Walking in darkness

 Isaiah 50:10-11:

Who among you fears the Lord
and listens to his servant?
Who among you walks in darkness,
and has no light?
Let him trust in the name of the Lord;
let him lean on his God.
Look, all you who kindle a fire,
who encircle yourselves with torches;
walk in the light of your fire
and of the torches you have lit!
This is what you’ll get from my hand:
you will lie down in a place of torment.

I come back to these verses often, because it seems to me they are a standing rebuke to much of our contemporary culture, within and without the church, and because they describe an aspect of the life of faith which we would rather forget.  Isaiah is writing to the exiled people of Judah, to those who have suffered disgrace and who have no obvious earthly hope.  But his words in these verses reach even further across the centuries, to speak to us in the here and now.

The prophet describes two groups of people.  Both groups are in the midst of darkness, but they react to the darkness in very different ways.  One - perhaps from a human perspective the most sensible, practical group - set about making light.  Fire!  Torches!  Drive back the darkness!  The other, in a move which does not seem humanly speaking to be very wise, walks on in the dark.  We might expect that their ultimate destinies would reflect their choices, and so they do - but not in the way the image would lead us to expect.  It is not those who prudently make themselves lights who avoid danger; no, they will lie down in torment.  It is those who walk in the dark, leaning on the Lord, who avoid stumbling and falling on the way.

In a pragmatic, technological society like ours, the first question which naturally comes to our minds when confronted with an issue is 'what ought we to do?' - how can we address the problem?  How can we fix it?  Whether it's public health issues, or personal issues, this is just how we're wired to think.  This is just as true, I think, within the church as outside it.  How do I fix this feeling of being spiritually dry?  How do we reverse the decline in church attendance?  What do we do?

And there is a very real danger that in every case we are just scrambling around lighting torches.

It is hard for us to shift our sense that things just ought to work, and that there must be something we can do to fix it if they don't.  But this is not a sound instinct.  Life is not a machine.  The life of faith, in particular, does not mean relentless activity to drive back the darkness, as if it were some sort of strange intrusion.

Rather, our posture is to be: fear the Lord, listen to his Servant.

The Servant, of course, is the Lord Jesus Christ - and the rest of the chapter makes clear why it is that the life of faith must consist largely of walking in darkness.  It is because in this world Christ our Lord suffered, submitted himself to humiliation, walked the path of the cross.  He walked the way of darkness.  We ought to follow him.

It is not that we should never try to solve any problems or fix any issues.  It is just that that is not to be our first response.  First we bow before the Lord, acknowledge his sovereignty, hear again the message of the Lord Jesus, consider again that this is just the way of the cross.  Because sooner or later we're going to hit problems we can't fix - ultimately, death! - and we will not be ready to go into that great darkness unless we have become accustomed to walking in the dark, leaning on the Lord.

Hope, despite everything

I've copied below a long paragraph from Church Dogmatics IV/3, on the subject of hope.  The wider context is the doctrine of reconciliation as that relates to Christ's role specifically as Prophet and therefore the one who bears witness to himself and brings his people to faith in him (and incidentally, it seems to me that in comparison with the roles of Priest and King, this part of Christ's triple office is typically neglected; it gets a brief paragraph in Letham's Systematic Theology, for example, compared to chapters on the priestly and kingly roles).  The narrower context is the work of the Spirit in awakening the church and the individual Christian to hope.  And the immediate context is the three great challenges to hope: firstly, that the Christian finds him- or herself outnumbered and the message of Christ sidelined in the world; second, that the Christian is confronted continually by his or her own continuing sinfulness, which stands in contradiction of the great hope; and third, that the Christian still awaits Christ's judgement, and so cannot pronounce on the righteousness or the fruit of his or her labours.  This paragraph addresses the first challenge.  I've broken it up and added some commentary.  If you want to read the context, you'll find this paragraph on pages 917-919.

What is hope, and what does it mean for the Christian who, since Jesus Christ has not yet spoken His universal, generally perceptible and conclusive Word, finds himself in that dwindling and almost hopeless minority as His witness to the rest of the world?

Barth is clear that Christ has spoken, but he has not yet spoken in such a way that everyone will hear; that awaits the final coming of Christ.  In the meantime, how is the Christian who looks around the world and finds himself, as someone who has heard that word of Christ, in a minority to maintain his hope?  What does gospel hope mean for the Christian in a world where that hope seems to reach so few?

