Who could have imagined?

The second feature of God’s incomparable Word is the mystery of its doctrines. It acquaints us with  things far above our reach. “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!” (Rom. 11:33). God’s Word contains a depth that no one can fathom:

• Who could have imagined that a woman could be both virgin and mother?
• Who could have imagined that millions of people would be members of one body, living wholly by one Head (Eph. 5:27–30; Col. 2:19)?
• Who could have imagined that three distinct persons would be one in nature and essence?
• Who could have imagined that God would become man, or that He who made all things would be born of a woman?
• Who could have imagined that the Bread of Life would be hungry, the Water of Life would be thirsty, the only Rest would be weary, and the only Joy would be sorrowful?
• Who could have imagined that millions would be enriched by another’s poverty, filled by another’s emptiness, exalted by another’s disgrace, healed by another’s wounds, eased by another’s pains, and absolved by another’s condemnation?
• Who could have imagined that infinite justice and infinite mercy would be made friends at the cross?
• Who could have imagined that the greatest fury and greatest favour, the greatest hatred and greatest love would be manifested in Christ’s death?

Could we have invented such mysteries?

(George Swinnock, The Incomparableness of God - I heard this passage being quoted on this podcast)

Last Winter

I thought I'd posted this here a long time ago but apparently not... Back in late 2017 I was invited to the church poetry group. Bring a poem, they said, on the theme of Christmas or Winter. I thought I'd read someone else's but the family said, 'No! You gotta write your own.' But I only do non-rhyming, barely-comprehensible, takes-itself-far-too-seriously kind of stuff ... and mostly when I wore a younger man's clothes. Anyhow, I caved in and this is what transpired. It's set in the winter of 1982/83 but rooted elsewhere.

******

Last Winter

That was the winter

I finally
came apart;
every rusted hinge and joint
sundered
by the moon's waxing
and the waning,
draining,
of my heart.

Every pound of
flesh, every ounce
of life's burden
heavier than could be
held aloft;
arms too leaden
to even raise
a surrender.
No more place

for
words
or
breath
or
silence.

The only necessity
the dissolution
of every last atom;
redundant
and craving its
release
into the blue nothing.

That was the winter
spring came in May,
its resurrection
and deliverance
a gift so unknown
it was beyond tears,
the

delicate and deliberate
unveiling
of a life
given, laid down, offered,
and a death
taken, embraced, suffered,
and a love
wider, deeper, broader
than the harrowed edges
of time and space.

That was the spring
winter

ended

for all time,
coffined

in a borrowed tomb.

The riddle of grace

The incompleteness of Samson’s story, and indeed the incompleteness of the entire book of Judges, is an invitation to hear the book of Judges in its larger canonical context, especially the context of the prophetic canon. The prophetic canon bears witness to the ultimate riddle or mystery—that a God who fervently wills faithfulness, justice, and peace remains unfailingly committed to people whose persistent unfaithfulness and disobedience regularly result in chaos and destruction. In a word, of course, it is the riddle of grace. The story of Samson, the entire book of Judges, and the whole prophetic canon fully articulate God’s fervent desire for the covenant loyalty that produces life as God intends it; they unflinchingly document the human unfaithfulness that yields chaos and destruction; and yet they affirm God’s abiding presence and commitment amid the messes that God’s people make. The prophetic books—including the book of Judges (and especially the book of Judges at its lowest point with Samson and the aftermath in chaps. 17–21)—are powerful statements of hope; not hope in “culture heroes” like Samson, but rather hope in a God whose grace is greater than our ability to comprehend and whose commitment to justice, righteousness, and peace surpasses our understanding.

J. Clinton McCann, Judges: Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (emphasis mine)

Between subsistence and decadence

Today, I’m grateful to live in a space between subsistence and decadence, between scarcity and consumption. It feels like a gift. I can work for harvest, enjoying the fruit of my labor, while also knowing that my work was never going to be enough anyway. I can give tomatoes away, and I can leave a few on the vine without fear. And I wonder if this is what it means to flourish, to exist in a place where limits are no liability because abundance is sure. I wonder if this is Eden.

