Alchemy: The Transforming God 2

The refiner’s fire

He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the LORD will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness... [Malachi 3.3 NIV]

Remove the dross from the silver, and a silversmith can produce a vessel. [Proverbs 25.4]

1.  We are the stuff of God’s alchemy, the raw material out of which he wants to fashion pure gold, the pure gold of lives lived for him, in him, and through him.

2.  But we know that our stuff – our raw material - is pretty messy, rough, flawed, impure, corrupt. And so God has to set his divine magic to work to refine us and make of us the beautiful things that he has always wanted, not make-up, make-believe or make-over, but re-creation, a new me, washed, purified, reworked. It is most mysterious, most magical, most wonderful, to think that God cares for us enough to want to create us all over again.

3.  And that divine magic involves:

a.  fire

b.  light

c.  words

d.  a reaction

4.  I don’t want to say much about fire today, because that’s the subject of the next Sacred Space evening, on June 14^th. But I did have a conversation with our Simeon Centre intern this week about refining. She’s a material scientist, and she told me that if you want to refine a piece of metal, the best way is to heat it slowly along the length of the metal bar, and the impurities are driven to one end and can be cut off. It’s a bit like refining and pruning come together. Heat the metal, drive out the dross and cut it off!

There’s something about the pain and cost of being refined by God’s alchemy here, and Paul puts it well in his Letter to the Romans: We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. [5.3-5] It’s the fire of God’s love that refines us, not the fire of anger!

5.  And so to the next magical element, light. Paul again: Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, 14for everything that becomes visible is light.

If you’ve ever turned a large stone over in the garden, you will have seen ants, or beetles, or other strange creatures of the dark, run for cover. I think Paul has this in mind when he says, Turn the stone of your life over, and shine God’s light on it.

What does that look like in practice? Well, we are very good at wriggling and squirming out of facing the people we really are. We make excuses for our actions readily: I was tired. He started it. It’s the way my parents showed me. I was distracted.

And the magic of God’s alchemy says Step 1: bring the dross of our lives into the light, own it, confess that we have sinned, sometimes tell others, admit that we are at fault [when we are, of course], squirm and wriggle a bit. And then God and me together can do the business.

Step 2: the magic words: I am sorry. Or, on the other side, I forgive you.

Step 3: a reaction takes place. God has magic words of his own. Father forgive them; they do not know what they are doing. And later, after the resurrection, Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

6.  It’s really all about change. Change hurts. Change is costly. Change is hard. But God has given us a chance for change, a choice to change, and a challenge to think about what might happen if we

a.  chose to accept a bit of fire

b.  chose to lift the lid on the secrets of our hearts

c.  chose to utter the magic words

I will draw this together simply by quoting Corrie ten Boom, whom I return to over and over again when I want to make this point. I know of no one better to illustrate the magic of redeeming love, made possible in Christ.

[Betsie and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland; this man had been a guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp where we were sent.]

“Now he was in front of me, hand thrust out: ‘A fine message, Fräulein! How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!’

“And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that hand. He would not remember me, of course—how could he remember one prisoner among those thousands of women?

“But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. I was face-to-face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

“ ‘You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying, ‘I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me.

“ ‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein,’ again the hand came out—’will you forgive me?’

“And I stood there—I whose sins had again and again to be forgiven—and could not forgive. Betsie had died in that place—could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

“It could not have been many seconds that he stood there—hand held out—but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I had ever had to do.

“For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive those who have injured us. ‘If you do not forgive men their trespasses,’ Jesus says, ‘neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses.’

“I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed their bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

“And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘… Help!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’

“And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“ ‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart!’

“For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely, as I did then”

Alchemy: The Transforming God I

On Saturday 9th May, I spoke at a Quiet Day for the Lordsbridge Team Ministry on Alchemy: The The Transforming God. This is the first of the three talks.

1. The philosopher’s stone

The medieval science of alchemy invested most of its energy in a magical quest for the philosopher’s stone, the mysterious stuff that would turn base metals into gold. It was a quest for wealth, for power, for understanding, for control of a troubling and troublesome world.

In Sacred Space this year, we are celebrating the stuff of life, the stuff of creation: earth, fire, air and water, and we’ll go on doing that for the rest of this year. Focusing on the elements of life got the team thinking about the one who is in charge of the elements: the transforming God.

And so we arrive at our theme for the day: Alchemy: The Transforming God. People’s lives often look like that alchemical quest: for wealth, for power, for understanding, for control. We need to tame our unruly world, our fleeting lives, our turbulent passions. And it’s a failed quest. In trying to tame our world, we end up like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, who imitates his master’s magic, gets the jug to fill with water and then nearly drowns because he doesn’t know how to get the jug to stop. In desperation he cries out, and the master comes and saves him.

So the first step in this simple reflection is to turn back to God. Stop looking for the philosopher’s stone, stop looking for solutions, and turn to the philosopher himself: Almighty God. You’ve done that, of course, many of you, all your lives, I know. I simply need to say to you: Turn back to God today – it’s our daily task.

