You don't know

On Sunday morning, the sermon was preached from Ephesians 5 and 6.  It's a challenging passage, about the way to live in family and working relationships.  It calls us to live in the light of the gospel, to live in a way which is transformed by the reality of Christ's death and resurrection.

As is often the case with these sorts of passages, there was a big part of me that wanted to respond: you don't know!  You don't know what it's like for me, Paul!  You have no idea!  This would be said in much the same tone of voice as is used in this video, which if you have kids is hilarious.  If you don't have kids, you don't know.


But the point is, Paul doesn't need to know my exact situation.  He doesn't need to have gone through the exact situations I am facing (which, incidentally, are not particularly hard anyway).  He is not offering that sort of 'been there, done that' advice, as helpful as that can sometimes be.  He is applying the gospel, which is true here and now for me as it was there and then for him.

Enough excuses.  Jesus died and rose.  Live like it.

Pro patria

Today is Armistice Day, the day when we remember the sacrifice of those who fought for our country, and in many cases gave up their lives.  If we are at all sensible, it is also the day when we give thanks for the relative peace in which we now live.  If we are at all compassionate, it is also the day when we particularly remember the many millions caught up in armed conflict right now around the world.  Armistice Day, for me, is all those things.

I am glad we have this day.  It is, for me, much more comfortable than Remembrance Sunday.  I worry that in the context of church, the remembrance of our own dead can so easily become the worship of nation.  I worry that putting our act of national remembrance in such close close proximity to the Lord's commanded act of remembrance cheapens the latter and distorts the former.  Coupled to this, I'm aware of the custom -painfully incongruous to me - in some parts of the church of displaying a national flag in the church building itself.  The church, as somebody else has said, is an embassy of another kingdom, and it is inappropriate that she bear the flag of any earthly kingdom at all.  All of this has got me thinking a bit about patriotism, and how I ought to relate to my nation as a Christian.

I love my country - genuinely love it.  It's one of the things that puts me on the political right, to be honest.  I feel that many on the left love ideas and ideals, but don't love the real things.  I think it's why some of the people I know who are that way inclined politically love other cultures more than their own - because those things are idealised, still not close enough to show the nasty bits and the grubby corners.  Still lovable in the abstract.  But I love my country, not in the 'my country right or wrong' sort of way, but in the only way in which it is appropriate to love anything other than God: in full recognition that there are failings and shortcomings and ugly bits, even if sometimes my love stops me from seeing them.

I guess my love for my country is on the move.  I am becoming more self-critical about it.  I love western culture - I love the literature, the philosophical tradition, the architecture.  This is where I grew up, where I am at home.  But I am more aware of the danger of idolising it.  I guess that is why Remembrance Sunday has become an issue for me in the last few years.

One line of thought that I have been pondering today is this: what if I, as a Christian, were in the armed forces, and were required to fight.  What if I were required to kill other people who could well be brothers and sisters of mine?  This is all very hypothetical, but it instantly raises for me the question of whether I see in another person who is unlike me in almost every way - yet knows and loves the Lord Jesus - someone to whom I am as closely related as a brother or sister as I could possibly be.  I wonder whether my loyalty is to Christ's Kingdom, or the kingdom of the world.  Armistice Day forces the thought down these extreme lines, but I could equally well ask whether I am not guilty of casually idolising my culture and nation in much less obvious ways every day.  One could reasonably ask whether I even do this in my approach to church - do I prefer a comfy monocultural church to Christ's multi-faceted congregation?

My mind rushes to the end - the glory and honour of the nations being brought into the new Jerusalem.  And I guess the best way I can love my earthly nation is to love God's Heavenly Kingdom more, to be committed to his international people, to witness to his gospel which holds out the hope that this love of mine will not ultimately be futile but will be redeemed.

Me and the Holy Spirit

On Sunday I preached a very poor sermon on Acts 2:37-41.  I really shouldn't bother listening to it if I were you; you have better things to do with half an hour.  To explain why it was so poor, let me give you a bit of background info about how I write sermons.  On the whole, I don't spend a whole lot of time sitting down studying.  I read the passage towards the beginning of the week, maybe take in a couple of light commentaries, and then put it to the back of my brain to turn over and over during the week.  If something tricky comes up, I'll go find a more technical commentary; if something interesting pops into my brain I make a mental note.  Sometimes whole paragraphs of a sermon are written and committed to memory whilst I am walking up the hill to work.  On the whole, I find that I spot structures to passages, and craft structures of sermons, pretty early on in the week; the flesh to go on the bones might not come until Saturday.  Or, let's face it, Sunday.