Grace to work. Grace to receive. Grace to know it never depended on me in the first place.

Hannah Anderson, from "Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit", p.103

Rising through the stack of the past

But perhaps you would argue that, since you want to be a contemporary poet, you do not want to be too much under the influence of what is old, attaching to the term the idea that old is old hat - out-of-date. You imagine you should surround yourself with the modern only. It is an error. The truly contemporary creative force is something that is built out of the past, but with a difference.

Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked. It is created in imitation of what already exists and is already admired. There is, in other words, nothing new about it. To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain. Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air.

Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, p.11f

******

There is much about this that could be applied to the task and calling of the preacher.

The differences are not profound

This comment by Mary Oliver regarding poetry might also be usefully considered in relation to how we see and understand people and their stories from long, long ago:

In looking for poems and poets, don't dwell on the boundaries of style, or time, or even of countries and cultures. Think of yourself rather as one member of a single, recognizable tribe. Expect to understand poems of other eras and other cultures. Expect to feel intimate with the distant voice. The differences you will find between then and now are interesting. They are not profound.

Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook, p.11

The root system of the visible now

[Eugene] Peterson’s various insights into the vocational benefits of reading are nowhere more compelling than in the places where he writes about pastoral caregiving. In Run with the Horses, one of Peterson’s earliest books, he writes, “Lives cannot be read as newspaper reports on current events; they are unabridged novels with character and plot development, each paragraph essential for mature appreciation.”

I have long been struck by his words “mature appreciation.” It’s as if Peterson is saying that, as pastors, to interpret human beings on the basis of the words they are currently speaking, or the problems they are currently presenting, is not only to provide an attenuated sort of pastoral care but also to telegraph a certain form of immaturity, one rooted in a fear of complexity and a need to offer quick resolutions—much as it would be to read about a lavish party at Jay Gatsby’s house and, knowing nothing of Gatsby’s humble origins, hastily conclude that he throws such parties simply to put on airs. It would be to completely miss the point. “The before,” Peterson writes, “is the root system of the visible now.”

"The Pastor's Bookshelf: Why Reading Matters for Ministry" by Austin Carty.

Going heavily when we might rejoice

Unacquaintedness with our mercies, our privileges, is our sin as well as our trouble. We hearken not to the voice of the Spirit which is given unto us, “that we may know the things that are freely bestowed on us of God” (1 Cor. 2:12). This makes us go heavily, when we might rejoice; and to be weak, where we might be strong in the Lord.

John Owen, Communion with the Triune God, p. 123

When faith cannot be expressed

Someone asked me,

If Jesus couldn't do many miracles in Nazareth, but he raises the widow's son without any active faith, then what's the difference between unbelief and whatever is happening in Nain?

It's a good question. My thoughts in response were:

Hmm, isn't that just wonderful? He acts when there cannot be explicit faith, either because evil has taken over (the Gadarene man) or when the chaos of grief has smothered the soul into lifelessness. In Nazareth, and everywhere that explicit faith ought to be capable of being expressed, there is an expectation of it, a call for it. But not when we are beyond our capability to believe or to ask - he is, as Paul says in Rom 4:17 "the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not."

To suffer is to act

Referring to the character Dilsey in William Faulkner's novel, The Sound and the Fury, Marilyn McEntyre comments:

As a white man, Faulkner had, as he acknowledged, limited access to the suffering of an old black female servant. But he gives us her tears. As she listens to the Rev. Shegog’s sermon, claiming the power of the blood of the Lamb, what she has suffered emerges in the safe space of a worshiping community where she can lay her burden down. As readers, we become aware that we are almost intruders upon the intimacies of her pain, which, though public, is as utterly personal as the wracked and worn body that sags beneath the purple Easter dress in which she appears, iconic and, Faulkner would say, indomitable. Dilsey’s weeping “signifies,” in the antique sense of bringing forth meaning in the story she inhabits. For her to suffer is to act, and her suffering is the only redemptive action in this whole bleak tale of spiritual squalor.

