more radical than a series of seminars on how to mature spiritually; it certainly wasn’t a ‘7 parables to perfection’ ministry. He wasn’t training the disciples (and therefore by extension us) to simply grow in grace and wisdom, like He had before the encounter with the Holy Spirit. The goal of the gospel, its endpoint, in fact, was to produce a new type of man, indivisible from Him – and that required going to the cross.

As Paul put it ‘For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God’ Rom 8v14.

But if you want to explore spiritual maturity, what it is to be truly human, perhaps like the ‘pre-dove Jesus’, Rohr and Bell will feed you well, and give you further insight and instruction.

The goal of the gospel, its endpoint, in fact, was to produce a new type of man, indivisible from Him – and that required going to the cross

All well and good, John, but you’ve ignored the charge of heresy, haven’t you?

Yes. But that doesn’t mean that the Evangelical/Pentecostal world isn’t lacking in some of the things they are saying. That may explain their popularity. Sheep will graze where the grass is good. But I agree, if, in the final analysis, we are eating from the wrong table we should be at least ‘on guard’.

Here are three questions I would ask Rohr and Bell and Maclaren.

Q1. Why do you speak of ‘the divine’ rather than God? Is God, in your understanding, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ? Is God the trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Q2. You often refer to ‘spirit’ rather than the Holy Spirit. Why?

Q3. You refer to the scriptures, the Old and New Testaments as ‘ancient tradition’ rather than the word of God, inspired, inerrant, and infallible. The accounts in Genesis as referred to as poems for example. What is your belief about the Old and New Testaments?

You can see the danger.

Sounds a little like, in your view, John, there’s an Elephant in the Evangelical and Pentecostal/Charismatic room?

Dead right. Evangelicals and Charismatics (who may be found in all the traditional, historic denominations or more modern churches) routinely skirt round Romans 6 and 7 and other passages that deal with the cross, as applied to us, our crucifixion with Christ.

Leaving Romans 6 and 7 untaught, unbelieved, and unentered into, is as much a heresy as anything Rohr and Bell are accused of. The Romans 1-5 substitutionary gospel is an incomplete gospel. It’s not wrong. But it is incomplete.

In Romans 1-5 Paul constructs his arguments that show that Christ Jesus died for me, in my place. All my iniquities were placed on Him. The Just for the unjust. It is all wonderfully true: salvation, justification, acquittal, the gift of righteousness, eternal life, grace…it’s all wonderfully true. To truly understand that we are under grace not law will transform your life as it sinks in. That’s all found in Romans 1-5. And you’ll find ‘under grace’ preached faithfully in any number of evangelical churches of all denominations. Pentecostals and Charismatics point out, correctly, that as much as we need to know Jesus as Saviour and Lord, we also need to know Him as the One who baptises us in the Holy Spirit and be baptised in the Spirit. Such is the substitutionary gospel.

The clear teaching, however, of Romans 6 and 7 (and other passages – notably Galatians 2 v20 and Colossians 3 v 3) is that Christ’s death was also inclusive – it included you and me: ‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I now live I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who love me and gave Himself for me’ Gal 2v20.

Faith - spelt differently

It is not just that our ‘sins’ needed to be placed on Jesus, dealt with, and taken away, so we can be forgiven, but that the ‘sinner’ needed to die, so we can be delivered from Adam and re-potted in Christ. He brought about our end. It was the end of John Stevens. That old, seemingly self-empowered John Stevens, who may have tried to be good at times, attempting to live the Christian life, or at least a good life with some measure of success and failure, to live a life fuelled by his own resources, a life independent of God, an autonomous being, a ‘human’…‘being’. That attempt works to some extent until you hear the gospel, the ‘good news’ that Jesus has appeared, not to improve us at a distance, but to end our exile from God, and our self-driven lives. The trouble is that so many are taught that Jesus took our sins but not us in Him on the cross. The result of this is that now we feel that we should be able to live the Christian life, especially if we have the power of the Spirit to give us the power and strength. Really, we have no excuse! Surely! But this misses the point. But the gospel is far more radical than this.

Left like this we think that sanctification is a process whereby we become progressively more like Jesus. But this is polishing a turd theology. This isn’t much better than self-help, as if it is ‘us’ that needs to improve rather than crucified and buried. The gospel becomes an inversion of its true message, and the centre of its universe becomes ‘me’ and one that could get caught in the Romans 7 trap.

