Sermons turning to ash in the presence of Love

For Ames, writing sermons was a spiritual discipline that was unseated by an apophaticisim of sorts. The spiritual discipline fails in the face of actual Love. That's something all preachers know too; probably all pursuers of any spiritual discipline know - at least, we hope we'll come to know, if we persist long enough in the Christian life. We hope to know that the disciplines fail in the face of Love, that in Love's company we feel the poverty of our efforts, as Ames's sermons turn to ash in his mouth when Lila is there.

Lauren Winner, Thinking about preaching with Marilynne Robinson, in Balm in Gilead p.88

Learning from the preaching of Peter

Peter's foundational preaching in the earliest days of the church provides a model for preaching to every generation. It must be practiced in the power of the Holy Spirit, as the natural outflow of a life lived for and empowered by the presence of God, humbly submitted fully to him. It must be authentically proclaimed by one who has first personally come under the convicting power of God's truth and also responded in repentance and received God's forgiveness. And the message must always be Christ-centred, gospel focussed, rooted in Scripture, and relevantly applied to contemporary circumstances. The response to such preaching is in the hands of a sovereign God, and all the glory is his.

A Legacy of Preaching, Vol 1 (p.61f)

The willingness of leaders

Then the leaders of families, the officers of the tribes of Israel, the commanders of thousands and commanders of hundreds, and the officials in charge of the king’s work gave willingly. They gave toward the work on the temple of God five thousand talents and ten thousand darics of gold, ten thousand talents of silver, eighteen thousand talents of bronze and a hundred thousand talents of iron. Anyone who had precious stones gave them to the treasury of the temple of the Lord in the custody of Jehiel the Gershonite. The people rejoiced at the willing response of their leaders, for they had given freely and wholeheartedly to the Lord. David the king also rejoiced greatly.

(1 Chronicles 29:6-9)

To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away.

(1 Peter 5:1-4)

Dorothy L Sayers on language for God

Trying to get God into a verbal formula is like trying to force a large and irritated cat into a small basket. As soon as you tuck in his head, his tail comes out. Once his back paws are inside, the front paws appear again. Even when you finally manage to squeeze the cat into the basket, his “dismal wailings” make it clear that “some essential dignity in the creature has been violated and a wrong done to its nature.”

(from "Mere Discipleship: Growing in Wisdom and Hope" by Alister E. McGrath.)

My favourite reads of 2019

The books I most enjoyed reading this year, without any why's or wherefore's - you can go check them out if you so desire.

(Oh and they're listed here in reading order, not preference of any sort)

1.  All That's Good: Recovering the Lost Art of Discernment
2.  Lewis on the Christian Life: Becoming Truly Human in the Presence of God
3.  On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books
4.  Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
5.  Some Pastors and Teachers: Reflecting a Biblical Vision of What Every Minister Is Called to Be
6.  The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
7.  Walking Through Twilight: A Wife's Illness-A Philosopher's Lament 
8.  The Lord Is Good: Seeking The God Of The Psalter
9.  Thirst
10. Virgil Wander
11. Taking the Long View: Christian Theology in Historical Perspective
12. Strangers in Their Own Land Anger and Mourning on the American Right
13. Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
14. Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing
15. The Care of Souls: Cultivating a Pastor's Heart
16. Christina Rosetti: Poems (Everyman's Pocket Poets)
17. Old Testament Wisdom Literature
18. Confessions of St.Augustine
19. Disappearing Church
20. Grace & Glory
21. Sacred Endurance: Finding Grace and Strength for a Lasting Faith 
22. The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity

You're speaking to it in acts and it speaks back to you in reactions

Reading 'church' for land/place/farm in this from Wendell Berry makes for worthwhile musing:

Analogies have tied things together for me, personally. The fundamental one for me is the analogy between your relationship to your spouse and your relationship to your place. Both need to be a settled commitment and both involve continuous learning and adjusting. If you have a wife of any spirit, she’s not going to let you be married to her only on your terms or your assumption about what she is. Land, a place, by nature also is going to react. If you’re wrong about it, you’ll find out. The problem there is that your land, your farm, doesn’t speak English. You’re speaking to it in acts. And it speaks back to you in reactions. 

