SOUL SURMISE

GOD SEES YOU

To be seen. I have been amazed recently at how many times a simple text, social media message or phone call has been received with a "thank you for seeing me". Coronavirus times have isolated us. We have felt a little alienated from our communities. To be seen has become something special. 

Hagar was the focus of a sermon Rev Lesley- Ann Wilson preached in Fitzroy on International Women’s Day just a week before our world went into lockdown. Having just returned from a trip to the Wilderness in the Holy Land, Lesley had some rich content for the sermon.

I was very drawn to the story. It resonated with me as the Biblical outworking of a Martyn Joseph song and a great truth that all of us can take into our lives.

Hagar was like an invisible woman. A slave to begin with she is then given by Sarah to Abram to give them a child. Sarah then became jealous of her and mistreated her. She heads out into the dessert to escape.

Then this invisible woman becomes the first person in Scripture to be visited by an angel. After God blessed Hagar the text tells us:

 

She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to : “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered. (Genesis 16:13-14)

 

I love this. God sees Hagar. She knows it and calls God, “the God who sees me”and the well “The well of the one who sees me”.

In a life that seemed invisible, where nobody cared and everyone seemed to be abusing her she is seen by God. Wow!

I was immediately drawn to on elf my favourite Martyn Joseph songs, I See You.

From his first Sony album Being There released in 1992 Martyn himself described the song at the time:

 

“A simple statement of my personal belief, that no one will, or does, get any eternally with anything.”

 

That fascinates me. Martyn’s focus in writing seems to have been those who carried out evil acts. God sees them. They won’t get away with it.

I have always heard the song as being about the victims. God sees the victims. He sees the the impact of evil.

To know that God sees us will change our sense of self worth and hope. Whatever we are struggling through. Whatever is going against us. God sees us as he did Hagar. Wow. I’ll take that encouragement:

 

“I see the playgrounds with drugs

Children’s cloths in the mud

Starvation

Segregation

What about salvation

I see you, nothing escapes my attention”

 

God sees you. It is good to be seen. It is good to see others too.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU LOVE... NOT WHAT YOU BELIEVE

 

My good friend and former colleague at Queen’s Chaplaincy, Father Gary Toman, often speaks about having a grá for something. It is the Irish word for love but it takes on a guttural description for that passion for something that drives you and your life.

It is that grá that James K A Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University, is talking about in his incredibly insightful book Desiring The Kingdom. Smith followed that one up with the more direct You Are What You Love. The general premise is that we are not what we think but by what we love. What we have a grá for will be what shapes our lives.

So, I asked, is Jamie right?  Do slogans like "God and Ulster" and "God and Ireland" suggest that our love for country or flags could get in the way of our beliefs about God. A really articulate theology could go by the wayside when a deep grá for political allegiance and flags are what drives our actions.  

So, my next question, was how Smith’s theories connect with the Scriptures. It happened that as I was reading Desiring The Kingdombook I was reaching, in my preaching series, Mark 12 where Jesus declares the greatest commandments and speaks of love for God as the Jews would have been familiar with in the Shema from Deuteronomy 6 and then adds from Leviticus 19, an amazing chapter that spells out the love for neighbour.

It is these two commandments that would define Jesus followers and he actually never mentions cognitive understanding of God but always emphasises love. Jesus is encouraging the grá that will transform his followers. In John 14 he tells the disciples that if they love him they will obey his commandments. The grá is what drives the Jesus community.

Smith is not using Irish words or applying his theories to Ireland. His argument centres on 21st century America. He uses the Shopping Mall, the religious nature of which he paints provocatively over a few poetically crafted pages, and the sport’s stadium. He argues very compellingly how even the Christian who thinks he/she has his/her brain switched on and is what he/she think cognitively can be subtly caught in allegiances that would quite simply have been described as idols in the Old Testament.

The powerful gut stirring symbolism of the American national anthem at sporting events leading to a belief that God is American receives Smith's strongest ire! That we could be doctrinally well thought through but miss the hold that consumerism has on our well being is also well pointed out.