Here then are three things to think about, that might help us focus on God himself and turn back:

1.  Our God is a provident God. Providence is not something we think about much these days. We are much more likely to talk about chance, good fortune, serendipity or – at best – God-incidences in our lives. But Christian teaching is that God, who knows all things, cares for all things, and is steering all things, including our lives, towards an end in which he and we will be at rest together.

If I were in college today, I’d have a lot of hands going up saying, but what about Nepal, Syria, refugees in the Mediterranean, Rotherham, and I guess some of you are thinking that it doesn’t always look as if God cares very much. That’s why we try to sort it all out for ourselves, because we sometimes struggle to believe and trust in a God who cares.

That’s why it’s fundamental for us to turn back to God, to the beginning of the story, that God created the world, including us, as part of a plan, that we might be loved by him and love him in return. That’s why we also need to turn back to God in the middle of the story, where it’s all gone horribly wrong, and we see a cluster of crosses on Calvary. Here God declares his intention to recover, restore and redeem us in his providential plan.

And in the confidence of the resurrection, we work at trusting in a God who won’t let us go until all is well, until – as Julian of Norwich says – all manner of things are well, and we finally and forever rest in the loving care of God. We work at hope, at seeing that God is still at work, for us, and not against us. We pray: Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.

2.  Secondly, our God makes beautiful, even magical things. He is a God of awesome wonder, and as we turn to him today, we need to respond with childlike delight, playfulness and amazement. Paul gets close to this when he says in Romans 15 that the Kingdom of God is ‘righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.’ But let’s use Job to illustrate this. Imagine the master alchemist Almighty God in his laboratory, mixing, stirring, playing, fizz, sparkle and smoke everywhere, and Job says:

‘At this also my heart trembles, and leaps out of its place. Listen, listen to the thunder of his voice and the rumbling that comes from his mouth.

Under the whole heaven he lets it loose, and his lightning to the corners of the earth.

After it his voice roars; he thunders with his majestic voice and he does not restrain the lightnings when his voice is heard.

God thunders wondrously with his voice; he does great things that we cannot comprehend.

For to the snow he says, “Fall on the earth”; and the shower of rain, his heavy shower of rain, serves as a sign on everyone’s hand, so that all whom he has made may know it.

Thus God creates; we wonder and laugh out loud. In our laughter, we turn again to the world as God has made it, and back to God himself.

3.  The last of my three simple calls back to God is a call to respond to the power of God. Simply put, God is who God is; and we are to worship him, in amazement and sometimes in terror. As the children’s song goes, our God really is a great big God, and we should be very afraid.

We are so familiar with the idea of the power of God, and of the Old Testament stories in particular which stress that power, that I’m going to make this point by way of a question. Have you over the years tamed and domesticated your view of God? Is God simply a cosy, reassuring, comfort-blanket kind of God?

It was not so that Francis Thompson, his life ravaged by drugs and alcohol in 1890 experienced God, and wrote about it in his amazing poem The Hound of Heaven:

I fled him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled him, down the arches of the years;

I fled him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears

I hid from Him, and under running laughter.

Up vistaed hopes I sped;

And shot, precipitated

Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,

From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbed pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat – and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet –

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

1 Corinthians 11 and long red hair

Choose your commentary, choose your church tradition, choose your prejudices, draw your conclusions. I was once accosted on the street in Port of Spain, when my hair was long, dense and red, and told that I was a shameful sinner by a young man who had clear and hermetically sealed convictions on the matter. So sure was he that he never had the courtesy to greet me, name himself or open his heart to me. Shame, man!

I have three minutes to speak on a passage that Kenneth Bailey describes as a ‘dense and mysterious passage [that] does not reveal all its secrets to anyone’. Richard Hays says that it presents severe problems for the interpreter. So I refer you to Richard’s Interpretation commentary for an excellent exposition, and in the meantime, encourage you not to forget three things that can be positively drawn from this passage:

1. Rejoice in your womanhood, or in your manhood. A healthy Christian community needs us all, with our distinctions, and not with some bland aspiration to neutral sameness.
2. We are all free to minister, and in this passage at least, we see both women and men prophesying and praying. Grasp your God-given freedom to exercise that ministry, but do not allow your joy in the freedom of Christ lead you into licence, or acts that are culturally offensive, or shameful.
3. Paul has his views on the position of men and women in the created order, but even he recognizes that in the new order, ‘in the Lord, woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman.’ We are, in Christ, interdependent, given to each other, for each other, for the coming Kingdom.

And finally, don’t be afraid to preach on the hard passages, but never do so standing twenty feet above contradiction. If you don’t agree with what I’ve said, thank God that I’m not the Pope. Pray for me, as I will pray for you, that we will never lose that glorious Christian relief at being saved by grace, lest anyone, man or woman, should boast save in the cross of Jesus Christ. 

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. 