If you’ve been badly mistaken, the reaction can be expensive—to it and to you. It’s possible for the tuition to be too high, economically or ecologically or both. And that’s why the destruction of the continuity of local communities and farm families is a significant loss. It’s a loss that is practical. There’s nobody to say, “Hold on a minute. That’s been tried before, and it didn’t work.” If you can keep that voice alive, then you’ve kept culture alive, a local culture in which the generations talk to each other.

(from: "It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays" by Wendell Berry.

a healthy dose of realism for potential ministry workers

Interviewed by Jim Leach of NEH , Wendell and Tanya Berry said the following about people thinking to take up farming...

BERRY: Well, I hear from readers a good deal, and I try to answer every letter. I think, because of my commitment to issues of conservation and good agriculture and peaceableness, they find something hopeful in my work.
TANYA BERRY: They’re looking for a life instead of a career.
LEACH: What are the principles you encourage, then?
BERRY: When they say they’re planning to take up farming, I encourage them to be awfully careful. I have received a lot of letters saying, “I don’t like my job. I don’t like where I’m living. I’m going to sell out, and move to the country, and be a farmer.” It seems to me that the only responsible thing, then, is to write back some version of “Be careful” or even “Don’t do it.”
TANYA BERRY: Or “Keep your job.”
BERRY: Yes. Buy a place in the country if you want to and live on it, but keep your job. Don’t put your marriage at risk. Don’t put your livelihood at risk. Because there’s a lot to learn, and why should somebody who has a lot to learn try to take up farming when experienced farmers are failing? So, in writing favorably about farming, I’ve assumed a considerable responsibility that I’ve tried to live up to. People say, sometimes in alarm, “You’re discouraging me.” And I say, “Well, yes, to some extent. I’m obliged to encourage you to be thoughtful.”

(From: "It All Turns on Affection: The Jefferson Lecture & Other Essays" by Wendell Berry.)

It struck me on reading it that, given the avalanche of encouragement to younger men and women to enter ministry, to become church-planters or assistants or [insert your choice of title]...that there is much wisdom in being, as Berry suggests, more thoughtful. His question, "Why should somebody who has a lot to learn try to take up farming when experienced farmers are failing?" feels especially pertinent. And "Don't put your marriage at risk" is an utterly haunting statement.

This isn't of course to discourage new ministry workers - very many are and will be needed - but is simply to encourage a greater open-eyed realism, a realism that will include a greater consideration of and attentiveness to the subject of 'a call to the ministry' and the slowing down of the process of discernment and decision.

neither sarcastic nor cynical

I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge — God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 are smothered in irony, in the light of all he will go on to write in the letter. But the note of thanksgiving and rejoicing, despite all their flaws and muddle and the agony of heart and soul they are causing him, reads as utterly genuine. There is not a hint of sarcasm or cynicism here.

And that is deeply challenging. When wounded or disappointed by others, when you see your hard work nullified, how easy it is to think or speak with clever sarcasm or stinging cynicism, but Paul does neither. In God's presence he lifts his heart and voice in praise, simply and sincerely. Because they have been genuinely saved to the great glory of Jesus and all their present struggles, all their sinful meanderings, will not - can not - erase what God has done. The reality is there, despite the smears. Jesus is yet at work "to present [them] to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." (Eph. 5:27)

That is always a cause for thankfulness and confidence.

Preacher: don't be David Letterman

Every night you're trying to prove your self-worth. It's like meeting your girlfriend's family for the first time. You want to be the absolute best, wittiest, smartest, most charming, best-smelling version of yourself. If I can make people enjoy the experience and have a higher regard for me when I'm finished, it makes me feel like an entire person. If I've come short of that, I'm not happy. How things go for me every night is how I feel about myself for the next 24 hours.

David Letterman, Parade Magazine, 26 May 1996 (quoted in Wholeheartedness by Chuck DeGroat, p.15)

Is your gospel preaching primary and fundamental?

In speaking of the Lord's Supper as "an epitome of the gospel of redemption", Vos notes that he could not then (and perhaps we cannot now) say that "there is no need of such a witness of the sacrament because the ministry of the Word always and everywhere proclaims the central truth of the gospel with sufficient clearness and emphasis...I am sure that there are churches in which a great many other things can be heard, yet where one could listen in vain for the plain preaching of the cross as the God-appointed means for the salvation of sinners."