If the great Constantinian delusion is now being shattered, the question becomes the more insistent, though it has always been felt by perspicacious Christians.  What can a few Christians or a pathetic group like the Christian community really accomplish with their scattered witness to Jesus Christ?  What do these men really imagine or expect to accomplish in the great market, on the battle-field or in the great mad-house which human life always seems to be?  "Who hath believed our report?  and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" (Is. 53:1).

'The great Constantinian delusion' is the dream of a church triumphant in this world; of the normalisation of Christian faith as the pattern of this age.  If it was being shattered when Barth was writing this in the 1950s, it is well and truly gone now.  Christendom is in the past.  And yet, even at the height of Christendom, when it seemed the world was, or would shortly become, wholly Christian, there were those 'perspicacious Christians' who saw that all was not well - the reformers of the church, who regularly saw themselves as in a minority even though they were surrounded by professing Christians.  The point that Barth is making is that the church is, generally speaking, small and weak - too small to compete in the marketplace of ideas, too weak to triumph on the ideological battlegrounds, too insignificant to make much of a difference to the madness of the world.  That this was also the experience of the prophets and apostles (as shown by Barth's quotation from Isaiah) may not make us feel much better.

And what are we to say concerning the countless multitudes who either ante or post Christum natum have had no opportunity to hear this witness?

Perhaps the most acute form of this problem: how is gospel hope to be maintained for the world when so many have never heard of him - and many of those came and passed before his nativity?

Hic Rhodus, hic salta!  The Christian is merely burying his head in the sand if he is not disturbed by these questions and does not find his whole ministry of witness challenged by them.  He buries it even more deeply if in order to escape them, forgetting that he can be a Christian at all only as a witness of Jesus Christ, he tries to retreat into his own faith and love or those of his fellow Christians.  Nor is there any sense in trying to leap over this barrier with the confident mien of a Christian world conqueror.

Three useless responses to the problem: firstly, to pretend that is isn't there, to ignore the questions - a useless response, and a damaging one, because it exposes the Christian's hope to ridicule; second, to retreat into pietism, of an individualistic or a communitarian sort - a response which denies the Christian's character as a witness, and which smacks more of self-interest and self-preservation than hope; and third, to continue to imagine a revived Constantinianism, perhaps in a very different form, in which the church triumphant will indeed be seen in this life, to be a world-changer, a history-maker - a response which perhaps appeals to self-confidence or youthful exuberance, but which I would guess is often actually founded on insecurity rather than gospel hope, and a sense that we have to do Christ's work for him.

The meaningful thing which he is permitted and commanded and liberated to do in face of it is as a Christian, and therefore unambiguously and unfalteringly, to hope, i.e., in face of what seems by human reckoning to be an unreachable majority to count upon it quite unconditionally that Jesus Christ has risen for each and every one of this majority too; that His Word as the Word of reconciliation enacted in Him is spoken for them as it is spoken personally and quite undeservedly for him; that in Him all were and are objectively intended and addressed whether or not they have heard or will hear it in the course of history and prior to its end and goal; that the same Holy Spirit who has been incomprehensibly strong enough to enlighten his own dark heart will perhaps one day find a little less trouble with them; and decisively that when the day of the coming of Jesus Christ in consummating revelation does at last dawn it will quite definitely be that day when, not he himself, but the One whom he expects as a Christian, will know how to reach them, so that the quick and the dead, those who came and went both ante and post Christum, will hear His voice, whatever its significance for them (Jn. 5:25).

The detail of this sentence will not, of course, be acceptable to those who are committed to the doctrine of limited atonement, which is a shame for them; but the thrust of it is I hope broadly appealing.  Christ has spoken his word; astonishingly, by the power of the Spirit that word has reached even me; there is nobody who is therefore beyond the reach of this word, even in the passage of time and history in which we see such a small minority receive it; at the end of history Christ will speak his word in such a way that all will hear his voice 'whatever its significance for them' - and the context of Barth's reference to John's Gospel makes it clear we cannot prejudge what that significance will be.  I am reminded of the scene in The Last Battle when everyone comes face to face with Aslan, to head off to his left or right.  There is no need for anxiety about the progress of Christ's word; indeed, anxiety is ruled out by gospel hope.

