Why does God allow suffering?

“Our instincts are right,” said the preacher, “sickness is a horrible thing.” When faced with this ‘horrible thing’ or any suffering, there are two equal and opposite errors that we may fall into. The first is to minimize it; the second to glorify it. The minimizers tell us that things are not as bad as they seem, or even that suffering is an illusion. Positive thinking, they say, will make suffering feel less, or banish it altogether, in the case of Christian Science.

The second case is more difficult, because there is much in scripture that recognizes the potential of suffering for growth: the school of life forms us; hard experiences toughen us, and according to St Paul, ‘all things work together for good for those who love God’ (Romans 8.28). However, Paul nowhere says that all [bad] things are good, and it is only a Job’s comforter who can tell someone in pain that suffering is a blessing in itself.

The hard truth that faces us as Christians is that we believe in a good and powerful God, yet live with suffering caused by ‘natural’ events as well as by human sin. We also see that the consequences of such events and actions are unevenly (and, it is often said, unfairly) distributed, with the weak and marginalized experiencing much more than their ‘fair share.’ Some conclude in the end that God is truly good, but powerless to deal with evil; others that he is powerful, but not truly good.

This may sound like a counsel of despair or an insoluble paradox. After all, Christian philosophers and theologians have debated for millennia without coming to a common mind. Yet there is much that can be said, and our preamble so far is part of it: as Christians, we need to engage in an honest and hard conversation about suffering. Those who ask us the question ‘Why?’ will quickly sniff out our clichés, defensive responses or excuses. We don’t begin to address the question with a set of clever words but with a Christian stance, in which we offer our questioners our vulnerable, risky, self-emptying life.

The other thing that we offer our questioners is complete respect. Job’s comforters undermined him not so much by inadequate theology as by a total lack of respect for his integrity. Job knew how he felt much better than they knew. So the starting point for our response is not to say, ‘I know how you feel’ because we may not know. Nor have we the right to tell people that they are mistaken about the depth of their suffering. We need to listen, to hear and to care with the compassion of Jesus himself.

This brings us to the threefold heart of our response: it is at once theological, pastoral and spiritual. Each part of this response is grounded in biblical principles, and each is crucial in the face of the cries of those who suffer.

A theological response
Scripture teaches that God is sovereign in all things. There is nothing over which God has no control. The created universe is sustained only by his continuing interest, will and power. We, pinnacle though we are of that creation, made ‘in the image and likeness of God’, remain creaturely, things of earth, life-breathed only because God wills it.

The clue lies in the ‘image and likeness’. This is not our rationality, our speech, or some other supposed superior faculty, but the fact that we have been invited to share with God in his character, his purposes, and in the very community of the Godhead, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this invitation lies God’s risky choice to allow us a share in the divine project, and not to act without us. In this lies God’s love, our freedom, God’s risk and our fall from grace.

Is it worth it? God thought so, and thinks so: he has promised never again to destroy the world through flood. He has sent his only Son, to live and die for us, and raised him from death as the first-fruits of our resurrection. Peter reminds us that through God’s promises we ‘may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants in the divine nature’ (2 Peter 1.4).

It is not so much that God ‘allows’ suffering. God risks suffering for the sake of an intimate relationship with us as his people, a relationship almost of equals, in which we are deeply involved in God’s saving work as ‘the body of Christ.’ To this end, we are given freedom of choice and the grace of redemption when we fall.

A pastoral response
There are a few who need such theology in the midst of their distress. I suspect that it is mostly we – the ones who are questioned – who need to have biblical theology engraved on our minds and souls. Whether we repeat it to those who struggle must be a matter of deep discernment; and sometimes we must keep our counsel, knowing that God has a broad back and is perfectly capable of defending himself.

Pastorally, we sometimes sense that our questioner asks ‘Why?’ out of a sense of isolation and deep loneliness. Evil cuts us off from those whom we have loved, and suffering loses us friends. Many tell of bereavement becoming a living hell not so much in the loss of someone loved, but in the loss of community, when supposed friends cross the road to the other side, not knowing what to say.

The truth is that they need to say nothing; they are simply needed alongside, in silence, in shared incomprehension, in a journey accompanied, in deep friendship. This is at the heart of the Christian gospel because it is at the heart of what Jesus did. This is the God of whom we ask our question ‘Why?’ The pastoral answer from God is that ‘I was there with you.’ Moltmann calls Jesus the crucified God: this is the ultimate ‘there with you’ from God. The promise is that this will never change: ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age.’

A spiritual response
One person that I talked to before writing this said that he could answer in three words or in many thousands! The three words were, ‘I’m not God.’ More people resolve the issue of suffering through encounter with God than by being offered philosophical answers, even of the most sophisticated kind. Our spiritual response needs to be an invitation: ‘Pray with me, and meet the one who is God.’