Ó 2011 Adrian Chatfield

The harrowing of hell

The harrowing of hell

The story so beloved of medieval mystery plays around Christ’s harrowing of hell has a complex and much disputed history. There are two primary interpretations of the spirits in prison: either they are the disembodied spirits of Noah’s contemporaries imprisoned in Hades, who in rabbinic tradition are excluded from resurrection, or they are the fallen angels of Genesis 6.1-6 [the majority view, and one which some rabbinic material alludes to.]

The expansion of the latter suggestion dates back to the Book of the Watchers, a 3^rd or 2^nd  century BC comprising the first 36 chapters of 1 Enoch 36, embellishing Genesis 6. The tradition includes a punishment through flood for such miscegenation, so it is possible to read it in this way. However, allusions to Christ preaching to those who died in the old dispensation occur in the early 2^nd century Shepherd of Hermas, one of the so-called Apostolic Fathers and in the apocryphal Gospel of Peter and Odes of Solomon.

Underlying both traditions is the Christological theme of the victory of Christ, and his Lordship over all that is above the earth, on the earth, and under the earth. The detail can be endlessly argued about, though Hades/Sheol is clearly the place of the dead in general rather than a place of final [and often eternal] punishment post-judgement.

In summary, the tradition, carried on widely through the Middle Ages and then falling into disrepute in 16^th Protestant Europe, celebrates the power of Christ to save, the comprehensive reach of that salvation, the justice of God’s salvific acts in potentially incorporating all, and the cosmic dimensions of the battle between good and evil. Maybe it is time to recover this celebration for the Saturday of Holy Week, rather than simply going shopping for Easter eggs in a consumerist anticipation of the return of spring!

Sharing my body, my soul, my store - a monumental hopeI

There is a monument in the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary [!] at Harlton in Cambridgeshire to a saint of God, Thomas Fryer. The details are easily accessed elsewhere, and there is a picture of the monument below. What particularly caught my eye was the English poem that commends Thomas' piety:

Incloisterd in these piles of stone

The reliques of this Fryer rest,

Whose better part to heaven's gone;

The poore mans bowels were his chest.

And 'mongst these three: grave, heaven, poore,

He shard his corps, his soule, his store.

Holiness is an elusive thing, but I aspire to the values expressed here.

First, I long to be well-prepared for death now, that I may fully live the rest of my life here on earth, in gladness, in gratitude, alert for the moments, opportunities and revelations of each day. I long, in other words, to 'share my corpse with the grave.' I wish to be reconciled to Sister Death [St Francis' words] and to know that death no longer has any sting for those who are in Christ.

Then, I long to be heavenward bound. I do not like the inherent dualism implied by the use of the word 'soul' here, but the Fryers were recusants, Catholics and crypto-Catholics in a Protestant Elizabethan England. The language is the language of medieval theology, but there is a deep truth embedded in it, that the 'true and complete me' that I am is designed for eternity with God. I will find no rest until I find my rest in him. So, as I explored at great length in my PhD, my life on this earth is exilic, and the OT exilic writers deserve much more attention as spiritual guides in today's church, often far too earth-bound.

Finally, I long to share my store with the poor, perhaps the simplest, clearest and most challenging of all. I will die without any hard work on my part. I will inherit heavenly life through Christ's hard work on the cross. But for now, my work is to share all that I am, and all that I have. Today, then, I pray for the grace to be open, hospitable, aware and generous with those who by accident of life and circumstance, are today's neighbours. May the same be true for you.

 

The apostle is distressed, and what he does about it

Three thoughts on Paul's Athens experience

Paul in Athens is faced with two dilemmas: how to capture the attention of the chattering classes, and how to retain it in the face of many competing – and often superficially more attractive – philosophies.

Here’s how he does it.

By being distressed at idolatry. We are surrounded by idolatry all the time, much as Paul was, and it is tempting to take it for granted as part of the scene. It’s the way life is, we think. Not so Paul. His example reminds us that we need to pray for a sharper response: not paralyzing fear, but a distress which propels us into the public arena. Pray for the Holy Spirit to drive you into places of influence, exposure and risk, and pray for all of us, as pioneers and visionaries in God’s church, that we may be equally distressed on behalf of God’s Kingdom. IDOLATRY SUCKS!

By being able to talk the languages of the age. No one knows who the poet is whom Paul quotes in building connections between the inchoate spirituality of the Athenians and the Christian gospel. But clearly his hearers knew, and it was part of his strategy for holding them long enough to speak about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pray for apologists, theologians and thinkers – and pray for your study, that we may have the discernment, insights and skills needed to speak the languages of the age. CULTURE COMMUNICATES!

Paul’s refusal to compromise with the spirits of the age. He may build bridges for his audience from the known to the unknown, but he is uncompromising in his proclamation. Jesus alone is Saviour, Jesus’ resurrection is the only hope for us. Our failure to respond to the good news leads directly to judgement. And so finally we pray for all who in telling the truth face mockery, apathy, and in some cases virulent opposition, and we ask for God to place his angels and watchers in protection over them, and us. TRUTH MATTERS!