SOUL SURMISE

DANGEROUS GRACE - GOD IS A PIPE BOMB WAITING TO BLOW

You thought God was an architect, now you know

He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow

And everything you built that’s all for show goes up in flames

In twenty- four frames

 

I have been using this quotation from Jason Isbell’s song 24 Frames for a couple of years. Chris Wilson did a great cover of 24 Frames when he played a gig in Fitzroy and it has been whirling around my head ever since.

It is one of those quotes that when you first hear it you think, “oh no, that’s not very Christian.” Yet, as you reflect on it and marinate it over time you think, “Wow, that is a powerful truth!”

Isbell’s idea is that we sometimes see God as someone building something around us. Architects forgive me, or at least forgive Isbell’s poetic licence, but there is a sense of safety in the architect image. It describes a God building nicely, with straight lines and mathematically accurate planning.

It is funny, put pertinent, that my first hearing of God as a “pipe bomb waiting to blow” made me wince! We do not want to imagine God as a destructive force. Pipe bombs indicate bad things in our minds.

It is the third line that brings the solution to the conundrum. The things we build for show go up in flames. The architecture here is about what is on the outside. It is to impress others and make us self righteously smug. 

The Pharisees in Jesus’ day had God as an architect and God arrived incarnate in Jesus and like a pipe bomb blew away their attempts at religion for show. 

God keeps on doing it. He keeps blowing up the how it is with a grace force that replaces it with how things can be. I remember once wanting to call a youth event Dangerous Grace and being told there was nothing dangerous about God! Oh dear!

God is a dangerous force from the beginning of the Bible until its end. People are constantly being blown into new ways of living. Safety is hard to find in the biographies of any Scriptural character who dared follow God. Any theological attempts to describe God that leaves out dangerous doesn’t seem to have any idea about God as far as I read it.

I think that CS Lewis gets it right in the Chronicles of Narnia. he writes of Aslan who represents God in the Chronicles, "He is not a tame lion... he is not safe, he is good... Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more, When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death, And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”  Aslan is more pipe bomb than architect!

I used the Isbell quote at a commissioning service for students going off to serve God in India. I told them at I hoped that in India they met God as a pipe bomb. 

I told their parents that I was sure that the organisation they were going with, Saphara, would do all they could to make sure their offspring came home safe.

BUT… I added… that if their sons and daughters dared to open themselves to the fulness of this new experience that there was no way that I could guarantee a safe future. It might cause them to change their University courses, shift to different vocations and end up living in some interesting places across our world. There was a chance that they would meet God as a pipe bomb, blowing their minds and hearts and souls, changing them forever.

Let me not confine that experience to young people off to experience the world for the first time. In Fitzroy I have been calling all of us to be open to a God of transformational power, explosive in his ability to rework our lives and our world. May our spiritual lives be constantly exposed to a pipe bomb God who blows up all that we do for show!

A SPECIAL MOMENT IN KAMPALA - THE COINCIDENCES OF GOD!

Forgive the more personal nature of this blog but tonight was a special evening for the Stockies in Kampala. It was a night when our lives came full circle and we ended up in a space that was geographically and spiritually significant.  

Back in the early noughties we took Alain Emerson and then, his future wife, Lindsay Anderson to South Africa. They had both been to Africa before but our Queen’s University Chaplaincy trip gave them the idea of doing something similar with their Church, Emmanuel in Lurgan.

We had gone with Habitat For Humanity and when a Habitat trip didn’t work out for Alain and Lindsay they went with Fields Of Life to Uganda.

Sadly, Lindsay died of a brain tumour less than a year after their trip. In response Alain’s family raised money to build a secondary school, Light For All, in the same place as the Primary School, Source of Light, that they had visited. 

One evening in Fitzroy I heard Alain tell the story. I knew the story but when Alain said that Light For All cost £75,000 I realised that that was a tithe of what we were paying for a new Church hall and a light went off in my soul.

A few years later a team from Fitzroy were at the opening of a school in Arua, north west Uganda that we had funded through Fields of Life.