Once we are shaped, Smith goes on, we then aim our loves at what we believe to be human flourishing. This end result will again not be so much decided on by cognitive doctrinal statements but the social imaginary of what we are steeped in at mall, sports stadium and wherever else we inhabit.

Christian thinking over the past decades has targeted the mind with great books and lectures and conferences. Smith is not saying that we replace these, or the book itself would be dropped from the publisher’s catalogue, but he is saying we have missed the more potent spiritual formatives; the stories, movies, songs and worship that are pedagogies of the kardia.

Smith is suggesting that the liturgy of worship takes on an enormously important role in challenging the social imaginary of the mall and sports stadium in order that we recognise the Kingdom of God as what human flourishing is really about and our hearts get aimed at the right loves to bring that kingdom around.

Smith has articulated what I have been thinking for years that this generation in particular are more subjective than objective. Modernity had us lost in a phase where that might not have been so but the “word becoming flesh” was God’s best revelation of truth and that was aimed at the subjective gut not the intellectual mind.

Desiring The Kingdom and You Are What You Love that followed it have all kinds of things to say into the last days of Trump and the first days of Biden. If the States are to unite again. If a nation divided seemingly so venomously is to find a path towards healing then James K A Smith throws up perhaps the key question. Who are we? What we believe? Or what we love?

Smith's thesis has to be heard in Ireland too and in post Brexit Britain. Jamie's profound thought and his meticulous unpacking of it has opened up all kinds of leads for me in how to pastor a Church, lead worship, form the Christian core of the young, develop the spiritual maturity of the older, how to evangelise and teach. Before all that I am reassessing the habits of my own life to reconsider what feeds my social imaginary and where the idols of our time might be subtly having their way.

My good friend and former colleague at Queen’s Chaplaincy, Father Gary Toman, often speaks about having a grá for something. It is the Irish word for love but it takes on a guttural description for that passion for something that drives you and your life.

It is that grá that James K A Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University, is talking about in his incredibly insightful book Desiring The Kingdom. Smith followed that one up with the more direct You Are What You Love. The general premise is that we are not what we think but by what we love. What we have a grá for will be what shapes our lives.

So, I asked, is Jamie right?  Do slogans like "God and Ulster" and "God and Ireland" suggest that our love for country or flags could get in the way of our beliefs about God. A really articulate theology could go by the wayside when a deep grá for political allegiance and flags are what drives our actions.  

So, my next question, was how Smith’s theories connect with the Scriptures. It happened that as I was reading Desiring The Kingdombook I was reaching, in my preaching series, Mark 12 where Jesus declares the greatest commandments and speaks of love for God as the Jews would have been familiar with in the Shema from Deuteronomy 6 and then adds from Leviticus 19, an amazing chapter that spells out the love for neighbour.

It is these two commandments that would define Jesus followers and he actually never mentions cognitive understanding of God but always emphasises love. Jesus is encouraging the grá that will transform his followers. In John 14 he tells the disciples that if they love him they will obey his commandments. The grá is what drives the Jesus community.

Smith is not using Irish words or applying his theories to Ireland. His argument centres on 21st century America. He uses the Shopping Mall, the religious nature of which he paints provocatively over a few poetically crafted pages, and the sport’s stadium. He argues very compellingly how even the Christian who thinks he/she has his/her brain switched on and is what he/she think cognitively can be subtly caught in allegiances that would quite simply have been described as idols in the Old Testament.

The powerful gut stirring symbolism of the American national anthem at sporting events leading to a belief that God is American receives Smith's strongest ire! That we could be doctrinally well thought through but miss the hold that consumerism has on our well being is also well pointed out.

Once we are shaped, Smith goes on, we then aim our loves at what we believe to be human flourishing. This end result will again not be so much decided on by cognitive doctrinal statements but the social imaginary of what we are steeped in at mall, sports stadium and wherever else we inhabit.