It is a risky business inviting those who suffer to pray, but it is often all we have and all we need. We ourselves are in a living relationship with a God who, we believe, cares far more deeply than we, but we have no proof to offer in this case. So we offer an invitation instead. The invitation may lead to violent or bitter words, to recrimination or anguish. But it is here, in the truth of expressed pain, that new life may emerge as the Holy Spirit begins to work.

I once worked with a curate in an abusive relationship with his incumbent, and encouraged him to write an imaginary letter to the man expressing his feelings. When the letter came to me, it began: ‘Dear D, s***, s***, s***. Out of that painful writing began his healing. How much better if we could help others unburden themselves to a compassionate God rather than to a caring counsellor?

In the fire of conversion, or reconversion, the ‘why’ of suffering is not always answered, but is woven into the fabric of this new life. Chaos and pointlessness begin to be replaced by meaning and direction: God’s meaning, and God’s direction. Even where there are no words to be spoken, only silence to be endured, waiting beside the suffering one until God comes gives courage. We who know how to wait contribute persistence; those who struggle bring their pain. Together, by God’s grace, persistence in pain may lead into a place of light.

Afterword
And so I come very quickly to the end of myself, left with the reality of suffering, in often silent contemplation of Christ on the cross, in a time of dereliction. This is the deepest darkness of all, evil blanketing the world and cutting out the sun. It is here that I really want to take all those who suffer, to know a God who has been there, and remains there with those in pain, yet who at this moment gave hope back to the world. There can be new life, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing. There is life after death. We discover these truths for ourselves not in challenging God, but in embracing him forever.

Making good use of the season of Lent

The development of Lent is something of a mystery, and scholars are divided on its origins. We know, however, what we have now: a 40 day period of fasting, reflection and preparation for the celebration of Christ's passion, death and resurrection. So let's think of Lent as a series of spiritual exercises which help us to grow as fit, faithful disciples, grouped around several themes.

Theme 1: Preparation for baptism

Because you are probably long since baptized, this first theme involves us in reconnecting with our baptism. I recently suggested in a sermon that people dig out their baptismal certificate and keep it before them for a while, and you might like to do the same. You may or may not remember the occasion, but you can envisage it, and the associated exercises might include:

1. A spiritual spring clean leading to an act of penitential confession. Depending on your church tradition, you may wish to do this on your own, with a friend, or in the presence of a Christian minister. 
2. A reaffirmation of your baptismal promises. In some of our churches, this will be done at the Easter vigil, but you might like to look [a] at a baptismal liturgy and think carefully about the promises, and [b] at an example of the Easter renewal of promises itself. 
3. A consideration of the role of the Holy Spirit in your baptism, which is much more an act of God than it is a human act. What did the Spirit do for you and in you, and what does the Spirit continue to do, in holiness and equipping you for God's mission?

Theme 2: Following Jesus

Because Jesus' baptism was immediately followed by his time in the wilderness, culminating in the great temptations, there has been a long association between Lenten observance and the 40 days. Never mind that Jesus went into the wilderness after his baptism, while Lent comes before the renewal of baptismal vows. Just hold baptism and the desert together in your mind! There are several ways in which you can use the connection for your Lenten exercises:

1. The first characteristic of the imitation of Christ is not us copying him, but Jesus sharing in our life's experience. It would be appropriate to read the scripture in Hebrews 4.14-16 as a lectio divina. Click on the link if you need help with this.
2. The second characteristic of the imitation of Christ is the command to follow. I have sometimes found it helpful to look back at what following has meant. Each step of obedience is like a map marker, or a marker in the road that we have walked. In this looking back we are invited to give thanks for the presence of Christ, the privilege of being invited to follow, and a sense of hearing his 'Well done', something that we are not very good at as Christians. Then look forward to what is not yet, not trying to double-guess God (very tricky!) but simply asking for the grace to recognize the difference between the gentle call and the light yoke of God, and the heavy weight of responsibility we sometimes lay on ourselves.
3. The third characteristic of the imitation of Christ is the invitation to take up our cross. This is a tricky one, because we often talk about 'bearing our crosses', simply meaning 'putting up with what life throws at us.' RT France says this about Matthew 16.24-26: "In the light of what follows it must mean here to dissociate oneself from one’s own interests, which in this case means the willingness to risk one’s own life. It means putting loyalty to Jesus before self-preservation." So you might like to follow this through by praying the Prayer of Ignatius, or the Methodist Covenant. Certainly, if there is something that you are reluctant to let go of, even though you know Jesus wants you to, that's an exercise to go through this Lent.
   