But this is polishing a turd theology

By the time we reach Romans chapter 5, Paul presents us as ‘in Adam’ and the clues and the signposts to a completely new ‘in-Christ life’ are scattered around pointing to chapter 6. For example ‘…if by one man’s trespass death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ’ Rom 5v17

Our problem, then, is that we are rooted in Adam, and therefore the ‘me-in-Adam’ person, cut off from God, is deceived into trying to live a human life on our own inner resources. The ‘evangelical’ gospel attempts to solve this need for transfer from Adam to Christ by using the phrase ‘dying to sin’ (from Rom 6v2). ‘Sin’ in this context is the nature within us inherited from Adam, our tendency to sin. The problem with leaving the argument there is that it suggests that ‘we’ can, by our own decision, by the exercise of our own will, die to sin and live a righteous life. But this is not the solution that chapter 6 teaches.

‘Do you not know that as many of us as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death…buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we could walk in newness of life…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…’ Rom 6 v 3-6

By this point in Paul’s argument, we see that it is not only our sins that were laid on Christ on the cross but we ourselves. Not just the sins but the sinner.

The phrase ‘die to sin’ is not something we do but something that, historically, has taken place in Christ. God has effected the transfer:

‘Of Him are you in Christ Jesus who has become for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption’ 1 Cor 1 v 30

This was always the goal of the gospel, its endpoint, in fact: to produce a new type of man, indivisible from Him – and that required Jesus taking us to the cross, sins included, being buried and rising again in a new form, in Christ.

Now we can be led by the Spirit into the spiritual maturity that Bell and Rohr describe so well. We become Holy Spirit-led sons, ‘mini-Christs’ as C.S. Lewis was wont to say and the true meaning of the term ‘Christians’, the nickname given to the early believers.

Next: Barking up the wrong tree

Folding In

‘Folding in’ apparently is
‘Combining a dry ingredient
With one of more weight,
And wet,
Whilst retaining much air’

If your parable antennae
Are restless and twitching
You’ve tuned in
To our story -
Mine and maybe yours

Like flour in a recipe
I have been taken, by Love,
Dry, and dead with potential
And folded into a Christ
So ready to baptise me…

…in His story
And, like an author
I find myself in print
An autobiography
Another incarnation

Breathing deeply.

The Stones Will Cry Out

Jesus is famous for his numerous parables: ‘the kingdom of heaven is like…’

We are so accustomed to the imagery and symbolism used in the bible that we hardly notice it. And not just in the bible. All good storytelling and literature use images and symbols, parables, and metaphors to paint scenes that are somehow more appealing, are more memorable, and make more sense than a straightforward explanation.

Someone, for example, is a ‘wet blanket’ or there’s an ‘elephant in the room’ or, life is described as ‘an emotional rollercoaster’. Shakespeare employed numerous metaphors: ‘His face is all carbuncles…and his fire is out’ Henry V.

The disciples brought the donkey to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road. When he came down the road from the Mount of Olives, the crowd joyfully praised God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

‘Hosannah in the Highest. The King of Israel! Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!’ But the Pharisees said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, rebuke your disciples!’ ‘I tell you’, he replied, ‘if they keep quiet, even the stones will cry out.’ Mt 21 and Luke 19.

An absurd picture. The one thing that inanimate objects, especially hard stones, cannot do is cry out. Was this simply poetic exasperation directed at his chief critics, the Pharisees, always there to pour cold water on the joy of the people and his mission?

Before we explore this further, I have three questions, primarily for those of us who live in England:

Q1. Would you say you are a Christian?

Q2. Do you know how to become a Christian?

Q3. Have you ever thought you’d like to be a Christian? If so, would you like to?

In England and the rest of the UK, our history, culture, traditions, holidays, and the laws that govern us are still largely bible based. And yet I can guarantee that Question One would flummox many or elicit a negative answer. In England, despite Christianity pervading our national life, there is widespread ignorance of true Christianity.

Jesus remains box office, but few know the answer to Q2 and therefore Q3 becomes nonsensical.