Anyway, the structure for this passage seemed clear.  Peter mentions two conditions: repentance and baptism.  Then he mentions two blessings: forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  In between stands the name of the Jesus Christ, through whom all these things are possible as in repentance and baptism we identify with him.  Simples.  Conditions, blessings, Jesus.

But when I came to put on the flesh, I got stuck.  I can talk about repentance, goodness knows I can talk about baptism, I can and will wax lyrical about the forgiveness of sins.  But I don't really know what to say about the gift of the Holy Spirit,  Oh, don't get me wrong: I have a fine pneumatology.  My doctrine is straight.  I could lecture on the subject of the Holy Spirit.

But from the pulpit - as God's word to his people about his Spirit - I don't know what to say.

And that one failing became a black hole which dragged the whole sermon down into it, in my mind at least.  Because it seemed to me that the central question had become 'where is the answer to this promise?  Where is the gift of the Holy Spirit?'  Shouldn't we be able to see that more - if God were here, amongst us?  Shouldn't I have something to say about this?

So this is where I got to: I am not satisfied, not satisfied at all, with my current experience of God.  I was saying to a friend on Monday that my dissatisfaction is almost at a level where I feel it might overcome my laziness and fear.  Laziness because I know that, although I cannot work my way into a deeper experience of God or strive my way into his favour, I will need to seek him with my whole heart, and that sounds like hard work.  Fear because as long as I can blame my lack of zeal, God himself is not put to the test, but if I really seek him and he is not there...

I guess I'm praying, in so far as I can be bothered and in so far as I dare, for more dissatisfaction that can be satisfied with this gift of the Holy Spirit.

And in the meantime, I will try to write a better sermon for next Sunday.

Just a little Protestantism

Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics is helpfully read as an attempt to outline Evangelical (meaning, Reformation) theology in contrast with Roman Catholicism on the right and Liberalism (what Barth calls Neo-Protestantism or Modernism) on the left.  Barth sees Rome and Schleiermacher as being, despite their many differences, very similar at the end of the day - or at least similarly opposed to the fundamental basis of Evangelical doctrine.  That fundamental basis is a free Bible, a Bible which shows itself to be the Word of God, which does not have to be defended or to have its authority discovered in another place.  For Rome, the authority of the Bible derives (in practice, if not in theory) from the church, which claims the exclusive right through its teaching office to offer interpretation of Scripture; for the Neo-Protestant, such authority as the Bible is thought to have is tied to the religious self-consciousness of the reader.  In neither case is Scripture regarded as free, self-authenticating, and able to stand over against the reader as the Word of God.  (It is, of course, all these things despite the way in which it is regarded, and God is able to make it evidently all of these things even within Romanism and Modernism.  But it is not so regarded).

In contrast, Evangelical theology points to the Bible as its very basis, on which everything else if founded.  "That is to say, we have not in any sense or in any way to answer for it that the Bible is really God's Word...   We can say no more than this, that the Bible can answer for itself in this matter".

But the key thing for me is that, in contrast to the pre-suppositionalist apologetics of today, Barth does not see this position as a strong one.  It is desperately weak, and throws one open to all sorts of accusations.  Is it not utterly arbitrary?  If it is not, that does not depend on us but on God. Where does our assurance come from?  We cannot say, but then we do not want to build on our assurance but only on the thing itself.

Is it perhaps a special spiritual experience that has led us to this?  Is this "a secret appeal to a special grace"?

Not at all - "this opposition [to Rome and Schleiermacher] seeks to be nothing of all that, nothing special, no prophecy or apostolate, just a very earthy, harmless, ambivalent matter, devoid of all mystical splendour or mystery, just a little Protestantism, a sign to which we can give no signifying power, which may in fact be opposed or totally overlooked or misunderstood, and about whose unimportance among all the other signs in which the world and the church are so rich we have no illusions."

And the irony is that we are talking about the very power of God for salvation!  But that power, that Word, is not under our control, cannot be advanced by us, can only be pointed to as the sign which God is able to turn into that which it signifies, the word which he is able to make into the Word.