I like to think that the Stockies led Alain and Lindsay to Africa but then, in a lovely twist of God’s providence, humour and graciousness, they led the Stockies to Uganda.

Tonight we gathered in the Fields of Life guesthouse, Emmaus and spent some time with this year’s Emmanuel team. It was a beautiful moment being in the same space as Alain, his mum and his daughter Annie from his second marriage to Rachel. 

Actually, it is almost ridiculous that 17 years after Alain came to Cape Town with us that we were all in Muyenga, Kampala at the same moment. As the good book says, “our heart burned within us” (Luke 24:32). Even more bizarre that that quote is from the story of the Emmaus road that gives guesthouse its name.

In the worship session we had tonight, I thanked God for Emmanuel who God used to bring us to Uganda and for tonight being with Emmanuel in Uganda!

In moments when my faith goes agnostic such crazy happenings renew my faith.

“Coincidence,” I hear the doubter whisper. It could be.

In 2015 in my speech when we opened Onialeku Primary School, in Arua, I mentioned Trevor Stevenson, the founder of Fields of Life. I said that because of the step of faith of an ordinary man, from County Wicklow, here I was being blessed in Uganda. “I’d love to read his story,” I concluded.

The reason I am in Kampala, to be able to meet up with Alain and Emmanuel, is that I am helping Trevor write his story. You couldn’t make it up.

"Coincidence," I hear the doubter whisper.

It could all be coincidence of course but, eventually, there are too many coincidences. When you add coincidence after coincidence the criminal usually gets convicted. 

Thank you God for Trevor Stevenson, Fields of Life, Alain Emerson, Emmanuel, Fitzroy, Onialeku Primary School and Shalom where I write this from.

The Stockies are Blessed!

HOLINESS IS NOT A SHERIFF'S BADGE TO POLICE THE WORLD BUT...

Our faith should be held confidently… but carried gently.

It does not take too much for us to allow our faith to make us arrogant, like James and John, as recorded at the end of Luke chapter 9:54-55…

“When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?” But Jesus turned and rebuked them”.

The Samaritans were not welcoming Jesus. James and John wanted vengeance. It wouldn’t take us long, if we closed our eyes, to think of those who we would love to bring a little judgement down on.

That was not the Jesus way. Jesus entire incarnation was a lesson in carrying faith gently. This is the Gospel of Manger, Donkey and Cross. This is a God of humility and grace. Yes, he turned over a few tables in the Temple but in general…

We follow Jesus in holding our faith confidently… but carrying it gently.

Holiness has nothing to do with us feeding our own self righteousness and everything to do with feeding the world with shalom.

For too many decades planked eyed pietism has led us down a heretical path towards arrogant judgementalism. Tragically faith was worn like a sheriff’s badge and believers strutted, policing the world and many innocents had their souls damaged forever by being hurled into cells of exclusion.

The holiness of God is centred on the characteristics of love and grace. That is what makes him 'separate' - holy. When Isaiah is in the Temple and meets the holiness of God face to face he assumes that he is ruined. However, Isaiah discovers that before he can do anything to altar his predicament, God’s holiness kicks in and God moves towards him in grace and atoning forgiveness.

Holiness is not about what we achieve religiously within ourselves. Holiness is revealed in our self sacrificial giving to others, to neighbours, to enemies and to the marginalised in our society. Following Jesus is always worked out in relationships with others.

As Luke 9 rolls into Luke 10 we find Jesus sending his disciples out to do what? To wear their holiness like a badge and condemn. No. They go to feed the world with shalom. Everywhere they go they are to bring shalom. That shalom is the love of God moving across the earth, bringing the encroaching Kingdom Of God to everybody in every place.

As my friend Justin Zoradi described it in his book Made For These Times, It’s like “gigantic heavenly wheels rotating all over the earth. They roll around scrubbing up the darkness. mowing down injustice, and building up shaky structures of redemption and renewal.” 

That is the return on holiness’s investment…. Hold it confidently and carry it gently!

