SOUL SURMISE

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.

RECONCILIATION AT THE HEART OF GOD

(Fr Martin and I are writing for the Youthscape Website this month... here's my contribution.)

READING: LUKE 6: 27-36

27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

Growing up during the Northern Ireland Troubles, I decided to follow Jesus as a 17 year old. When I read “Love your enemies” I did not need to think too hard about what that meant and who they were. Yet, for maybe thirty years I was what I would call a passive peacemaker. I was against the violence. I wished for peace. Prayed for it, even. Yet, I wasn’t doing very much about it. 

These words of Jesus are a radical challenge, an other worldly attitude towards your enemies. This is not just passive non retaliation, this is actively living in a way that benefits the conditions of your enemy. It is serving your enemy. It is loving your enemy. It is doing for others what God has done for us, in Jesus. 

The Amish community live this out in their everyday lives. Their idea of forgiveness is to reconcile with the enemy to the point where you make them a friend! 

In 2006 Charles Roberts entered an Amish Schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and shot ten young Amish girls, killing five of them dead.

Within hours of the shootings, the Amish had visited the killer’s wife and family. They not only told them that they forgave them but they actually set up a charitable fund for the killer’s children.

Love for the family of the killer of your children. This is loving your enemies and doing good to those who hate and mistreat you. Forgiveness for the Amish is not about wiping some objective slate clean. Forgiving is a loving act that seeks to build friendship with those that they should be at enmity with. Every Thursday night Charles Roberts’ mother now reads and prays with a severely brain damaged little girl her son shot.

This kind of mercy and love is at the heart of the Christian faith. God doesn’t only forgive us… he reaches out to build relationships with us. When we find ourselves in spaces where there is need of reconciliation we find ourselves in places where we can get closest to the heart of God and with opportunities to follow our call to follow Jesus.

God’s love led him to action. He didn’t just talk about his love. He didn’t just believe it as an idea. God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). There was nothing passive about that. We don’t follow Jesus into ideas… but to action. Revolutionary action.

Blessed are the peacemakers,

    for they will be called children of God (Matt 5:9)

 

PRAYER: Lord, lead us close to your heart, to be about what is closest to your heart that you might make our hearts like yours. 

WHEN CHRISTIANITY ROBS US OF THE WONDER OF OUR HUMANITY - IT'S A SIN!

“My Christian journey almost robbed me of the wonder of my humanity.”

The words of artist Colin Davidson to a class of Calvin College students meeting in Fitzroy, recently. 

Sadly, the words rang true, for me. I grew up in a Christian faith influenced by a narrow legalistic puritanism. It was judgemental. Indeed, the theological belief that you are saved by grace was almost nullified by the fact that you had to then work like the clappers to keep that salvation. There were hundreds of dos and don’ts, very like the spiritual oppression that Jesus fought the Pharisees over.

The heresy of dualism, rife across a large swathe of Christian spiritualities, also played its part. The things of the spirit were good. The things of the material world were bad. There was a demarcation between scared things and secular ones. 

In such a world a friend gave up sport after his conversion. It was secular. He was gifted but God, he was told, wouldn’t want him in those secular places that came with it. A little of the wonder of his humanity was robbed. 

Bono, Edge and Larry from the rock band U2 were told by their Church to give up music. It tormented them for a time before, thank God, they made the right decision to keep on following their musical vocation. The  wonder of their humanity was almost robbed from them.

I had friends who were banned from listening to certain music, going to certain places and following certain vocations because they were judged to be worldly. Sadly, I know many many people whose wonder of their humanity was stolen by faulty theology and Christian practice.

I was fortunate in that I never understood such thinking as I read the Gospels and attempted to follow Jesus. Yes, I was curtailed for many years but eventually I broke free to live in the fulness of our humanity that Jesus came to bring.

Recently, I preached on John chapter 2. It is Jesus first miracle. John calls them signs. Jesus turns water into wine. That is immediately a problem for many wonder of humanity stealers. Wine has often been described as the devil’s vomit. Alcohol is of the world. 

Wherever such an idea came from, it was not the Bible. Jesus wine was the best wine. Grape juice doesn’t quite compete with real fermented wine. Believe me. I enjoy a glass. If this was not fermented wine then it was no miracle. Blasphemy. Hersey actually. My mother turned water into grape juice every Sunday lunchtime! 