Theme 3: The disciplines of life

I sometimes wonder whether it's particularly helpful to 'give something up' for Lent, usually chocolate or alcohol, of course! It may be that this is useful for you personally, and I sometimes think that I'm just plain reluctant to give up my creature comforts :). But that's not really what the discipline of Lent is all about. What follows are simply some random thoughts which might help you to take this further:

1. If there is something that has become an idol in your life, whether it's a consumer item, a regular practice or an addiction, then an act of renunciation may be called for. We don't give up idols for Lent; we give them up for God for good. That of course may need help, and it's something to discuss with a mentor, coach or spiritual director.
   
2. If you want to use the opportunity to get yourself in better physical or mental shape, then do so, but replace the thing you temporarily give up with something else constructive. Introduce a positive. Christians all too frequently make life sound like having a hard time with God, who is an exceedingly grumpy parent! I wonder if some of you might not do better giving up staying up half an hour too late for Lent, thereby getting better quality sleep. And maybe your mobile phone is more of a temptation than that bar of chocolate?
3. Perhaps most important would be an exploration of the rhythm of your life, the patterns, and whether there's a little arrhythmia in the proportion, the regularity or your control over elements of this little Rule of Life. If you've never done this before, then you might paint or draw one, or create a Mind Map, using some of the following categories: Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Annually, Future, Often... 
4. Start small with discipline. It might be as simple as: each day in Lent, I will light a candle, and sit quietly with God for ten minutes, waiting to see what happens.

There's so much more that could be said, but my prayer is that you will be prompted to think creatively about this wonderful season, which begins on Ash Wednesday, March 6th 2019.

Is it right for Christians to be rude about their politicians?

The apostle Paul says: I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings should be made for everyone, ²for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. Recently, I came upon a Facebook post chastising someone for criticizing Donald Trump, and used the quotation above from 2 Timothy to suggest that we should pray rather than criticize our leaders. I suggest that we have a twin vocation: to pray for our leaders, and to hold them to account. That will sometimes mean criticizing them, both in our prayer and in other forms of communication.

How might we criticize our leaders in our prayers? In the fashion of the psalmists, when they lament to God the corrupt or self-serving nature of the leaders of the day. At that moment, prayer becomes a safe place for saying the things we feel deeply but dare not express publicly.

But it is more than that. In those cries – which are sometimes so strong that they offend us deeply in a more touchy age – we call for justice and for change, not just for revenge. We ask God to help our persecutors to understand and feel what it is like to be helpless, at the mercy of powers stronger than us. We call for change.

We ask God to bring about change, but we also understand in political prayers that we too may need to be part of bringing the change into being. So in prayer we

1.      Interpret current events in the light of the great story of God

2.      Critique political actions through the Spirit’s prompting, in the gift of prophecy

3.      Act out our displeasure

There has been much debate about whether it was right to float a cartoon blimp of the ‘baby Donald Trump’ over London. Apart from the fact that cartoons and lampoons are a long-established part of the humour and political commentary of this nation, we know that the prophets of our tradition were not infrequently called to act out their prophetic words in a kind of zany divine drama. I’m not wanting to suggest that those who floated the blimp are thereby acting as the voice of God, but their humour might just serve as a prophetic warning.

Maybe most importantly, we must not use criticism to aggrandize ourselves at the expense of others. Politics is too important for that, and our words of criticism, our humour and our outbursts need to serve the common good. But I am grateful that in this nation, we have the freedom to express ourselves in that potentially prophetic way, and of course to receive the criticism that will come our way. We too, like Donald Trump, are fallible, flawed human beings.

Approaching my own death

Jill and I read Malcolm Guite's poem 'Westward' this morning in prayer, and were struck by the final words: "We watch the sunset, but we tread the dawn." Then, praying Psalm 90, my mind was drawn towards my approaching 70th birthday, and the clichéd words: "The days of our life are three score years and ten, or if our strength endures, even four score." I hope that it doesn't sound morbid to say that I often now think about my approaching death, which I want to grasp well. But it meant that 'watching the sunset' hinted to me - as I'm sure Malcolm intends - that watching for my own death, watching, if you like, for the fading of the light, is a good and blessed thing to do.

So of course is 'treading the dawn' or 'walking in the way of the resurrection'. Gerald Manley Hopkins puts it like this:

And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs.

I think that Malcolm Guite must have had this in his mind when he wrote his sonnet. But whether he knew it or not, here I now am, rooted in the present, reaching towards the future with curiosity and with some trepidation, delighting in the mixture of darkness and light that makes up our experience of faith. The accompanying photograph was taken from our balcony in South Africa, probably at the end of a thunderstorm, but it too has that blend of light and darkness, of smudge and freshness, which makes up the rough stuff of life tinged with the glory and compassion of God.