GETTING HEARD - PENTECOST AND THE GOSPEL IN EVERY LANGUAGE

Preparing to preach on Pentecost Sunday I was pondering the people in Jerusalem hearing the Gospel in their own language and came across this in my commentaries:

What language would you speak in your missional location, if you were filled with the Holy Spirit? How might those outside your congregation hear their mother tongue and be welcomed home?

That in the end was the challenge I brought to Fitzroy, as a Session and congregation. For whatever reason, the good news of Jesus is being lost in translation in the world today. 

It would be easy to read Romans 10:14, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” and say that therefore we need to preach. Actually what we should maybe draw from it is that we need to get heard.

In 2019 preaching doesn’t get heard the way it did in 1959 or even 1989. Something has shifted and the way the modern western world communicates has changed how people hear. In Uganda I could stand in the middle of Arua and gather a crowd with my preaching. Not so at Corn Market.

The Spirit needs to help us decipher the means to get heard. The visual is so much more important in an image dominated world. Neil Postman in his insightful book Amusing Ourselves To Death helped us see that image dominated learning leads to us being more subjective in our sieving of information. 

If we want heard, communication needs to change in response. Actions speak louder than words has never been more true. John’s poetry of the word becoming flesh suggests Jesus was ahead of this but are we?

In the Church we still lean heavily on the preaching, even when we see it getting lost in the translation. We have also got into a habit of our actions contradicting our words. 

This week at the Presbyterian General Assembly we voted yet again to remain out of fellowship with our mother Church, the Church of Scotland, because of their more liberal take on the LGBT issue. We refuse to engage with them while at the same time encouraging our political leaders in Stormont to get over their differences and work together. That simply is not getting heard. That is big time lost in the translation.

Holy Spirit come. Give us discernment. Help us communicate in ways that the world around can hear the Gospel in their own cultural language! 

MOST MIND BLOWING MOMENT IN THE GOSPEL... BLOWS OUR CHURCHES COLD WAR APART

It blows my mind. Every time I read it, and even more times ponder it, Jesus engagement with the Roman Centurion boggles my mind, stirs up my soul and shudders the foundations of how I live in a divided society. Of course the encounter blew Jesus mind too.

Roman centurions were not exactly friends of the Jews. They were hanging them on crosses all around the country. The role of the Roman military was to keep the locals in their place. This Centurion is a man of war! Violence came easy. That violence was done on Jesus’ people.

Now, we how to say that there is something different about this Centurion because the elders come to Jesus on his behalf. He believes Jesus can heal his servant. He even believes he can do it without even going to the house to see him. As someone who rules over an army he seems to understand something of Jesus rule.

No matter, when Jesus utters those words, ““I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” Wow! Oh my! I can only imagine the Jewish elders who mediated for the Centurion are ready right here to ask him to nail Jesus on a cross!

For me this is the most shocking moment in all of the four Gospels, way more revolutionary than his words to prostitutes, tax collectors or that Samaritan woman at the well. The brutality that Roman Centurions and their men visited on Jesus people and he sets one of them up as a model of faith!

This has huge implications to our love of neighbour or enemy. It is a radical example of how far grace reaches.

This was not someone who held the same creeds as Jesus, went to synagogue like Jesus, did passover like Jesus or could be declared one of Jesus community. His faith wasn't judged on doctrine or liturgy but on his faith in Jesus!

This was enemy as much as enemy gets. Yet, in Jesus ministry you find that enemy blurs with neighbour because his grace is the same to everyone.

Here in Northern Ireland over the course of our Troubles and even post Agreement we have been meticulously careful in who we engage with - an antithesis of Jesus way!

We don’t talk to Catholics because they have different doctrines, doctrines which we seem to know better than they do! We don’t talk to ex paramilitaries because of the murders they were involved in during The Troubles.

The first of these is incomprehensible for a follower of Jesus who should be thrilled to engage with anyone about the good news of Jesus. The Cold War between our Churches during The Troubles not only mirrored the war on the streets but left us derelict in our clear Biblical peace making vocation. The Churches didn't cause the violence or contribute to the violence but they nourished a divisive environment for the violence to thrive in.