Where the Eye Alights p.71

Quotes from The Flourishing Pastor

I recently read The Flourishing Pastor by Tom Nelson - it was really helpful; here are some quotations that struck chords with me:

Sheep are not the only ones who get lost, shepherds do as well. Shepherds and the sheep suffer for it.

Lurking behind a smiling stage presence is an inordinate narcissistic love of self at the expense of love for God and others. Instead of living before an audience of One, the celebrity pastor lives before an audience of many...The crowd need not be big nor the stage prominent for the celebrity pastor to emerge.  

At soul level, preaching puts the pastor in a very vulnerable space where our sense of self-worth can become closely connected to the affirmation or criticism of our Sunday listeners.

We are saying that it is easy for pastors, fearing what people might think, to become isolated from others. By so doing, they fail to grow spiritually. As one pastor put it, “I have a longing to be shepherded by someone else, but a fear to actually ask someone into my life.” Again the themes weave together: isolation is bad self-care and poor leadership as well. (Quoting Burns, Chapman and Guthrie)

Like many callings, the pastoral calling is hard to navigate, and the road ahead often seems murky and unclear. Every day is a new day. Every situation and context is unique. Every morning we get out of bed, we are above our pay grade. In every new role and phase of life we are rookies. The inconvenient truth is this: it is all too easy and common for pastors to lose their way.

If people are not your thing, then pastoring should not be your thing. ¹⁰ It is not about whether we are more of an extrovert or an introvert; it is about how widely and deeply we love the people entrusted to our care.

As pastors we are entrusted to protect, provide, guide, and nourish what God cherishes and values most. Pastors must never forget that the sheep belong to God and that we are accountable for leading them well.

David’s story reminds us that shepherding leaders are forged on the anvil of obscurity and refined in the crucible of visibility.

A great peril awaits pastors when the light shining on them is far brighter than the light shining from within them.

Shepherding leadership flows from an ever-increasing, integral inner world moving outward to an integrated life. The shepherd leader lives, loves, and leads out of the overflow of an integral life, a wholeness of soul.

The shepherding leader must embrace a teachable attitude; a growing curiosity; and an eagerness to learn, unlearn, and relearn the increasing competency their calling requires, which means spending time and money to stay up to date.

The painful irony is that we speak to others about cultivating intimacy with God while we neglect our own intimacy with God ... Resilient and flourishing leadership over the long haul demands one thing above all other things, growing in intimacy with the greatest lover of our soul

Less so than the challenging circumstances around us, the churnings within us prove most dangerous to pastoral leadership.

While pastors can and do experience dramatic moral meltdowns, over the years I have come to the conclusion that a more common peril and ever-present threat are the slow burnouts and insidious corrosion that occur slowly at soul level ... Ministry idealism is shattered, and lurking in the dark shadows of the soul is a quiet desperation, a dulling disillusionment, and a corrosive cynicism.

While we need to take steps to avoid pastoral isolation and pursue peer friendships, most important is to cultivate intimacy with the shepherd who is always with us and is always attentive to us.

Even if we have a good deal of pastoral experience, in many ways each year we lead feels like a rookie season.

We must nurture the necessary spiritual receptivity that makes possible leading a congregation with humility and confidence.

The authenticity and effectiveness of our pastoral calling over the long and arduous terrain of local church leadership will require not only faithful service but also experiential, recognizable spiritual formation in our lives.

Is it any wonder why so many of our sermons lack authenticating spiritual unction, when our lives reflect such spiritual impoverishment?