The ones we overlook

When I was a curate at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Port of Spain, in the mid-1970s, there was a little old lady who regularly joined the choir procession into Choral Evensong. In the way of things in Trinidad, nobody minded very much; she was just a part of the untidiness and unpredictability of life. She occasioned the odd titter or comment, but she almost became a member of the choir.

Her music folder was an old school exercise book, with meaningless scribbles in it, but she sang her heart out anyway, without seeming to clash with the Anglican chant. It was a little miracle of the sort that nobody notice
s, really.

Now, here's the thing. I guess that we all wrote her off as a little strange, soft in the head. Until, that is, the day when she turned up in the Cathedral Office when I was on duty, to ask for me to certify her application for a passport renewal. I discovered then that she was an 88 year old Anguillan, in complete possession of her faculties. It was we who had lost touch with our faculties of discernment and hospitality, in putting her in the category of 'harmless but strange'. Our behaviour was certainly strange, but not harmless.

How many of the saints of God have I dismissed in this way? Countless perhaps. One of the besetting sins of church leaders is to measure people by their usefulness to the institution, the programme, the active life of the church. So when Jill and I came across Malcolm Guite's sonnet for All Saints' Tide, on 'A Last Beatitude', I remembered my little old lady with gratitude, an angel sent to me by the wisdom and grace of God.

Here's the sonnet: hopefully, you'll be encouraged to buy this wonderful book on 'Sounding the Seasons':

And blessèd are the ones we overlook;
The faithful servers on the coffee rota,
The ones who hold no candle, bell or book
But keep the books and tally up the quota,
The gentle souls who come to ‘do the flowers’,
The quiet ones who organize the fete,
Church sitters who give up their weekday hours,
Doorkeepers who may open heaven’s gate.
God knows the depths that often go unspoken
Amongst the shy, the quiet, and the kind,
Or the slow healing of a heart long broken,
Placing each flower so for a year’s mind.
Invisible on earth, without a voice,
In heaven their angels glory and rejoice.

Simeon's song, Eliot's poem and all our laments

I don’t know how I haven’t come across TS Eliot’s Ariel poem “A Song for Simeon” before. He wrote it and several others (including “Journey of the Magi” as ‘Christmas cards’ towards the end of the 1920s. I won’t reproduce it here, because it’s still in copyright, but you can find it online at http://bit.ly/eliot-and-simeon. It’s a reflection on the Nunc Dimittis, portraying Simeon as a tired old man waiting for his own death. It begins innocently enough on a window sill:

Norwich Cathedral

Lord, the Roman hyacinths are blooming in bowls and 
the winter sun creeps by the snow hill

 but quickly turns to the dominant theme of the poem, death as a fading:

My life is light, waiting for the death wind,
Like a feather on the back of my hand.

Over the past six months, as Jill’s father has grown progressively weaker (and lighter), we’ve watched on as he too has begun to fade, and have prayed with Eliot’s Simeon:

Grant us thy peace.

Simeon goes on to talk about his faithful discipleship as an observant Jew, lamenting that the memory of his house will fade in the desolations that are to come, the ‘time of sorrow’ when

They will take to the goat’s path, and the fox’s home,
Fleeing from foreign faces and the foreign swords.

This too has marked 2017 for us, with its endless flow of refugees fleeing war, persecution, economic disaster. For them too, we have prayed:

Inverness Cathedral

Grant us thy peace.

Simeon’s musing turns next to the passion of Christ, the ‘time of cords and scourges and lamentation’, of Mary’s sorrow, and imagines Christmas as ‘this birth season of decease’. Over many years of preaching at Christmas, I’ve only been able to make proper sense when I’ve coupled it with Calvary. This year, I’ve carried a Christmas refrain around in my head:

This day is a day like any other;
Yet unique, the hinge of history.

Those are not Eliot’s words, but mine. The ‘day like any other’ is an allusion to the fact that December 25th doesn’t obliterate or mask pain, suffering and despair, though it often exacerbates it with its superficial air of jollity. And yet, I know somewhere deep down that because of this ‘birth season of decease’, I find hope in Christ’s coming, and pray it with longing for our tragic world:

Grant Israel’s consolation
To one who has eighty years and no to-morrow…

St Aignan's Church, Brinay

As the poem draws to its natural end, Simeon’s ordinariness come to the fore. He is not a giant of the faith, though he experiences both the glory of the coming Christ and the derision accorded by the world to the people of the Word, the children of God. Nor is he a mystic or a martyr like John of the Cross or Teresa of Ávila:

Not for me the martyrdom, the ecstasy of thought
and prayer,
Not for me the ultimate vision.

He is every person, everyman, you and me, who walk in faith, struggle with faith, often finding little to gladden our hearts:

I am dying in my own death and the deaths of those
after me.