The second is more understandable because of the pain and hurt that had been caused. Yet, Jesus calls us to follow him and reaching out to Roman Centurions  is what he does. Let’s not make any discipleship claims and then excuse away our obedience!

Those other words of Jesus in Luke 6 (27-33) ring truth around this, “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you… “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.

In the cold wars between Churches, between communities and between political parties, Jesus judges graciously by showing us a shocking, radical and Christlike alternative to our fallen need to push away, rather than love.

Follow me into redemption of soul and society he calls!

GOD OF JUDGEMENT OR GOD OF LOVE; A SURMISE ON 40 YEARS OF FOLLOWING JESUS

I preached on Sunday on the 40th Anniversary of the night that I made a leap of faith, deciding not only that God existed but that he was interested in me. As soon as I
that God existed it was a no brainer to commit to connecting. Imagine knowing God exists and not being on God’s side or not having God on yours!

I was 17 at the time and for a few years The Beatles had been my gurus, shaping my world view. I have often said that The Beatles led me to Jesus. They asked the questions that I found the answers to in Jesus.

Indeed, for this sermon I was able to compare John, Paul, George and Ringo with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Indeed the two Johns had a lot in common. Both where convinced that love could change the world!

John Lennon sang, “All you need is love.”

The apostle John suggest that Jesus was convinced about the power of love too. Among his most popular verses:

 

John 3:16 

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

 

1 John 3: 1

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!

 

1 John 4:16

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them.

 

The context for the main verse in todays’ sermon is fascinating. Jesus is sharing last thoughts and prayers with his disciples before he dies. When he gives them a new commandment to love one another we shouldn’t be surprised that it comes after his washing of the disciples feet.

BUT… we maybe should be shocked that it comes after he has declared Judas as his betrayer and Judas has just left to do that dirty deed. In the emotional  intensity of these moments you could understand Jesus talking about vengeance and judgement but instead this is the time he says:

 

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13: 34 & 35)

 

It gives us a clue to the kind of love Jesus is commanding. This is not a be nice to people kind of love. This is love in the midst of betrayal. This is loving those who do you harm. It is upside down love, sacrificial love, servanthood love.

It is the kind of love that proclaims the Gospel. It does that better than words. It is a love that will shock, intrigue and draw people into another way to live, not like the world but with the power of God’s Holy Spirit connecting neighbours and enemies. Indeed it has such force that neighbours and enemies will blur together!

What I have never understood in my 40 years following Jesus is how can Christians living by this new commandment of Jesus be so unloving, exclusive and judgemental. So many people are damaged by people claiming to live by this command to love. Ot at least claiming to follow the Jesus who said it.

I have surmised for sometime that the key to the difference between a judgemental Christianity and a Divine loving practice of a Jesus follower is whether your premier belief is that God is Judge or God is love.

When we make God first and foremost a Judge and concentrate on his justice we will be cold, harsh, excluders, hurting already and tender and damaged souls. God is love as our most passionate mantra and we will look at people’s situations and flood them with grace, this God breathed unmerited favour. We will be more compassionate, patient and forgiving. We will be more Jesus than the Pharisees.

40 years ago I got blessed. It was Jesus that I connected with that May evening. It wasn’t the gigantic structural religion of Christianity. Oh that structure has encrusted me down the years but I have always sought to avoid the human made darkness of the world and the human made light of the Church to keep as focused as I can on the Jesus of the Gospels in my fallen heart, mind and soul.

God is love. He’s left a new commandment. The world will decide on Jesus by how well his followers live the Commandment! How are we doing?

CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE COMES FROM THE HEART

While on sabbatical at Regent College, Vancouver a number of years ago I sat in on a preaching class with Darrell Johnston; a wonderful expositor of the Scriptures. This particular day, Darrell was speaking about Paul’s prayer in Philippians 1 (v 9-11). Paul prays that our “LOVE would abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight so that we may be able to discern what is best.” The ability to discern, Paul suggested, comes from our loving. 