Integrity is first and foremost something we are at the core of our being and not merely ways we externally conform our behavior to an ethical standard lived out in our daily lives. Integrity is not sin management.

human integrity is more than a nice-looking external ethical veneer. Integrity goes to the core of a flourishing person whose entire life from inside to outside, from top to bottom, is remarkably whole, consistent, and coherent.

Out of a life of intimacy with God, an integral life is formed and emerges. In a pastoral leader, intimacy with God comes before integrity of heart.

“The most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life is the presence of God. That means finding constant pleasure in his divine company, speaking humbly and lovingly with Him in all seasons, at every moment, without limiting the conversation in any way.” (Quoting Brother Lawrence)

Even though my brain was crammed full of Bible information and knowledge, I painfully had to confront a big disconnect between my mind and my heart. I began to realize that I had placed a primacy on the pursuit of ideas about Jesus at the expense of intimacy with Christ. And this became my real, troubling, soul-level crisis. The shame I was carrying around, the insecurities and past struggles of my life, had led to my fearful reluctance of being truly honest with God.

We can and must model transparency, pursuing whole-life discipleship and all-of-life integration in the context of our faith community. The greatest sermon we ever preach is the integral life we live before God and those around us.

So many pastors are spiritually malformed and lose their way because from the very start of pastoral ministry, their life and leadership compass setting is off true north.

A pastor’s lack of spiritual formation and anemic leadership are not in most cases a paucity of Bible information or superficial doctrinal reflection, but rather a lack of whole-life submission to Jesus.

Your own soul care is of the highest importance, for you live and lead out of the overflow of your soul.

As pastoral leaders we must look to Jesus the Great Physician, who can truly bring healing to the deepest depths of our very being. We don’t have to hide our wounds or hold up a good-looking image or fake integrity. Our wounds can be healed, and we can truly find and experience an increasingly integral life.

 As leaders, we must acknowledge and embrace our wounds if we are ever to be able to shepherd effectively. It is only through the experience of our own healing through the power of Christ that we can offer that same hope to those we lead. As those who have been healed by Jesus, we can pick up the mantle of our shepherding calling and become wounded healers.

Looking back in time, I now believe more pastors melt down in their personal lives, marriages, and leadership effectiveness due to a perennial lack of self-care than those who do from anything else.

While affirming the importance of preserving religious liberty for all as a high priority, Luke Goodrich rightly reminds us as apprentices of Jesus, “We’re called not to ‘win’ but be like Christ.” Rather than assume a cultural warrior posture, we can evidence a kingdom posture.

Shepherding in exile will mean adopting a cultural posture not of monastic retreat, cozy cultural accommodation, or a cultural warrior mentality, but one of faithful presence.

The leadership legacies of kings like Solomon, Asa, and Uzziah are sobering reminders that finishing well is not easy. Like these leaders of old, we too can be tripped up along the way—especially in the latter years of our lives—by disordered loves, divided loyalties, unwillingness to heed advice, and personal pride.

Passion and Serenity v. Indifference and Fanaticism

The word pair passion and serenity establishes an essential contradiction for our inner lives.

Imagine a person who pursues his convictions with great passion. He recognises his calling in them. He dedicates himself to whatever his calling demands with tireless devotion. The tasks that come with this calling touch and move him; they uncover a creative restlessness in him. He puts his time and thoughts, his gifts and strengths into this pursuit. For him, this commitment is living faith. He well recognizes King David's words to his son Solomon about building the great temple in Jerusalem: "Now begin the work, and the Lord be with you" (1 Chronicles 22:16).

On the other side we see the person with great serenity. He also has convictions and recognises his calling. He does not have a heart that fights, but one that waits expectantly. There is a faithful peace in him, for he knows that the essential things in life cannot be produced but rather received. His heart understands the expectant gaze toward heaven. He knows what it means to wait. Even in troubles and need he seeks to be quiet before God. How many times has he found that the important things come about without him struggling! He recognises the solace of his calling. He has experienced that "the Lord will fight for you, and you have only to keep still" (Exodus 14:14).

............