But Simeon, like us, at the end, can pray ‘Let thy servant depart’ because he has truly ‘seen thy salvation.’ May you in 2018 find a little faith, a little hope, a little prayer in your heart, and may God grant you too his peace.

Barnabas, the Apostle of Cyprus

Monastery Church of St Barnabas

There was a Levite, a native of Cyprus, Joseph, to whom the apostles gave the name Barnabas (which means ‘son of encouragement’). [Acts 4.36]

The disagreement became so sharp that they parted company; Barnabas took Mark with him and sailed away to Cyprus. [Acts 15.39]

Iconostasis

Barnabas, cousin of John Mark, is remembered widely on Cyprus as their apostle, the one who brought them the good news of Jesus Christ. While we were on holiday, we were able to go to the Monastery of St Barnabas, which had three monks in residence as late as 1976.

Thomas doubts no more

The story goes that Barnabas, having returned to his home city of Salamis, was martyred there by some in the Jewish community. His body was dumped in the marshes and recovered by Christians. They buried him on the site where the monastery remains as a museum.

The tomb of the saint

In 477 Archbishop Anthemios had a remarkable dream which enabled him to find the remains of the saint with his handwritten Gospel of St Matthew in his arms. As a result, Cyprus became an autocephalous or self-governing Orthodox church, the fifth in the world.

The monastery church is now an icon museum, somewhat spoilt by being more like an art gallery than a church. The icons themselves are not particularly remarkable.

Barnabas remembered by followers of Jesus

What we found specially moving was the tomb of the saint, now in the crypt of an 18th century building somewhat apart from the museum and much less overrun by tourists. Underground is a simple tomb covered in a drape, and tapers burning in Barnabas' memory. He is after all the one who told Cyprus about Jesus!

The pictures show both the large monastery church with its icon displays, and the tomb church.

God bless Africa

In the wake of the bloodless coup in Zimbabwe, I thought it would be good to revisit my prayers for the continent. Most Sundays we were there, we prayed Bishop Trevor Huddleston's prayer:

God bless Africa
Guard her children
Guide her leaders
And give her peace
for Jesus Christ's sake.

I will update this blog over the next few days, as there are 54 sovereign states on the continent. But for now, this is an invitation to pray for:

1. Zimbabwe, that Emerson Mnangagwa and the ZANU-PF government may build a new, prosperous and reconciled nation;
2. South Africa, that President Jacob Zuma may step down, having learnt the lesson that Robert Mugabe failed to learn, that there is an end to everything; and that justice may prevail;
3. Lesotho, for national unity following the assassination in September of the army commander by disgruntled former soldiers;
4. Swaziland, that King Mswati may relinquish his absolutist and tyrannical grip on power, and allow modernization and development that benefits the poor;
5. Angola, that the mineral wealth may not become a source of greed, blood diamonds and violence;
6. Namibia, that SWAPO's (ruling party) National Congress may seek justice and serve the whole nation;
7. Botswana, that this model country's stand against political and economic corruption, long lauded internationally, may continue and set a good example to the rest of the continent.

Is it my right to carry a gun?

President Trump famously said of the church shooting in Texas on November 5th that "This isn't a guns situation. This is a mental health problem at the highest level. It’s a very, very sad event." Meanwhile, a town mourns its dead and injured. Back in 1999, when we arrived in an equally gun-violent South Africa, we were told by our bishop that there was an absolute ban on guns in church in his diocese, and that any minister found to possess a gun licence would lose their church licence. For us, it was a relief to know that there was a clear choice.

About four years later, our racist white Irish neighbour was shot and killed while cycling to work. Why? Because the thieves wanted his proudly displayed gun, tucked into his waistband. I wish I could say that those who live by the sword die by the sword. The trouble is, that so often the innocent bystander and the vulnerable get taken down as well, or instead. I'm not a pacifist (I wish I could be, but the world is a fallen place), but I do not think that guns lead to a safer society. The evidence is quite clear.

So maybe it's a matter of human rights? The Second Amendment of the American Constitution says that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." We'll leave aside the particular interpretation of this held by gun-rights advocates, as there is a debate about the implications of the text. I have two questions about it. The first is whether the right of the people is an absolute right or a right relative to other rights, like my right to safety, and society's right to walk in public without fear? I personally don't think that a constitutional right is a human right. It is a political and social right, and, more importantly, it is a political and social responsibility.

The second question is whether Donald Trump's denial that the shooting was a 'guns situation' is expressed as a conviction of the truth, a moral stand, a fear that he might lose his power base, or a deeply paranoid reading of the way to control the world. His approach to North Korea seems to me even more dangerous than the American love of gun freedom: let's all have a big shoot-out between the West and North Korea, and may the best gun win? Really? The costlier way is the way of dialogue, but it takes time, effort, and a commitment to play less golf...