Christian thinking over the past decades has targeted the mind with great books and lectures and conferences. Smith is not saying that we replace these, or the book itself would be dropped from the publisher’s catalogue, but he is saying we have missed the more potent spiritual formatives; the stories, movies, songs and worship that are pedagogies of the kardia.

Smith is suggesting that the liturgy of worship takes on an enormously important role in challenging the social imaginary of the mall and sports stadium in order that we recognise the Kingdom of God as what human flourishing is really about and our hearts get aimed at the right loves to bring that kingdom around.

Smith has articulated what I have been thinking for years that this generation in particular are more subjective than objective. Modernity had us lost in a phase where that might not have been so but the “word becoming flesh” was God’s best revelation of truth and that was aimed at the subjective gut not the intellectual mind.

Desiring The Kingdom and You Are What You Love that followed it have all kinds of things to say into the last days of Trump and the first days of Biden. If the States are to unite again. If a nation divided seemingly so venomously is to find a path towards healing then James K A Smith throws up perhaps the key question. Who are we? What we believe? Or what we love?

Smith's thesis has to be heard in Ireland too and in post Brexit Britain. Jamie's profound thought and his meticulous unpacking of it has opened up all kinds of leads for me in how to pastor a Church, lead worship, form the Christian core of the young, develop the spiritual maturity of the older, how to evangelise and teach. Before all that I am reassessing the habits of my own life to reconsider what feeds my social imaginary and where the idols of our time might be subtly having their way.

CONTENTED OF DEEP SOUL - STOCKI'S BEATITUDES

photo: Philip McCrea

 

I was preaching on Jesus Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). Much as I thinking that the greek word makarios is best translated blessed, blessed has lost a little bit of its pointed meaning. I am very unhappy with translations of the Beatitudes that translate it as happy. As I was preaching and seeking to unpack the text I started seeking my own translation and came up with "contented of deep soul". After I preached I jotted down my own Beatitudes based on many Biblical idea that I have preached on this past year. 

 

Contented of deep soul are those who know their place in God’s order of things

Contented of deep soul are those who look in the mirror and know that they are loved just as they are

Contented of deep soul are those who do not compare themselves with anybody else

Contented of deep soul are those who do not need to reach for the advertisers temptations to find satisfaction in the buying of things

Contented of deep soul are those who go to sleep knowing that they are forgiven for all their quirks, foibles and bad decisions

Contented of deep soul are those who forgive those who have hurt them because then they can no longer be hurt by the hurt

Contented of deep soul are who have discovered the gifts God has given them and have gifted them to the world

Contented of deep soul are those who love their neighbour with the the same grace that God loves them

Contented of deep soul who love their enemies and know the holiness of peacemaking

Contented of deep soul are those who are content with their place in God’s order of things

PEOPLE OF THE MANGER, THE DONKEY, FOOT WASHING AND THE CROSS

(My contribution to Fr Martin McGill's new First Thoughts project... on July 25th 2020...there is a link below to watch it...)

 

All world leaders come to power. It might be by a majority vote, or it might be hereditary or it might be by military force but it called coming to power. The power comes with some might. Most of our 6 o’clock news is about such power struggles. It is how the world rolls.

It is these ways of power that were in James and John’s mother thinking of when she approached Jesus to get her boys promotion. Could they sit with Jesus when he came to power. The other disciples were not pleased at their attempt to get one over on them.

Then Jesus explains, yet again, that his ways are not at all like the ways of the world that we are used to. This mother and the disciples are thinking about the power of Rome, ruling over them in brutal force or even the religious leaders oppressing the ordinary jewish people.

Jesus talks revolution. But it has a very different power source. Jesus Kingdom was going to be nothing like the world they were used to. His Empire was going to be upside down, the exact opposite of the nromal. 

Jesus is God and not just a King but the King of Kings. Not just a lord but the lord of Lords. However he who has every right to rule in power and might does it differently. To rule in Jesus kingdom is to serve others. Power is Servanthood. By humility. By grace, mercy and love.