Indifferent people risk nothing. They never venture something important or valuable. They would never come up with the idea of investing in something beyond the state of their own interests. They are content with everything as long as it does not affect them. They regard themselves above all else. They are prisoners to themselves.

Fanatics risk everything and everyone. They wear themselves out over matters and are never satisfied. They are possessed by an idea and blind to anything and everyone that are not part of it. They see the injustices that, in their eyes, should be rectified, and believe that everything depends on their own efforts. They, too, only regard themselves in the end. They, too, are their own prisoners.

Fanaticism and indifference create a word pair of their own. But they are the fallen reflection of passion and serenity. Each exaggerates itself. That is the essence of fallen opposites. Opposites that do not preserve unity signify alienation. Harmonious opposites are different: they are oriented toward each other. Their relationship invariably consists of giving esteem and honour to the Non-Me. Their essence is consistent with the order of love.

Martin Schleske, The Sound of Unspeakable Beauty, p.52f

Some favourite reads and listens 2021

In no particular order (as they say), here are some books/listens I've really enjoyed through this year:

Thy Will Be Done: The Ten Commandments and the Christian Life by Gilbert Meilaender - wonderful, wonderful book.

Hope in Times of Fear: The Resurrection and the Meaning of Easter by Tim Keller

(also by Tim Keller, this trio of short books on birth, marriage and death)

Favourite re-read would be CS Lewis' Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

I know I'm late to the party on this one but Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death remains a perennial recommendation on all sorts of lists, so why not on here too?

Esau McCaulley's Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope came so highly praised and reading it I can see why.

Among the authors who reached the end of their earthly pilgrimage this year was Walter Wangerin Jr. Another late-in-the-day acquaintance, The Book of the Dun Cow is now a firm favourite.

Uprooted: Recovering the Legacy of the Places We've Left Behind by Grace Olmstead was a calming morning listen, read impeccably by the author.

Tish Harrison Warren followed up her very enjoyable Liturgy of the Ordinary with a great read, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep. I listened to the audiobook of this one, too, and it was terrific. Won't be to everyone's taste but I loved it.

I thoroughly enjoyed Joe Rigney's Strangely Bright: Can You Love God and Enjoy This World? And his work on CS Lewis is another great read.

Reading a signed copy of Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun was always going to be a delight and it more than delivered the goods.

Andrew Cotter's Olive, Mabel and Me makes it onto the list because I finished reading it on New Year's Day - and because it's such a hilarious read.

As a ministry read, Stefan Paas' Pilgrims and Priests: Christian Mission in a Post-Christian Society was incredibly stimulating.

An end of year list wouldn't be complete without some Wendell Berry - so take your pick from his novels, Jayber Crow and The Memory of Old Jack or a collection of his poetry, The Peace of Wild Things. I'm already looking forward to reading some Berry in 2022.

Lastly, Spotify let me know that Kate Bush's song, And Dream Of Sheep, was my most-played-track this year. I can't argue with them; it defined my summer listening. As an album of the year, whatever the stats might show, I'll opt for the latest from Sara Groves, What Makes It Through. Something of a scalpel for the soul, it's a reflection on events of the last several years - here's her own take on the album:

In Kazuo Ishiguro’s book The Buried Giant, a husband and wife are waking up to their own histories - the ways they have been wounded, and the ways they have hurt the other. The story inspired me to explore the role our memories play in forgiveness and reconciliation. What do we remember, what do we forget, and what do we memorialize? How can we move toward each other when we have different versions of what happened? We are imperfect witnesses to our own lives and histories, and in the end, it is really difficult to tell ourselves the truth.

On God answering our prayers

Proper prayers flow from faithful, obedient hearts bringing to God real needs that we beg him to meet. His answer may be “Yes, here and now, as requested,” or “Yes, but in a better way than you asked,” or “Yes, but you must wait—I will take the right action at the right time, which is not yet.”