This is what Christian hope means before that insurmountable barrier.  This is what the Christian hopes for in face of the puzzle which it presents.  But the Christian has not merely to hope.  He has really to show that he is a man who is liberated and summoned, as to faith and love, so also to hope.  And if he really hopes as he can and should as a Christian, he will not let his hands fall and simply wait in idleness for what God will finally do, neglecting his witness to Christ.  On the contrary, strengthened and encouraged by the thought of what God will finally do, he will take up his ministry on this side of the frontier.  He will thus not allow himself to be disturbed by questions of minorities or majorities, of success or failure, of the more probable or more likely improbable progress of Christianity in the world.  As a witness of Jesus Christ, he will simply do - and no more is required, though this is indeed required - that which he can do to proclaim the Gospel in his own age and place and circle, doing it with humility and good temper, but also with the resoluteness which corresponds to the great certainty of his hope in Jesus Christ.

To hope in this Christian sense is not a passive thing; it is not like hoping a bus will come along, just sitting and waiting for an event beyond one's control.  Rather, it is living as one called to hope.  Knowing that God has taken care of the end result, knowing that there is reason for absolute confidence - the Christian will bear witness to Christ.  Whether in the minority or majority, whether strong or weak, he will just do what can do in the place he is put; and all he can do is live and speak as a witness.  The humility in which this is to be done springs from the fact that nothing ultimately depends on his work as a witness, but everything rests on the One to whom he bears witness.

Advent and Christmas

Working through the letter of 2 Peter over the last few weeks, one of the things I've noticed is that forward momentum in the Christian life, driven and energised by hope for the second coming of the Lord, is a much bigger thing in the New Testament than it is in much of the contemporary Christianity with which I am familiar.  For 2 Peter, it seems to me, you're either growing in Christian character or you're falling back into the orbit of the corrupt world; you're either straining towards the promise of a new heavens and new earth where righteousness dwells or you're scoffing at God.

Particularly striking at this time of year, as Advent gives way to Christmas: the way in which you look forward reveals something about the way you look back.

If you're not growing in Christian character (looking forward), you've forgotten that you were once washed from sin (looking back).

If you're scoffing at the idea of Christ's return and the final judgement (looking forward), you've forgotten the Majesty that has already been revealed in Christ (looking back).

It strikes me that if we're not looking forward to Christ's second coming, that is a sign that we've critically misunderstood Christmas.  If we think, with the classic liberal and with many a nativity play, of Christmas as simply a particular example of the everyday miracle of life (i.e., as a myth), we will expect that existence will simply roll on as it ever has done: a series of miracles, the world infused with the miraculous.  No second coming here.  If, on the other hand, we follow some apologists and more conservative theologians and make Christmas all about history - a one-off, uniquely glorious event - we will not necessarily be driven to expect any further events - or if we do, we must confess them to be logically somewhat disconnected from the first.  Maybe a second coming, but what has that to do with Christmas?

But if we see in Christmas the breaking in of the end, the ultimate, into our history - interrupting its flow, bringing into history that which history could never throw up of itself: redemption, salvation, new creation - if we see that in the story of the manger, then we must look for the full and final revelation of that salvation.  Redemption which does not redeem, new creation which gets lost in the old: these are impossible things.  If in the baby in the manger we see - let us get to the absolute point - Almighty God, then we must expect the glory of God to fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.  We must, therefore, look forward to his return, his full unveiling, the judgement of all the earth.

Which is more or less what I was trying to say about this time last year!

He must maintain and defend it

We tell our Lord God plainly, that if he will have his church, he must maintain and defend it; for we can neither uphold nor protect it...

Thus Luther, Tabletalk, 368.

It is a common theme of my musings on Sunday nights and Monday mornings that if God wants to have a church, he is going to have to step in and work.  Whether the Sunday service has gone well or poorly - and I am often a bad judge of that - there is still the realisation that nothing we have done is sufficient.  Nothing we have done can bring it about that spiritually dead people will come to life; nothing we have done will lead by necessary consequence to the strengthening of faith; nothing we have done is adequate to defend those who know the Lord from the attacks of world, flesh, and devil.

Indeed, the church is a very fragile thing.

One of the most helpful applications which I take from the Advent season is simply this: not only does the world need Christ to come to redeem his creation on the last day, but the church needs Christ to come to save his people every single day.  Because God wanted to save his world, he sent forth from the heavens his eternal Word, to become a baby, frail and human.  If God wants to keep his church, he must send forth from the heavens his eternal Word, again and again and again, by his Spirit.  If God wants to grow his church, he must open up the heavens and show forth Christ.