The pictures that I have posted to accompany this blog are from Namibia and Angola, where mines, bombs and shells continue to maim and kill decades after they were laid or shot in anger. As for the fallout from a global nuclear conflict, Chernobyl is a sobering and terrifying reminder of the stain on all our lives, and consciences.

A disciple walks in the way of the Lord

Next year marks 50 years since I arrived at the University of Leeds to read Theology and Religious Studies under Professor John Tinsley. He was a somewhat stiff and aloof figure, and few of us warmed to him. But even then I was struck that he invited new students to his house for cheese and wine, clearly wanting to make the effort to be sociable and supportive. The only time that I saw him excited was when he was explaining to us how the mosaics at Ravenna, and the architecture of the basilica, demonstrated better than words the theology of the early church.

In the second and third years, he taught us Christian Doctrine, focusing in one on the Trinity and the Incarnation, and in the other on the Atonement. Much of my preaching and my own Christian reflection is rooted in all that he gave us, and I am deeply indebted to him. I only wish that I had told him so at the time, but students rarely thank their teachers!

He didn't give away much of himself, and when he became Bishop of Bristol, he had to walk with his wife through a traumatic time of illness and premature death from cancer. For some reason, I felt the need to go and see him when we were in North Devon, travelling from Barnstaple to Bristol with Jill. He welcomed us hospitably and gave us lunch at his kitchen table, though he was clearly the only person in our theological past who hadn't seen our marriage coming! "Oh, that came off, did it?" was his reply to our self-identification as fellow students of his.

The thing that I never did was read his book, and I'm making up for that now, 49 years late. "The Imitation of God in Christ" was published by SCM Press in 1960, the only book that he wrote, I think. At last, I'm beginning to get a measure of the man, and his spiritual journey, and it's very moving.

In the first part of the book, he deals with the theme of imitation in the Old Testament, and though I'm not here attempting to summarize what he writes, the key is that to imitate God is to walk in the way of the Lord. In this great 'journey' of faith, Israel is the imitator as it walks behind the Lord, miming and rehearsing all that God has done and is doing, by taking part in those works.

And here we come to the nub of it. Israel's covenantal discipleship is fivefold in structure: to walk after the Lord is first, to obey [to keep the commandments]. Secondly, it is to reverence the Lord [to fear the Lord]. Then comes love [to love the Lord and to cleave to him]; perfection [to be perfect in the Way] and to know the Lord. I love this, and it seems to me a powerful blueprint for Christian discipleship today rather than some intellectual assent to a set of plausible or provable truths or even an emotional and deeply felt passion which waxes and wanes with the ebb and flow of life. It is a covenant. We are called by a God who commits to us. In response we obey, worship, love, grow and know.

I wish I had known John Tinsley better, but this undeservedly forgotten little book is giving me rich insight into his faith and personal journey, and I find myself again giving thanks for one more saint in the unsung calendar of 'ordinary unremarkable but faithful children of God.'

Saints fit to follow

I'd love to be back in Trinidad tomorrow night, on the eve of All Saints', driving past the cemetery in the old capital of St Joseph after dark, nearly every grave lit up with a mass of candles. Ever since I was a child, it's reminded me of the way in which the risen Christ lights up the gloom of our lives and our deaths with a promise of the new creation.

Today, we're more inclined to make our own saints of our celebrity singers, actors and sports personalities. We idolize them and scour the newspapers for titbits of gossip. The glitter and razzmatazz draws us like moths to a flame, and consumes us with bitterness and envy as we approach. We can never be like them, try as we might. They are the icons of our broken dreams and failure to find meaning.

Which is why, in the end, we rejoice at their downfall. I am in no doubt that the spectacular 'fall from grace' of Harvey Weinstein and others is appropriate, and an object lesson in the danger that is inherent in our veneration of the secular 'company of saints'. Yet, having been poisoned by their narcissism and our voyeurism, we are even further corrupted by the danse macabre with which we surround their fall. Both celebrity heroics and the anti-heroic glee with which we welcome their fall to earth stain us.

The Christian gospel holds up a different band of pilgrims, of apostles, prophets, martyrs, teachers and confessors whom we revere, not because they are utterly unlike us, but because they show us in small and great ways what we also can be in Christ. They are models of what is possible, in Christ. They are beacons who light up a way that is open, in Christ. And of course, they challenge us to the narrow way of the kingdom, the way of ascent, the way of the cross, the way of dying to self that new life may come.

So tomorrow and throughout this week, I'll be remembering the unremarked and unremarkable saints who've shaped my life and my journey, as well as those whose names I carry: Thomas the doubting apostle who said 'My Lord and my God'; Francis, the little poor one, who stripped himself bare the better to follow Christ, and Adrian of Nicomedia, soldier in the Praetorian Guard who was converted and martyred at the beginning of the 4th century. May they, and we, rise in glory.