Don’t get me started on grape juice in communion. Not anywhere near a symbol of potent sin killing blood Christ. When Jesus used wine he knew what he was using and why. 

John’s account of the miracle of the water turned into wine follows on from John’s great theological prologue in chapter 1. We are given that poetic description of incarnation - “the word became flesh.” We are then told “and moved in amongst us.” 

Jesus did not separate himself from the world. He set up residence right in the heart of it. In chapter 2 in Cana of Galilee, he is doing just that. A wedding was a drink fest for a few days. Jesus didn’t remove himself . He was right there at the heart of it. He broke down any sacred spaces verse secular places debates right here. 

Whatever “come ye out from among them” means it is not to negate the entire message of Jesus incarnation. As Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper put it, “There is not one square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”

The sign of water turned into wine is one of fulness. It was the best wine. It is also sign of abundance. 

Grace is only mentioned four times in the Gospel According To John. All four mentions are in the first 17 verses of the book. Then, for the rest of John’s account of Jesus life, people get to see it, taste it, smell it, touch it, feel it. 

Jesus did not come to rob us of the wonder of our humanity. God becoming human was about exactly the opposite. Jesus came to give us the fullest possible wonder of that humanity and give it to us abundantly. My mantra of John 10:10 - “I have come that you might have life and have it in all its fulness.”

Some might be concerned about this freedom I am advocating. They might accuse me of leading us all into sinful living. Absolutely not. Sin’s end is to rob us from the wonder of our humanity. Jesus end is to lavish that wonder upon us. It would be a sin, maybe the greatest sin, to in any way curtail the fulness of life that Jesus was born, died, resurrected and ascended to give us.

That Colin Davidson experienced a Christian journey that almost robbed him of the wonder his humanity is a terrible sin. God forgive us!

Discipleship, spiritual formation, following Jesus - whatever we wish to call it - should never be about robbing the wonder of our humanity from us but should instead have an end goal that sees us experience this human life in its most abundant wonder.

A THIN LINE - PRAYERS OR BLASPHEMY

(in 1998 I had the honour of contributing to Jimmy Abegg's book Ragamuffin Prayers along with others like Brennan Manning, Amy Grant and Mike Yaconelli. I looked at the influence of the Irish language on the use of God and Jesus in Ireland today. I have edited it only slightly.)

It is a thin line between superstition and useful spiritual discipline. Between spontaneous connection with the Divine and using of the name of the Lord our God in vain. Between the prayer of a Ragamuffin and the blasphemy of careless souls. However, something makes me think that the cry of the divine expletive may in some instances, maybe the minority of instances but instances none the less, be the most fragile of Ragamuffin prayers.

I grew up in Ballymena, Co Antrim in the northern part of the island of Ireland. The northern counties are to Ireland what the southern states are to America – Bible belt. There is a puritanical backdrop to life. Regulations once brought in to help towards holiness have drifted recklessly towards a legalism that the Pharisees would have liked Jesus to bring to earth with him. The use of the Lord’s name is very much protected and rightly so, I reckon.. When I hear someone utter “Jesus Christ” or “Oh my God” there is a shudder that races up my evangelical spine. My sin radar sends bright sulphurous flashes across my soul. 

Thirty years into my life and thirteen into my Christian pilgrimage I moved to Dublin in the Republic of Ireland. From a predominantly Protestant and saturated evangelical culture I found myself in a country where a merely 4% of the population was Protestant. It was 1991 and Ireland was still very much Roman Catholicism that I was often told was the one great enemy to my Christian faith. It was a massive learning curve and many things were reassessed in the three years I lived there. One of them was this use of Divine expletives. Particularly with older folk I found a different attitude behind the use of “God” and “Jesus” in their daily shouts of wonder and cries of struggle.

So even now over twenty years after my Dublin sojourn I’m wondering could these shouts and cries be Ragamuffin prayers. Genuine calls to God in praise and pleading. Sincere attempts at connecting with the Divine in the every day moments of life. A daily connection which harks back to the Celtic Christianity of Ireland’s past where blessings and prayers were threaded into every chore, every meeting, every part of the daily routine.