Must preach

Krish Kandiah wrote a couple of posts on preaching last week, which are well worth reading - it's debate prep, so he gives both points of view: is preaching dead or alive? It has got me thinking about preaching, so here are a few of my somewhat disjointed and unpolished ponderings.

1.  Preaching is liturgical before it is educational.  If you take a glance at Krish's piece against preaching, many of the reasons have to do with educational theory.  Now, I don't have much time for that sort of thing anyway, but I especially don't want to see it applied to preaching.  The primary point of preaching is not the education of the church, not the impartation of knowledge.  The main thing is to lift the eyes of the congregation to Christ.  It is about speaking, and hearing, the Word of God - which means more than explaining the Bible.  It means speaking as if pronouncing the very oracles of God.  This is part of worship, and only secondarily is it a matter of catechesis (something which the church needs to do elsewhere).

2.  The gospel is news.  News is announced, not discussed.  One of the most frustrating things about the contemporary presentation of television or internet news is the apparent feeling that it would be a good idea to democratise the news by inviting comment from the ignorant public.  This is not the way news works.  News is not a conversation, it is an announcement.  Preaching is the only form that matches up with the content in this sense.

3.  The gospel is a monologue.  It is not that we are not invited in or involved - we certainly are.  But only really as hearers, as recipients.  In so far as we are doers, it is because we are hearers.  This is what grace means - God does it all.  Not only does he achieve salvation by himself without us, he announces salvation without us.  Preaching in the church is a sign of that - we listen to the preacher, who trusts that God takes up his preaching and makes it a genuine announcement of the gospel.

4.  Preaching is the centre of the church's life.  What else could it be?  The gospel announced calls the church together, and drives the church out to announce the gospel.

5.  God accompanies the faithful preaching of the gospel, and makes it powerful.

No straight lines

Human experience and thought as such, if they were to follow their own bias, would proceed in a straight line from despair to even deeper despair, from solemnity to even greater solemnity (there is also a negative theologia gloriae), or from triumph to even higher triumph, from joy to even greater joy.  To faith, however, this straight line movement is forbidden by the Word of God, which calls us from despair to triumph, from solemnity to joy, but also from triumph to despair and from joy to solemnity.  This is theologia crucis.

 Thus Karl Barth, in CD I/1, p 191.

The experience of the Word of God is an experience of always being called out of one place into another.  The Word of God meets us in our despair and calls us to a place of security and safety as it extends to us the righteousness of Christ.  The Word of God meets us in our security and calls us to a place of renunciation and repentance as it highlights our continuing sinfulness.  Always it is a call, which means that it is always an encounter, a fresh encounter.  This is personal interaction, not an escalator to holiness (or indeed to deeper and deeper self-renunciation).

God's Word "never leaves us alone whether in our humility or our pride".  God's Word goes with us, but not as our possession; not as the confirmation of our present humiliation or triumph.  How then would it be personal encounter?  Would it not be far more likely that this word which confirms me in my current state is just a self-reflection?  As the Word of God calls me out of humiliation into triumph, and out of triumph into humiliation, I hear the true speech of God, which is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen.

And faith is comforted despair.

Death, thou shalt die

The combination of two readings at Evening Prayer on Wednesday has been running around my brain the last couple of days.  In 1 Kings 17, the prophet Elijah raises from death the son of a widow who has been sheltering him during the divinely-imposed famine in Israel; in Acts 20, the apostle Paul brings back from death a young man who has fallen from a window after falling asleep during a lengthy apostolic homily.

Back from death.

I don't want to be morbid about it, but there's really no getting around the fact that death is the only absolutely terrible thing, the only thing that is, in an absolutely unqualified sense, disaster.  Anything else, even the worst thing, leaves us with some hope, or perhaps the possibility of learning, or perhaps the door to repentance.  Death ends it all.  Let's not kid ourselves or give false comfort by saying that death is not the end.  It is the end.  The annihilation of everything I have been, could have been, wanted to be.  And it is an intruder.  I was not made for this.  In so far as life is God's gift, it is grace, benefit, goodness - yes, even in all its struggles and hardships.  Death is the taking away of that gift.  Nowhere else do we see so clearly, if we have the eyes for it, that we stand under God's judgement.

All our days pass away under your wrath.

To be called back from death is nothing less than new creation.  Undoing the destruction, preserving the personality, remaking the life that has passed into shadow.

How can it be?

Jesus died, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.

Do you believe this, O my fearful soul?