The Three Loves

How to live well in the Kingdom of God

Hebrews 13.1-3

Hebrews 13 is a familiar end-of-letter exhortation to its audience, to live the life fully into which we have been invited by our Saviour Christ. When I preached on this in Crowmarsh Gifford in August 2006, I prepared a sermon on verses 1-3 as a manifesto for three kinds of love: mutual love, stranger-love, and love for the marginalized.

MUTUAL LOVE: Let mutual love continue - Ἡ φιλαδελφία μενέτω. This love is ‘brotherly love’ in the Greek, and the NRSV doesn’t preserve the force of the word. Love the family, love as sisters and brothers, love as those to whom you belong, certainly. More importantly, love with the full knowledge of the frailty and idiosyncrasies of those who are so close to you that you know them warts and all. It’s unconditional love, but it’s not careless love. It cares deeply that those we love are fractured, but it does not make love dependent on change. It is patient love, love for the addict who can’t find a way out; love for the sister who has wounded your life by a chance remark; love for the brother who doesn’t know how to treat you with respect. It’s redeeming love, because it frees those whom we love from the compulsion to prove themselves to us.

STRANGER-LOVE: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers – The word used for hospitality - φιλοξενία – may be literally translated as love of strangers or of those who are strange. The love theme continues! There is a further reminder that love for others doubles up as love for God, and that one without the other is the absurdity shown clearly in 1 John 4. Hospitality offered to humans may be hospitality offered to God, and there are echoes for me of Abraham’s experience in Genesis 18. Perhaps there is a supernatural dimension to all hospitality? We find the unseen guest Christ makes himself known in the breaking of bread when we make space at the table for strangers. Eucharistic strangers make the Eucharist a sacramental miracle, and Christ presents himself in them too. Might they, in a strange way, be some of the broken bread?

LOVE FOR THOSE ON THE MARGINS: Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured [μιμνῄσκεσθε τῶν δεσμίων ὡς συνδεδεμένοι] – the writer moves rapidly into more uncomfortable territory. We’ve been asked to make space at the table for those who formally don’t belong. Now we’re asked to go into inhospitable places, and make ourselves at home there, to be ‘in the flesh’ with them, as the text actually says. This is the core meaning of ‘compassion’, which takes us beyond empathy to participation, one of the ways of understanding what Christ means when he invites us to take up our cross. In a comfortable, warm and fuzzy church setting with glorious music and rich resources, it’s a challenge to remain uncomfortable and edgy ourselves.

The gifts of the Spirit

in 1 Corinthians 12

This blog is a collection of Facebook posts in 2016. I will add to them from Romans 12 and elsewhere in due course. For now, before I get into the detail, I want to make some general marks about God’s gifts.

The first is that God gives varieties of gifts, both to Christians and non-Christians. Here we are talking about gifts given to the church, and to individuals within the church for the sake of the church.

1.      Some of these gifts are naturally endowed: birth gifts.

2.      Some are learned skills: sweat of the brow gifts.

3.      Some are supernaturally endowed: I’m not sure what to call these.

4.      Some are a mixture of the 3 things above.

So we mustn’t separate out gifts that come from God and gifts that come from ‘nature’. They are all God-given! Having said that, let’s start in earnest.

λόγος σοφίας

This week I’m going to celebrate the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Today: Wisdom, who speaks for herself in Proverbs 8. This is the gift that Stephen had which gifted him to speak so eloquently when appointed a deacon, and which led him to die for the truth he spoke.

“Ages ago I was set up,

at the first, before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,

when there were no springs abounding with water....

...then I was beside him, like a master worker;

and I was daily his delight,

rejoicing before him always,

rejoicing in his inhabited world

and delighting in the human race.”

λόγος γνώσεως

The gift of knowledge is often trivialized as ‘a word of knowledge’ in an act of worship, through which someone identifies a person present who has a particular ailment or need. It may be that, but 1 Corinthians 12 uses the same word as 1 Corinthians 1, where ‘gnosis’ [knowledge] refers to the proclamation of Christ crucified. If I pray for this gift, I am most likely praying for the Holy Spirit to grant me the ability to teach and proclaim Christ our Saviour in a way that radically transforms the lives of those who listen. What a gift to pray for!

πίστις 

The third gift of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 12 is ‘faith’. This doesn’t refer to the faith that is common to all who are in Christ. It is a specific way of living out of that faith that touches the lives of others. Anthony Thiselton’s commentary says “Probably this gift promotes an ebullient, robust, optimistic acceptance of God’s sovereign love and mercy in such a way as to put heart into a troubled church in times of uncertainty.” I love this, but would add that it is a faith that holds others in its embrace, encouraging and enabling them to believe and hope when they are doubtful or spiritually weak. Thirdly, it is a faith which excites, energizes and propels others into the mission of God.