So I have been talking to my good friend Timothy Flaherty an Irish speaker (very rare among Protestants) with a degree in the Language (almost unheard of among Protestants) about Gaelic greetings. His feedback has been very interesting. If you meet someone one on the roads of the Gaeltacht instead of saying “hello” you would say “Dia duit” (God save you). The reply would be “Dia is Muire duit” (God and Mary save you) and though it rarely goes there, there would be a listing of saints from Pádraig to Brid to Colmcille and beyond. Blessings are an important part of the everyday greetings and sayings in the old Irish. Entering a house you would say “Dia sa teach” (God in the house) or leaving someone instead of “goodbye” you would say “Beannacht leat” (blessings with you) or possibly “Go dtuga Dia slán abhaile tú” (May God give you a safe homeward journey). 

This is in keeping with all that we know of the Celtic tradition where all of life lies under God’s watchful eye and in every minute of every tiny daily chore God is waiting for communion. There was no setting to the side moments or hours of prayer and worship and reflection and the rest of the time being lived in a different mode than those holy moments. There were prayers and blessings for the lighting of the fire, the milking of the cows and the making of the bed. Every opportunity was taken to use the seemingly mundane to reflect and be reminded of God’s presence. Today as Irish Catholics pass a Chapel they will cross themselves. Perhaps like our helpful evangelical regulations have drifted into reckless legalism, some of their rituals have become empty superstition but for some it is a very real chance to be reminded of God on their journey to work or the shops.

So maybe it is from this heritage that I have heard reverence in the cry for God. Maybe the difference between blasphemy and reverence is whether the searching soul of a Ragamuffin mutters the God word or it is the careless empty heartedness of the cynic or the cold blooded disparager. It is becoming my belief that some expletives are the reaching for the transcendent in the best of the Psalmist tradition. The Psalms are dominated with the awe inspired worship or the confused cry for some sense in the midst of tragedy. And so I remember feeling guilty as a seventeen year old when on my first trip to Canada I was so overwhelmed by downtown skyscrapers that I was speechless, apart from a God word. Today I feel freer to see it as a Ragamuffin in the jaws of wonder. 

When the news came across the radio on Saturday August 15, 1998 that a bomb had exploded in Omagh during the busiest part of the afternoon, much of my island let out that seemingly careless shriek of pain and despair. The “Oh my God no!” as the day and week progressed was the most honest and vulnerable response to a situation where no other words could articulate our loss. We were all Ragamuffins screeching with our minds in tatters. We were left scratching our souls for meaning. In what some might have seen as our blaspheming, and it’s a thin line, we were heard by a God who is “the Comforter” not “the explainer”. I reckon He was angry too. 

My nearly articulate first responses to the tragedy eventually gave way to more carefully considered words. Here is the prayer I prayed on Radio Ulster the following Friday.

IN A WEEK LIKE THIS 

Lord, we come to the end of another week
Except it hasn't been just another week
It has been the worst week of our lives
And even worse for some
Lord help us to be honest, vulnerable and somehow hopeful in the reflection of our feelings

Lord we have been shocked
Shocked by how one tiny second can tear our lives apart
Shocked by how far humanity can fall
Shocked by how callous and painful mankind's actions can stoop

Lord, we are grieving
Grieving for the loss of lives with so much love and energy still to give
Grieving for the man and woman and child who we will never be able to hold again
Grieving for our history that is as sad and twisted as this

Lord we are confused
Confused at why this should happen
Confused about how this should happen to the innocent
Confused about where you and faith enter into these events

Lord we have been angry
Angry at why we allowed our family and friends to go shopping
Angry at how evil people could rip our world asunder
Angry that you allowed it to happen

Lord we are seeking
Seeking some kind of feeble consolation in the midst of our deluge of tears
Seeking some kind of hope that good might come from this evil
Seeking your Spirit whom Jesus called a Comforter to whisper into our maddening silence

Lord we are squinting for faith
Faith that the majority might have some kind of a say in the future
Faith that love will end our hate, good will end our evil and grace will touch our broken hearts
Faith in a God who is as angry as we are and who is reaching out his hand to us. 

Lord we are remembering
Remembering those who today can no longer be shocked, grieve, be angry, be confused, seek or squint for faith
Remembering that you watched as your son covered in blood, died at the futile whim of injustice
Remembering that that very death is the only thing that we can grope in the dark for in a week like this. 

Lord we have planted our loved ones deep in the bloody earth of Ireland this week
We have watered them with our tears
Lord may you allow them to be seeds of a love that will grow into our peace. 

Lord remember us.