In the first chapter of Ephesians, Paul again is asking for knowledge, that the believers would know Christ better and that they would know the hope, the riches and the power of Christ. For Darrell the word know is two pronged – to know cognitively and to know by experience. 

Darrell pointed out the the word for know in the Philippians text is the same for word used for knowing in the intimacy of marriage. In recent centuries of Christian doctrine the cognitive has usurped the experiential so knowledge can stand in independence to experience. As Darrell put it, this definition of know is a flaw breaker!

Darrell then moved on to the word righteousness in the Philippians prayer. That, he said, should not be limited to a legal term. It is much bigger and more effective than that. This kind of righteousness is again not a cognitive knowledge we receive from Christ’s death. It is, but it is also, and much more importantly for a life of discipleship, an experiential righteousness in all relationships. 

God’s intentions in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, are the re-alignment of humanity. In Jesus, God recreates the original design which is a righteous world with righteous people not only in a declaration but in a living experiential reality.

Those who will claim to know their systematic theology but treat others, either in their pastoral care or theological discussion, in dismissive and unloving ways might be cognitively gifted but they are not living Christian knowledge. 

Truth, no matter how clear, succinct and sound, is not Christianity if it is not lived in a loving relationship to brothers and sisters in Christ, neighbours and enemies. The experiential actually leads us into the cognitive not vica versa. 

Indeed the vica versa leads us into loveless dogma, abusive self righteousness and the taking of God’s name in vain. From the basis of loving relationships comes Christlike thinking and Christlike living all tangled up in each other.

When Ken Newell, my predecessor at Fitzroy, lived to Indonesia in the early 70s a Catholic Priest knocked the door of his home. The two of them spent the first few months trying to out theologise each other but it was when they left their loveless dogma to the side and started to concentrate on their friendship and their love for Jesus that they became firm friends and soul companions. 

What a good illustration of Darrell Johnston’s exposition of Philippians 1. When we realign our love relationships we grasp the cognitive and it leads us into a Godly righteousness that is so much more than creedal and cerebral but an energetic living transforming power; love!

START THE WEEK WITH SPIKE MILLIGAN AND JESUS

It happens more than you think. You are in the Welcome Area after the service and someone comes up and tells you a story that you just wished you had known before the service began. Of course, the sermon, most likely, made your friend think of the story and they didn’t know your sermon before the service and so couldn’t have told you… but… 

It happened this morning. Your sermon reminded me of a Spike Milligan story, George Sproule told me. Spike was in one of his depressions and headed off to the middle Ireland for some peace. He got off a train, randomly, in the middle of nowhere and as luck would have it the first man he saw recognised him. On asking what he wanted the man said, “Mr Milligan, follow me and I’ll be right behind you!” 

Brilliant!

My sermon was on the recommissioning of Peter. The purity of Peter’s vocational call, way back when he was on the boats in Galilee had been badly tarnished with his denials of Jesus before the crucifixion.

The risen Jesus comes back to the beach in Galilee to restore Peter to that original vocation. Like a football team who find themselves three down in denials, Jesus more or less gives Peter three goals back by asking him three times if he loves him. Jesus equalises Peter’s three own goals. All is put right.

It is then time for Jesus to invite Peter again to this mad roller coaster ride of upside down Kingdom bringing. In John 21 Jesus asks Peter to follow him, In the chapter before Jesus had put it a slightly different way. “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 

It is Spike Milligan’s “Follow me and I’ll be right behind you!”

That is following Jesus. From one perspective, it is an invitation and our initiative. From another angle it is Jesus pushing us on. 

Maybe you are where Peter was on that Galiliean beach. Maybe you are a little down spiritually. Maybe your original vocation call has got distracted or tainted. Maybe if you look up the metaphorical beach you’ll see Jesus barbecuing you some fish, ready to recommission. 

Lean in and hear the words:

“Follow me!”

“As the Father sent me, I am sending you.”

“Follow me and I’ll be right behind you.”

BEING CONDUITS OF GOD'S LOVE

The Lectionary led us, in Fitzroy, into John chapter 12. It is in the first verses of this chapter that we find Mary, Martha and Lazarus’s sister, showing extravagant love to Jesus. She poured a year’s wages worth of perfume over Jesus feet.