In the New Testament, Paul himself seems to me to have this gift. In the history of the church, such people are sometimes leaders but more often seem to be found among the ordinary, unnoticed, faith-filled folk. The question to ask yourself today is, ‘Where do I see this gift at work in our church?’

χαρίσματα ἰαμάτων

The fourth gift of the Holy Spirit in our list is plural: gifts of healing.

1.      These are gifts given for the building up of the church; we do not ‘possess’ the gifts, but we steward them. Some of us exercise the gifts of healing for a season, or on one occasion only. Some are called to carry the gift as a central feature of their Christian discipleship.

2.      These gifts are exercised in prayer. We ask for healing in the name of Jesus, and the Spirit of Jesus responds graciously through us.

3.      Healing has a sacramental character. Laying hands on the sick and anointing them are outward signs of the inward working of the grace of God. We who pray for the sick are also outward signs of God’s inward grace.

4.      The healing miracles of Jesus were exercised in compassion. But they are also signs of the end, when all will be well and there is no more pain. The church continues this earthly ministry of Jesus, and in doing so, gives hope. Healing is partial now; then it will be complete.

5.      For those who are in Christ, death is a healing journey, the entry point into the eternity of God

ἐνεργήματα δυνάμεων

Gift 5 is the working of miracles, better translated as works of power. If I pray for this gift, I am praying that God will do powerful things in Jesus’ name through me. Those powerful things might be dramatic, but they are just as likely to be hidden, quiet, behind the scenes. The reconciliation of two factions in a church, the repairing of a threatened marriage, a person restored from despair, another enabled to forgive oppressors, these too are works of power. So if you desire and pray for this gift, don’t pray for drama, pray for God to turn a little corner of the world the right way up through you. If God chooses to act dramatically, that’s fine. But to pray to be gifted with works of God’s power is to pray to be used transformatively, not dramatically.

προφητεία

Continuing with our theme of the gifts of the Spirit, prophecy comes next. There are some cautions here: if we call people with a gift of prophecy 'prophets', we may unintentionally suggest [a] that they are fortune-tellers or oracles; [b] that they are infallibly speaking with the voice of God, as spokespersons, or [c] that they have high rank or status. Perhaps that is why Paul doesn't describe such people as prophets here or in Romans 12.

More positively, this is a gift of forthtelling rather than foretelling: forthright speech to the church, calling it back to holy living, active proclamation and costly service. Some sermons, undoubtedly, show this gift at work. So does godly conversation, or wise books. And though in 1 Corinthians 12 the gift is 'for the church', prophecy may be addressed to groups and nations as well as individuals. I for one, believe that Desmond Tutu has been such a person (and of course that doesn't mean that I agree with all that he says). I do believe that his words have on more than one occasion been words forthtelling God's challenge to the church and to the society.

διακρίσεις πνευμάτων

The discernment of spirits is the next in our tour through the gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12. It is relatively easy to cut through the thicket of opinions, perspectives and interpretations. To discern is to make a decision about the rightness or wrongness of something, to discriminate in the proper sense. As this is a gift of the Holy Spirit, this is an ability that is God-given rather than reasoned or intuitive, though of course God uses those faculties. What are the 'spirits'? They may be [a] the emotions and inner forces that pull us towards or away from God [consolation or desolation]; [b] the choices or claims we or others make in the name of God; and [c] actual evil spirits, the 'the cosmic powers of this present darkness'. It is of course a form of wisdom that we so desperately need in the church today. We always have done.

γένη γλωσσῶν + ἑρμηνεία γλωσσῶν

The last two gifts in the list in 1 Corinthians 12 go together. Paul here is not talking about the personal and private use of tongues, but about building up the church. Interestingly, in chapter 14, he says that this is a sign for unbelievers. I remember the unbelieving husband of a believing wife attending a service at which someone gave a message in tongues, followed by an interpretation from another. His remark afterwards was that this was the only thing that differentiated our church from the pub of which he was landlord!

Put simply, tongues are here

1.      addressed to God [14.2]: we ‘speak mysteries in the Spirit.’

2.      addressed to God in the church.

3.      addressed to God in the church for the sake of unbelievers.

It is as if unbelievers in church (are we bringing them in?) are invited to eavesdrop on our worship in tongues. And the interpreters must interpret what is happening, rather than what is being said. Interpretation is ‘spiritual explanation.’

More  importantly, our worship must be ‘in many tongues’ – God-breathed, inspired, ecstatic, supernatural, glorious praise, which does not dumb down. As we pray for these gifts, we are praying for our praise to be risky, to be open to the promptings of God, to be unbounded and unrestrained. It’s a prayer to ‘let God loose in our praise.’