God, the perfect Father, loves to give good gifts to his children but reserves the right to give only the best, and only in the best way. What he gives, therefore, is not always what the praying believer had in mind.

JI Packer, Pointing to the Pasturelands, p.303

A little bit of Bible sleuthing...

So in Genesis 33:4, Esau behaves in a way that is echoed by the Father in Luke 15, in their response to the returning (wayward) son - Gen 33 it's Jacob coming home, Luke 15 it's the younger brother, the prodigal.

The connection in the LXX (the greek translation of the Old Testament) to the greek in Luke 15 is quite marked - both contain this exact phrase: ἐπὶ τὸν τράχηλον αὐτοῦ καὶ κατεφίλησεν αὐτὸν.

So the Pharisees (the elder brother in the parable) refuse to do what Esau did (and what the father in the parable does) in welcoming the returning repentant one home. The Pharisees despised Esau and his descendants (the Edomites) yet Esau's actions were more in line with those of Jesus than theirs were.

It's the 2nd time in Luke a despised outsider has acted more righteously than the in-crowd (the Samaritan in Lk. 10). And Jacob then tells Esau that his face is like the face of God - the face of one who welcomes in mercy. 

Music and Song in the Bible

 Mark Futato:

One thing is clear when you look at God’s revelation, from Genesis to Revelation, that whenever really big things happen in the history of redemption, there’s music, there’s poetry - for example, when the Man meets the Woman for the first time in the Garden of Eden we have the first poem; at the time of the Exodus we have poetry; during the height of King David’s reign we have poetry; when Christ comes we have poetry; at the end of the Book of Revelation we have poetry, we have music. And I think part of the reason for this is that God not only wants to engage our minds and our wills but he wants to capture our emotions as well - and music and poetry have a way of capturing the heart, they have a way of capturing the mind, they capture the will, they capture the emotions, they capture the intellect. And so I believe that God has put a lot of his revelation, for example the whole book of Psalms, in musical poetic form because it captures the whole person.

Dr. Mark Futato

Forgetting Jesus Christ

The command to 'remember Jesus Christ' at first sight seems extraordinary. How could Timothy ever forget him? Yet the human memory is notoriously fickle: it is possible to forget even one's own name! The epitaph over Israel's grave was 'they soon forgot', and it was to overcome our forgetfulness of Christ crucified that he deliberately instituted his supper as a feast of remembrance, a fragrant 'forget-me-not'. Even so the church has often forgotten Jesus Christ, absorbing itself instead now in barren theological debate, now in purely humanitarian activity, now in its own petty, parochial business.

John Stott, Guard the Gospel, p.61

My memory

My memory

isn't

what it used to

be,

suffering the fraying

of edges made

ragged

by the wastage

and

shredding of

time's unkempt

false positives.

But, in truth,

even though I have

loved the easy

familiarity

of proper recall,

the promise of the

day when all that is

good shall be restored

beyond its birthed

capacity and all

that is bad

shall be

transfigured

by

wisdom

and a

cross,

is all that truly needs

to remain.

The Success of the Early Church

Reflecting on the growth of the early church, Gerald Sittser offers some thoughts to explain its success:

Christians had to guard the newness of the message without isolating themselves from the culture or accommodating themselves to the culture, which required them to form people in the faith and thus grow a movement of genuine disciples who could survive, and even thrive, in such a world. Rome would have ignored Christianity if Christians had been too isolated; it would have absorbed it if they had become too accommodating. For the most part it did neither.

Resilient Faith - Gerald L Sittser - Brazos Press, p.6

Augustine and A Well-Read Life

Augustine’s Confessions bears rereading because its story is the human story, a story that—with time and contemplation—I can also make my own. Like the prodigal’s tale, it shows me how I can return home. Like the Psalms it echoes, it gives me laments with which to confess my sin and praises to sing the faithfulness of God. And like the gospel it embodies, it teaches us all how to read and live our way into God’s great story of love.

from A Well-Read Life