In Jesus Kingdom the last our first and the first are last. In Jesus Kingdom we do unto others as we would have them do to us.

I have a mantra in Fitzroy that we are the people of the manger, the donkey and the cross. But as I prepared these First Thoughts I have added another -  foot washing.

Here is this new way to live. God was not born in a palace of riches. But in a stable. When Jesus came into Jerusalem to conquer the world, he didn’t come on a stallion but on a humble donkey. When Jesus wanted to show his disciples about how to use power he got on his knees and washed their feet. When Jesus took on the evil powers of the universe he did it dying on a cross of wood. 

This is a strange way. This seems a crazy way to rule a Kingdom. Yet, if we wanted to turn the world around and find peace and equality and justice. This is how it works. This upside down empire is our great hope. 

It is so radical that it takes us decades to come to terms with it. Perhaps even longer to start living it.  

James and john’s mother should have been asking, Jesus how can my sons serve the marginalised of the world alongside you. 

Us too. As I attempt to follow Jesus into this weekend I need to remember that I am following a person of the manger, the donkey, the foot washing and the cross. 

 

watch this First Thought HERE

ENCOURAGEMENT - JOHN O'DONOHUE, JACOB, SPRINGSTEEN & GOD

“One of the most beautiful gifts in the world is the gift of encouragement. When someone encourages you, that person helps you over a threshold you might otherwise never have crossed on your own. 

There are times of great uncertainty in every life. Left alone at such a time, you feel dishevelment and confusion like gravity. 

When a friend comes with words of encouragement, a light and lightness visit you and you begin to find the stairs and the door out of the dark. 

The sense of encouragement you feel from the friend is not simply her words or gestures; it is rather her whole presence enfolding you and helping you find the concealed door. The encouraging presence manages to understand you and put herself in your shoes. 

There is no judgment but words of relief and release.”

 

I love this quotation from the late Irish poet and mystic John O’Donohue’s Eternal Echoes. It is so inspirational in its idea and so simple in the pragmatic outworking.

I found it on Facebook, posted by my friend Rosie McKnight, less than an hour before I was to record a Sunday sermon. Most weeks there seems something on social media that clicks with the thread of the sermon. Here it was.

I was preaching on Jacob’s encounter with God at Bethel. Jacob is a man on the run for his life, vulnerable, disorientated, alone and wondering what is next. I, of course, found some resonance with our Coronavirus Times.

I mentioned in my sermon how Bruce Springsteen during a concert in The Point, Dublin introduced the song Jacob’s Ladder that he covered on the Seeger Sessions album by telling the crowd that “Jacob was a messed up son-of-a-gun who fell into the grace of God”. That pretty much describes all of us. The Gospel in a nutshell. I was excited to hear Bruce exegete on Genesis 28!

So, back to the John O’Donohue encouragement quote. If you are familiar with Jacob’s dream of a ladder to heaven with angels ascending and descending then John could almost have it in mind when he says, “When a friend comes with words of encouragement, a light and lightness visit you and you begin to find the stairs and the door out of the dark”. 

Encouragement is not preached on a lot. It seems to be down the pecking order to grace, love, mercy… O’Donohue sees it as an outworking of all of those things.

There is nothing more encouraging than being seen… recognised… loved… God encourages us that we are not useless, not alone, not forgotten, not unlovable, not purposeless. He encourages to find our way to a new beginning in his love. 

God reminds us that he created us, he came to earth to live among us and find us, he went to the cross to deal with all our brokenness and injustice and was raised to life to conquer all our weaknesses. He poured out his Spirit into us so that we humans could be the dwelling place of God. He ascended to rule over all things. 

That is all pretty encouraging! I believe that Jacob experienced that encouragement. 

I also believe that we are called to be conduits of that encouragement. Many of us down these Coronavirus Times have known that “door out of the dark when we received a text or a social media message, a phone call or even a letter. I know our lives have been energised so much by such encouragement. 