But he is at pains to point out that he is not suggesting that "in all such cases there need be the preaching of false doctrine which involves an open and direct denial of the evangelical truth." What is all too possible - and what is personally pertinent and searching - is that "there may be such a failure in the intelligent presentation of the gospel with the proper emphasis upon that which is primary and fundamental as to bring about a result almost equally deplorable as where the principles of the gospel are openly contradicted or denied. There can be a betrayal of the gospel of grace by silence." (my emphasis)

And so, he adds,

I sometimes feel as if what we need most is a sense of proportion in our presentation of the truth; a new sense of where the centre of gravity in the gospel lies; a return to the ideal of Paul who determined not to know anything among the Corinthians save Jesus Christ and him crucified. This does not mean that every sermon which we preach must necessarily be what is technically called an evangelistic sermon. There may be frequent occasions when to do that would be out of place and when a discourse on some ethical or apologetic or social topic is distinctly called for. But whatever topic you preach on and whatever text you choose, there ought not to be in your whole repertoire a single sermon in which from beginning to end you do not convey to your hearers the impression that what you want to impart to them, you do not think it possible to impart to them in any other way than as a correlate and consequence of the eternal salvation of their souls through the blood of Christ, because in your own conviction that alone is the remedy which you can honestly offer to a sinful world.

Grace and Glory, p.237f

Why the devotional may not be so much in evidence (Vos)

Are we sure that we feel with the frequency and intensity which our greater privileges demand the desire to meet with God? Or are we satisfied with that indirect relation to him which our service of him in his kingdom and our daily study of his Word leads us to sustain? I need not tell you that there is a tendency at the present day to make our religious life seek the surface, the periphery; to detach it more or less from its centre which lies in the direct face-to-face communion of the soul with God. The devotional is not so much in evidence as it has been another periods of the church's history... 

[One of the causes of this] lies in the stupendous multiplication of the out-going activities which the present practical age makes it incumbent upon every minister of the gospel to pursue. With all the centrifugal forces playing upon us, no wonder if sometimes the one centripetal force which ought to driver us to the heart of God for the cultivation of our own devotional life is less felt in our experience. And yet it is absolutely essential for us that we should not only have our seasons of communion with God, but that all the time we should carry with us into our outward and public work in some degree a living sense of our nearness to God and of his nearness to us, because in this way alone can we make our service in the Lord's Kingdom truly fruitful and spiritual. If the savour of this is wanting in our work, if we do not bring to the world when we come to it the unction and peace acquired in prayer, we cannot hope to impart any permanent blessing or to achieve any lasting results.

Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory, p.179f

Seeking God

It is certainly striking that these expressions of passionate desire to come into living fellowship with God are found in the Old Testament rather than in the New. Is it not possible that we, because we have the privilege of approaching God at all times without restrictions, are sometimes in danger of underestimating its value or even neglecting its exercise? Must not a David put us to shame when he cries in Psalm 63: 'O God, thou art my God, earnestly will I seek thee: my soul thirsts for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and weary land where no water is. Because thy loving-kindness is better than life my lips shall praise thee'? If he longed like this for the less, how much more earnestly ought we to cultivate the greater?

Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory, p.173f

A rule of thumb for the new and the old (Leithart)

Paul's letter to the Galatians is an important text for reflecting on the continuities and discontinuities of redemptive history. On the one hand, Paul argues for a massive discontinuity between Israel and the church, insisting that the coming of Christ decisively undermines the division of Jew and Gentile (Gal. 2:11-16; 3:23-29). At the same time, Paul is at pains to show that this change is precisely in keeping with the purposes of God already expressed to Abraham (3:1-14), so that the "new thing" is inherently a very old thing, a thing older even than the law, which was added as a means for realising the Abrahamic promise (3:19). From Galatians, one might draw this rule of thumb: any "new thing" in the church that is not simultaneously the realisation of some "old thing" represents a false path.

Peter Leithart, 1&2 Kings (SCM Theological Commentary on the Bible), p.253

the poise and stability of the eternal

Commenting on the "peacefulness and serenity enveloping the figures of the patriarchs" (in the Genesis narratives), Geerhardus Vos reflects that,

There is something else here besides the idyllic charm of rural surroundings. What enviable freedom from the unrest, the impatience, the feverish excitement of the children of this world! Our modern Christian life so often lacks the poise and stability of the eternal. Religion has come so overmuch to occupy itself with the things of time that it catches the spirit of time. Its purposes turn fickle and unsteady; its methods become superficial and ephemeral; it alters its course so constantly; it borrows so readily from sources beneath itself, that it undermines its own prestige in matters pertaining to the eternal world. Where lies the remedy? It would be useless to seek it in withdrawal from the struggles of this present world. The true corrective lies in this, that we must learn again to carry a heaven-fed and heaven-centred spirit into our walk and work below.