As I surmised the story I suddenly realised that we talk about Jesus loving others but we don't see much need for Jesus to be loved. We often rightly believe Jesus to be fully divine but forget that he was also fully human. As that full human being, we should understand Jesus need to be loved. His mother loved him and others too. Here is an act of love that might have helped see the fully human Jesus through the ordeal about to descend.

None of the Gospel writers record BUT as he prayed in Gethsemane, as he was taken away by the soldiers, as he was falsely witnessed against, as he faced injustice, as he was beaten and had to carry his own cross. As he was laid out and nailed to that cross. As he hung on the cross to the derision of the crowds gathered around him. As he breathed his last. Did Jesus remember this act of love. Did the strong waft of that perfume remind him he was loved. Did that love see him through!

Am I contriving the story? Maybe. However, I know that humans need love and our futures are shaped by love. Whether that is a young person setting out on a new vocation and is encouraged in their decision or whether it is sitting with a dying parent. The young person starting out in life or the older person coming to life’s end can have their future shaped by love. 

I have known this in my own life. In the early 90s colleagues in my denomination, in the name of a committee that I was a member, a letter was sent questioning my beliefs and personal faith. Long term I probably still deal with the damage of the incident and another that come a few years later. I have a social anxiety issue that I never had before. Anyhow, during the first incident, I remember a letter from my then girlfriend, now wife, all the way from South Africa that loved me into resilience and staying true to who I was. She loved me as I was and gave me the strength to follow Jesus and not peer pressure. 

Janice's hand in my hand at the time my mother died was the only thing that made any sense of my grief.

A few weeks into my ministry at Fitzroy I got up one Sunday and panicked that I wasn’t good enough to preach to such an able congregation. Janice realising my lack of confidence got out of bed to come round and assure me that it would be ok.

On all three occasions love shaped my future, I would describe Janice’s love here as much more than romantic. I would see her as conduit of God’s love.

You do not need to have a spouse or be a spouse to be a conduit of God’s love. We are called to be conduits of God’s love. 

It could be as simple as a on pat on the back, an ear to listen, a text or a card, a meal. It is incredible what small loving acts of love do for people in finding their belonging, their self worth, their resilience through tough times. 

Let us ask where we can love, simply or even extravagantly. Where can we be conduits of God’s love. Where can help God shape the future. 

PARTICLES OF LIGHT ACROSS THE CITY

“Let me be a little of your breath
Moving over the face of the deep
I want to be a particle of your light
Flowing over the hills of morning”

From Hills Of Morning by Bruce Cockburn

I have used this as prayer for thirty years since Alan McIlroy converted me to Bruce Cockburn’s awesome album Dancing In the Dragons Jaw in a house less than fifty yards from the Church where I am now minister. It is a spiritually potent album, vivid in literary images, influenced by the Charles Williams books that Cockburn was reading at the time.

This chorus conjures with the mystery of us humans somehow merging with the God in God’s tangible presence in the world. It is a prayer to be involved in God’s breath, in God’s light, in God’s mission to make the world better than the world is. Fitzroy might be unaware of the specific song but they will be familiar with these ideas. I use them often in prayers and sermons.

I often describe the congregation as vocationally scattered across the city of Belfast, working in very influential places, effecting social change and caring for many people who are not finding themselves cared for elsewhere.

In the summer a friend now working in a Christian development organisation spoke about how when he was a probation officer no one asked him how he was bringing the Kingdom and now that he is working for a “Christian” organisation lots of people ask him. The Northern Irish secular and sacred divide heresy. 

My belief is that all of my congregation are every day in every way Kingdom bringers. They are all “particles of light” scattered across the city, bringing the thinking, voice, touch, attitude and ultimately love of God wherever they are and whoever they are with. Those particles of light are somehow partners with God making up the bigger light.

I guess that is why Jesus called himself the Light of the world and then at another time told the disciples they were the Light of the world. This is a huge prayer; it is asking to be part of the force that transforms the world.