Let us live out God’s love and grace and mercy by being encouragers. You don’t need to be an appointed church leader, leading theologian or musically gifted. It is as easy as “I was thinking about you” and it makes a huge impact on the soul.

 

Watch the entire sermon and service from Sunday July 19, 2020 HERE

WHAT YOU WANT MOST AFTER LOCKDOWN IS WHERE YOUR HEART IS?

As the nation comes out of lockdown, after 3 months when our freedoms and desires have been greatly curtailed, I have been wondering if this brand new experience of opening up after such personal limitations is a spiritual thermometer.

I have been thinking about opening up while turning over in my mind, heart and soul that verse in Matthew 6 where Jesus says “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also”.

It is during Jesus’ Sermon On The Mount and he is in a little section about treasures in general. 

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth…”

He finishes the section by talking specifically about money:

“You cannot serve both God and money.”

This verse about where your treasure is is right bang in the middle.

I have been surmising whether I could paraphrase Jesus’ line to “what you want most after lockdown is where your heart is.”

The nation has been chomping at the bit for weeks. People have been deprived of many things and it is fascinating to see where the rush back to everything is concentrated.

The seeming desperation to shop. Writer Mike Starkey once wrote a book called Born To Shop that took Descartes’ understanding of being human “I think therefore I am” and changed it to “I shop therefore I am”. Are the queues after lockdown confirming Starkey’s fears?

Or a meal at a restaurant or a manicure or haircut or sun holiday or or a night at the pub? Maybe I should be thrilled with the pressure on churches to reopen as a sign of spiritual fervour.

It is only me surmising but it might be a helpful thermometer to ask what we missed most? What we are eager to return to in “normal” life. Is that a gauge as to where our heart is?

As I critique my own soul, I fear that for me it is the opposite of the yearning for what I want as lockdown opens up. I don’t want it to open up. As an introvert I am loving the time to myself and family. 

The thermometer of my hesitancy is telling me that I need to begin to be less selfish with my time and be ready to give my time for other people. Following Jesus is all about giving up self for others. 

As a natural introvert whose energy is quickly used up in social situations I have had three great months. Lockdown relief I hear it called. My yearnings and desires were not curtailed but indulged. The government were kind enough to ground my 22 and 19 year old daughters to the house. The government kindly gave me a near sabbatical where I could read and write and listen and prepare. All my time was for me. 

I am now wrestling with God as I deal with my treasure being self absorption and how I can shift that to a selfless giving to neighbour and church community. The thermometer of “what you want most after lockdown is where your heart is” is challenging me greatly!

THE WOW OF ASCENSION DAY - Belfast Telegraph Column 23.5.2020

(This was my Belfast Telegraph column published on May 23, 2020. It is based on a blog already published. I want to thank Malcolm Guite for the permission to use his poem. This is the poem I was referring to in my Ascension sermon in Fitzroy on May 24, 2020)

 

This past Thursday was Ascension Day. My friend Dani tells me that in Germany they have a school holiday. Growing up Presbyterian I hardly ever heard of it. 

Yet, Jesus’ Ascension is of vital theological importance. For me it sits alongside his birth, his death and his resurrection in its significance. In Luke chapter 9 when Jesus sets his eyes on the culmination of his ministry Luke doesn’t suggest that that is not his cross or resurrection but - “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem”.

When Paul was writing to the Church in Ephesus he explained the implications of the Ascension.  “That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.” 

When I preach on the ascension I often use a poem written by Anglican priest, poet and songwriter Malcolm Guite. His Ascension Day Sonnet is stunning in both theological insight and literary flair.

Malcolm begins with the experience of the disciples as Luke records them in Luke 24 and Acts 1:

We saw his light break through the cloud of glory
Whilst we were rooted still in time and place

Malcolm then opens up the eternal meaning of that event:

As earth became a part of Heaven’s story
And heaven opened to his human face.