Grace and Glory, p.118f

Not by the power of resistance, nor heroic resignation...

Whether the call was to believe or to follow, to do or to bear, the obedience to it sprang not from any earth-fed sources but from the infinite reservoir of strength stored up in the mountain-land above. If Moses endured it was not due to the power of resistance in his human frame, but because the weakness in him was compensated by the vision of him who is invisible. If Abraham, who had gladly received the promises, offered up his only-begotten son, it was not because in heroic resignation he steeled himself to obedience, but because through faith he saw God as greater and stronger than the most inexorable physical law of nature...Through faith the powers of the higher world were placed at the disposal of those whom this world threatened to overwhelm, and so the miracle resulted that from weakness they were made strong.

Geerhardus Vos, Grace and Glory, pp.106f

Lovingly work the field

One of the ways to recognise narcissism within ourselves is to notice when we have not yet accepted the field, the sphere of action, that God has given us—the opportunities and the limits of life in this body, this community, this set of relationships … this place where we have been called by God to serve. Narcissistic leaders are always looking longingly at someone else’s field as somehow more worthy or more indicative of success. They are always pushing the limits of their situation rather than lovingly working the field they have been given. … Our unwillingness to live within limits—both personally and in community—is one of the deepest sources of depletion and eventual burnout. That’s the bad news.

(Ruth Haley Barton, quoted in Disappearing Church by Mark Sayers, p.136)

"Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life...[and] mind your own business..." 1 Thess. 4:11

Why couldn't we drive it out?

The disciples' problem...has been a loss of the sense of dependence on Jesus unique exousia which had undergirded their earlier exorcistic success. They have become blasé and thought of themselves as now the natural experts in such a case and they must learn that in spiritual conflict there is no such automatic power. Their public humiliation has been a necessary part of their re-education to the principles of the kingdom of God.

R T France, commenting on Mark 9:29 in The Gospel of Mark (NIGTC), p.370

How to avoid parodies of pastoral work

If pastoral work is removed from its ground it loses...the strength to grapple with the complexities inherent in the work. Separation, by ignorance or forgetfulness, from the biblical pastoral traditions is responsible for two parodies of pastoral work: one, the naive attempt to help people on our own, as best we can, out of the natural compassion and concern we have for them; and two, the insensitive harangues from the pulpit, where, safe from the unmanageable ambiguities of bedroom and kitchen, shopping mall and workshop, corporate boardroom and legislative caucus, we confidently declaim the pure word of God to our confused flock. The Bible has the power to prevent either parody, either the naive humanist absorption into the world or the pseudo-spiritual aloofness from the world. The Bible's paradigmatic interchanges of divine and human reality inform and renew pastoral capabilities so that the work can be practiced among the commonplaces of sin with no loss of the extraordinariness of grace. But if that is to be done, the idea of quick achievement and instant exploitation must be abandoned in order to develop, painstakingly, lives in Christ that are coherent and many-dimensioned.

Eugene H. Peterson, Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, p.7

Wisdom in the Bible

It is important...to recognise that "wisdom"...finds its home above all else in the poetical books - among metaphors, wordplay and more imaginative literature. Wisdom is not primarily interested in relating a list of theological truths, an account of history or a picture of the future. Wisdom is about the ways of things - how they are meant to exist and work - and so we find it popping up all over the Bible.

Bartholomew and O'Dowd, Old Testament Wisdom Literature, p.23

An alert and loving confrontation

Writing about the poets and others who have influenced her, and of the 'inherited responsibility' of being formed by exposure to their work, Mary Oliver says this:

I go nowhere, I arrive nowhere, without them. With them I live my life, with them I enter the event, I mold the meditation, I keep if I can some essence of the hour, even as it slips away. And I do not accomplish this alert and loving confrontation by myself and alone, but through terrifying and continual effort, and with this immeasurable, fortifying company, bright as stars in the heaven of my mind.

(Upstream, p.57f, my emphasis)

It strikes me that what she says is comparable, for those in ministry, to the great theological minds and writers we are blessed to have at our fingertips. And so, daily, to this alert and loving confrontation, with terrifying and continual effort.