I know. I was brought up to go to church. I held the reed palm crosses made for Palm Sunday in the local CofE church services as a child. I sang the hymns. I knelt. I tried to pray. I listened to scripture being read at school and in church. I liked Jesus. Admired him, his courage, his inclusion of the outcasts, his denunciation of hypocrisy, his willingness to die, his unstuffy ‘out on the road’ discipleship with the rough fishermen. The miracles. The parables. The way he answered the scribes and the Pharisees. I was familiar with the parables and some other bible stories. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until I abandoned church in my teens and ran into someone who could explain the answer to Q2 that I had even the chance of answering Q3.

At this point, if you’re still reading, you might be thinking what’s this got to do with ‘the rocks/stones will cry out’? The answer is everything.

The stones will cry out is most definitely a poetic image, but it is also prophetic. To be more precise it is a prophecy that can be seen throughout the scriptures. It made sense to Jesus to utter those words.

We should begin with the Old Testament, with Moses in the desert on the way to the Promised Land with the Israelites. Their water had run out and the people were complaining to Moses.

‘The Lord spoke to Moses. ‘Take the rod…speak to the rock…and it will yield its water…Moses lifted his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod and water came out of the rock abundantly’ Numbers 20

When St Paul commented on the journey of the Israelites in 1 Corinthians 10 he wrote:

‘All were baptised into Moses…all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ’

Without lingering to interpret the spiritual and physical dimensions at play, the picture of life-giving water coming from an inanimate rock is beyond our everyday experience. It, like the whole of the Old Testament, was pointing forward to the New Covenant inaugurated by Jesus.

Moving on from the Law to the Prophets we read in Jeremiah 31 and in Ezekiel :

‘The days are coming…when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts…no more shall every man teach his neighbour saying ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest of them’ Jeremiah 31 v 31f

‘I will give you a new heart and a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes’ Ez 36v26,27

At the Last Supper, after supper, Jesus took the cup and said ‘This cup is the New Covenant in My blood, shed for you’ Luke 22 v 19

The picture of the stones crying out is beginning to become clear. The literal rock in the desert, the stone, pours out water; ‘Crying out’ a metaphor for shouting, the pouring out of speech and singing likened to the pouring out of water or a thunderous waterfall. Then the great Prophets of the Old Testament looking ahead to the New Covenant explain that what was external in the Old will become wonderfully internal in the New.

Despite the Law, despite the miracles in the Old Testament, and the sacrifices, the temple worship and so on, the problem of sin, of our hard hearts inherited from Adam, had not been overcome. But in the New Covenant the picture is of a heat transplant.

The promises in the New Covenant are internal. Our old stony hearts are removed and we receive a new ‘fleshy’ heart and a new spirit. And His Spirit. God Himself taking up residence, permanently, in us. This is the Christianity that is, tragically, unknown by so many. So many who think they have rejected Christianity, but find they have not even known what it is they have apparently rejected.

Imagine a knock on your front door. You open the door to find Jesus standing there. Along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. You invite them in. They explain they love you. You say ‘really, but…’ and list all your shortcomings. And they talk to you about the New Covenant and how they will be in you not just with you.

Jesus remains box office

Jesus said ‘He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’ John 7 v 37. That is real Christianity. ‘…the Spirit…who dwells with you, will be in you’ John 14 v 17. And so is this.

When Jesus replied to the Pharisees it was more than a poetic repost. It was ‘look around at these people, it’s happening, the stones are crying out. Listen to what they are saying. Listen to their praise at what God has done in their lives. The stones are crying out.’

Not only that but you can bet that Peter was probably standing close to Jesus with a smile on his rough Galilean face. Jesus, as we know, had said to Peter ‘Simon, son of Jonah, you shall be called Cephas, Peter’ John 1v 42, Cephas being Aramaic and Peter or Petros being Greek for ‘Stone’. On another occasion Jesus repeats this name changing:

‘Blessed are you Simon bar Jonah…and I also say to you that you are Peter and on this rock I will build My church…’ Mt 16 v 17,18

In other words, true Christianity is all about stones, the rocks; individuals like those in the multitude crying out as Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey over the palm branches strewn on the road. They have become like the rock in the desert pouring out life-giving water. He was saying ‘If I stop these from crying out there will be far more – even some of you Pharisees – when you let God take from you your hearts of stone and replace it with a new heart and spirit and My Spirit – you, too will be shouting your praises rather than seeking to arrest and kill me’.

To bring this to a halt we should revisit the three questions:

Q1. Would you say you are a Christian?

Q2. Do you know how to become a Christian?

Q3. Have you ever wanted to be a Christian? Would you like to?