Here is the Cosmic zig zag. In the nativity God becomes human. In the ascension, God as a human, flesh on, returns to heaven.

We saw him go and yet we were not parted
He took us with him to the heart of things
The heart that broke for all the broken-hearted
Is whole and Heaven-centred now, and sings,

Jesus spoke to the disciples about the oneness between them as he and his Father were one. Mysteriously he brings us with him and rules over the cosmos for the Church.

I so love the thought that Jesus took us “into the heart of things.” The idea of humans on the pulse of the government of the universe. Wow. What Jesus sings is where we find solace in these challenging days we are living through.  

Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,

This is very good news when you are struggling through a pandemic and find yourself in lock down and isolation. This cosmic rule of Christ is how we find resilience, hope and imagination... the power to live the faith and redeem the world.

The ascension means that Jesus is now ruler of the Cosmos. This a wonderful belief to hold in our current disorientation. In the seeming uncertainty of where the delicate steps out of lock down, we have a God who came to us, redeemed us and now stands strong for us at the very heart of all things. It is worth believing. It is worth celebrating. To finish Malcolm’s Sonnet:

Sings in the strength that rises out of weakness,
Sings through the clouds that veil him from our sight,
Whilst we our selves become his clouds of witness
And sing the waning darkness into light,
His light in us, and ours in him concealed,
Which all creation waits to see revealed.

 

Ascension Day Sonnet is available in Malcolm Guite’s book Sounding the Seasons and is published by Canterbury Press.

 

READINGS:

LUKE 9: 51-56

ACTS 1:3-8

EPHESIANS 1: 18-23

COLOSSIANS 3: 1-4

1 PETER 3: 13-22

GOD? WHERE HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN...

(I wrote this for a series that Fr Martin Magill and I did for the Belfast Telegraph during Coronavirus Times... This was published on April 25th, 2020...)

 

Where is God? If I had a pound for every time I’ve been asked that one, I could fund the NHS! During the worst of the Troubles, after 9/11, the 2004 Tsunami, Coronavirus… Where is God?

It is a difficult question. A mystery I would say, in no way to duck out of the dilemma evil throws into he philosophising needs of human beings.

However, my friend Inderjit Bhogal, Methodist minister, theologian and once Leader of the Corrymeela Community has a fantastic answer that not only satisfies me, for the most part, but inspires me and has me looking for the imaginative ways of the Divine even in the depths of our dark days.

Inderjit puts it simply. Check the first two verses of the Bible. That explains where God is and the rest of the Bible and our lives prove the point - In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. 

There was an emptiness, a formless void over the deep. That wasn’t God. God was there though. Not only there but creating.

A few weeks ago, on Good Friday, we saw God in another deep dark void. The depths of humanity’s violence and injustice was highlighted on a hill outside Jerusalem. 

Look closely at that Easter scene. There is a dead man walking to execution, having been falsely tried. Where’s God? There are those gambling for a condemned man’s robes. Where’s God? There are two thieves nailed to crosses. Where’s God? The city is mocking, sneering, spitting. Where is God? 

God is central to the scene. He is the condemned. He is the mocked. He is the dead man between the thieves. When the sky went dark that Friday afternoon God was there, identifying with humanity in all its injustice. Dare I suggest God is creating resurrection right in the middle of murder.

So in the deep dark depths of Coronavirus I expect God to be where God always is, hovering over this murkiness, this tragedy, empathising with those who have lost loved ones and those fighting for their lives in Florence Nightingale hospitals. And… I do not only expect God to just be there but to be creating too. God will be weaving good in the seeming despair.

Members of my congregation have told me about neighbours arriving at their door with packages of food, I have watched strangers pass strangers at a safe social distance and ask how they are coping with lockdown. I have received generosity of money towards feeding the homeless. I have given endless references for volunteers wanting to help at Foodbank. I have shown a video in Church of two young men in a Ugandan slum doing their best to feed 5000 families as starvation threatens to take them before Covid-19.

Goodness, hope and grace at work in this valley of the shadow.

Then there are the lessons. Do we want to back to the speed life was? Do we want to live with the same empty priorities? Has what we used to think was necessary changed? God has not gifted this sabbatical. God would prefer it wasn’t happening at all. However if we listen we will hear God whispering to us to imagine better days and better way to live on the other side.

Where is God in Coronavirus Times? Right there. Here. Seen. Unseen. Hovering. Creating. Resurrecting. Where he has always been!

THE MARK OF THE PREACHER (The Gospel According To Carla Boone)

“Those who preach don’t care to see the scars they leave behind”

Wow! I was listening to Ben Glover’s Shelter Sessions, his on-line mini gigs on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He sang a song called The Ballad of Carla Boone and I pricked up my ears at the line.

As a preacher the surmising started rippling out. 

Though Ben pointed out to me that “those who preach” was describing Carla’s community in general I couldn’t help feeling extra pressure for those of us who preach as a vocation.

Carla is a woman on the run from something and in a small community, like the ones Ben and I know of in the Bible Belt of County Antrim, everybody want to know your business and many are quick with their judgements. There were suspicions about Carla’s nighttime liaisons. Enough to cast a few stones, literally!

As I pondered the scars that preacher’s make, I was drawn to that moment in the Gospels when the woman caught in adultery is dragged before Jesus. Adultery takes two but there was no sign of the man being judged.

All of Carla Boone’s judgements are right here in this Gospel moment. The woman has just been caught. She might even have been naked. Some say that that is why Jesus wrote in the sand! The religious are preaching and want to leave their mark all over her body by stoning her to death.

Jesus, who God has given the right to judge the living and the dead leaves a very different mark. He leaves the self righteous uncomfortable in their own sinfulness. As Ben Glover’s song says, “Who’s not on the run?” 

As the “preachers” all leave the mark that Jesus leaves on the women seems so loving, wholesome and nothing short of beautiful. Jesus sets her free, oh free to a new kind of life, But free to be her self again… and free from the world’s judgements.

Of course this is only one story of many. If we look at Zaccheus, The Samaritan woman, Blind Bartenaus, the Roman centurion or even the thief on the cross everyone who might receive the world’s damnation get a mark of love and grace.

As Paul wrote I Colossians 2 - “God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross” I cannot help sense a mark of liberation, spiritually and psychologically here!

The only ones who get any sense of a mark of judgement from Jesus are the self-righteous religious leaders who were burdening their people with painful marks of the soul.

I was brought up preaching with an erroneous idea that the good news was not the good news without the bad news and that have we had an hour we should concentrate on the bad news for 55 minutes and only get to the good news at the end.

It makes certain sense if the Good News of Jesus is just a dramatic  story or a cold rational theological thought.

The Gospel isn’t though. John’s account of Jesus life drops a profound truth in his prologue when he says “the word became flesh”. The truth of Jesus is not rational creed it is living breathing knowledge, emotion and soul feelings.

Imagine the mark you would leave on a child’s psyche if every morning you told them what a pathetic little worms they were before a  last minute reprieve of “but you are loved”! You’d rightfully be up for child abuse.

I always find that it is much easier rom a firm foundation of love to shared the errors,sins and weaknesses of my children, my friends or myself. Good news is a more fertile soil to share any bad news there might be.

Yet, soul abuse has been rampant for centuries. The incredible amazing news of God self sacrificial grace has not been so much the mark on people’s souls as a spiritually brutal and paralysing judgmentalism. 

If the Jesus God has anything to offer that is different from all the other gods on the block, then it is the lavish idea of grace, a God whose mark is one of a healing and redemptive love that restores and brings life in all its fulness.

God may I be careful of the mark that I leave. May it always be a Godly one. And God forgive me when I left other marks. May the mark I now leave behind on lives like Carla Boone’s be a Christ like loving one.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO RESURRECTION?

I guess I always suspected it but it wasn’t until this particular Easter that I declared it. We are heretics towards Resurrection! 

Oh, we don’t that Jesus was raised to life again. We would never dare and indeed would die to defend the truth of Jesus resurrection. However, we almost totally ignore it in our worship songs and dare I suggest it, in our preaching and theology.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the climactic moment in God’s salvation history has five dimensions. 

 

Incarnation - God arrives on earth, in flesh and blood.

Teaching - Jesus shares the ways of God in teaching, stories and miraculous signs. 

Crucifixion - God demonstrates his love for us in this, while we were still sinners Christ Jesus died for us. 

Resurrection - Jesus is risen from the tomb. 

Ascension - when Jesus  goes back to heaven to sit at the right hand of God. 

 

When it comes to Easter, or any other part of the Gospel to be fair, there is an over concentration on the crucifixion. It seems strange to me. When I came to faith as a teenager I was told that we didn’t put Jesus on the cross around our necks. He wasn’t there, he had risen. Yet, our theology and preaching is ever keen to keep him on that cross.

Of course I am not negating the cross. Far from it. I love that moment when John the Baptist looks across the desert and says, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” I often quote Paul in Romans, "For God demonstrated his love for us in this that while we were still sinners Christ Jesus died for us". I hold on dearly to Christ’s cry on the cross “It is finished!”

Maybe it is that last cry that has me lacking any desire to remain there. The cross ends something. Maybe everything. Jesus deals with sin and evil and death. Nailed. Finished.

Resurrection takes it from there. It is about life. It is about the power of God bursting through a tomb and the death it represents to permeate humanity with new birth and hope and possibility. The cross puts to death the old. It is the resurrection life we should be living.

Yet, there is dearth of praise songs or sermons while the cross gets over exposed. 

I believe this imbalance to be wrong. The apostle Paul declared the importance of resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:

 

13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

 

17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

 

That last line even suggests to us that the resurrection as well as the crucifixion plays a role in the forgiveness of sins. Yet, we remain almost fixated to the cross. I would suggest that Resurrection is a Cinderella are it not for an even worse overlooking of the Ascension that we haven’t even gotten to yet!

I started surmising the implications of such an heretical imbalance. I immediately recollected the front rows of Presbyterian choirs with all their glum faces like they were at funerals.

There would be a different countenance on your face and personality if you were a funeral director and spent all your days around death as opposed to a mid wife spending most of your time around the happiness of new birth. Maybe too our souls if they are more around Calvary than the garden tomb.

Eugene Peterson wrote, “The Bible is not the script for a funeral service but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere is the story of resurrection.”

As I wrote, and Emma Horan sang, in the song we used in Fitzroy to declare resurrection this Easter:

 

Resurrection, 

The conception of our rebirth

Resurrection

The launch of a whole new earth

Resurrection

The sparking of light through holes

Resurrection

The bursting of hope in our souls

Resurrection

 

Resurrection is crucial to the new life we now live in Christ. Yes, we should recognise the old life being put to death BUT it is far more vital that we concentrate on the new life ushered in by Christ’s coming back to life.

Might this mis-orientation with the judgement of Friday lead us to be rather fearful and safe, tip toeing around our sin, frightened to fall rather than being confident in new resurrection freedom and power to be adventurers in faith, frightened of nothing, not even death.

I wonder are we a little too legalistic and judgemental because we have over focused on the legalism of Christ’s achievements and a little lacking in joy and grace because we have all but ignored the crucial energising force of resurrection.

I would be intrigued to see where this balance went askew in the history of the Church. When did we find an over emphasis on Christ’s cross to the detriment of his birth, life, resurrection and ascension. A theological PhD perhaps?

Hymnwriters, theologians and teachers of God’s word can I ask that we reassess, that we rebalance that we give more of the core centrality of our Gospel to Easter Sunday… to resurrection… it seems vital to the health of our souls. As I have said… we will get the the tragic lack of importance given to the ascension further down the road.