It is a humble but impertinent prayer:

Lord God, you have shown us that we can do nothing without you, either to maintain your honour, display your glory, preserve your church, or advance your kingdom.  In truth, we are nothing unless you send your Word in the power of your Spirit.  And so, we turn to you.  If you desire to have a church, if you desire to draw a people to yourself, if you desire to be glorified in all the earth - you must do it.  Will you do it, please?  Amen.

Advent makes Christmas

This comes with the usual qualifiers: you don't have to celebrate Christmas, and you don't have to observe Advent.  For various reasons, I think both are useful things to do.  But I'm happy that I can observe the season to the Lord, and you can abstain from observing to the Lord, and all will be well.  What I'm really talking about here is the concepts, or the realities, represented by Christmas and Advent - though I confess I don't know of any better way to keep them in the mind than the liturgical observances.  Anyway...

The Christmas story is constantly exposed to two great dangers.  On the one hand, there is the danger that it might be reduced to mere myth.  For those of us raised in Western culture, even in its post-Christian guise, the story is extremely familiar, and we were mostly exposed to it as children.  Thanks to the phenomenon of the nativity play, or the school carol service, the Christmas story has taken on a childish feel; all little donkey and no crying he makes.  Throw in some fantastical elements - angelic choirs, virgin birth - and you've got a myth.  A story of enduring significance, of deep meaning, perhaps even in a sense of great truth - but ultimately not challenging.  Not challenging because myths arise out of human experience, and can at the end of the day very easily be cashed out as something very human.  The Christmas myth tells us that, in a way, God dwells with all of us; the Christmas myth expresses the hope of universal brotherhood and peace on earth.  Annually we tell ourselves the story to remind ourselves of these deep realities.  We can live with the myth, even be enriched by it.

On the other hand, there is the danger that the Christmas story might become for us mere history.  This is more of a danger for those of us who take the biblical accounts seriously, who claim in some sense to 'believe' the Christmas story.  In a culture which largely reads the Christmas story through the lens of myth, we feel the need to stand up and say 'no, this really happened'.  There was an actual baby, real shepherds, wise men (not kings, it doesn't say they were kings!) with tangible gifts.  At the end of the day, I think this approach also strips the Christmas story of its challenge.  The birth of Jesus becomes simply one thing - albeit a fairly remarkable thing - alongside all the other things whic have happened.  We mark it every year by asserting its historicity, quibbling over any legendary elements that might have crept in over the long years of re-telling, establishing the core of 'what really happened'.  But it's still just a thing that happened, in the past.  Past occurrences don't confront or challenge me.  Of course events in history may have shaped the present world, but they are themselves trapped, back there and then.  We can live in the knowledge of this history, perhaps informed and enlightened by it.

The emphasis of the Advent season is not, despite popular perception, on counting down to Christmas.  It's actually about waiting for something more significant than an annual celebration: it's about waiting for Jesus.  Advent reminds us that he is coming, and that the one who is coming is the one who previously came.  It puts us in an eschatological frame of mind.  That is to say, we're thinking about ultimate things, the end, the final judgement, the redemption and restoration of creation.  And it turns out that is the best frame of mind to approach Christmas, because according to the New Testament the incarnation of the Word of God is not merely myth - a universal truth of humanity - or merely history - an important event in the series of world events; rather, the Christmas story is the story of the end of the ages.  It is a genuinely new thing, the first really new thing there has been since the creation of the world, not contingent on anything that has gone before, not arising out of the human condition or out of human history.  It is eschatology through and through.

And that is challenging, because it means that Christmas calls us, as we consider the baby who came, to also look to the horizon and see the King who is coming.  It tells us that the world is changed, whether we can see it or not, and that we are called to live in the tension of the salvation that is fully accomplished but not universally seen, the now and the not yet.  It confronts us with the fact that the child in the manger is our contemporary, that he is now on the throne of the universe.  He is not merely a factor in our being as human, or a factor in our history as a race, but he is the factor in our present being, the One who determines who we are and what our world is about.  He is the Lord.

The night is far gone

A few decades after the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome telling them that their salvation was nearer now than it had been when they first believed.  There is a set day of redemption, and with each passing day it gets closer.  Only the Father knows when that day will be, but the Spirit functions as an alarm clock, waking up God's people before the dawn.  With the Word of God ringing in our ears, we know what time it is.

The night, you see, is old.  It has been night for so long, but now - in this time between the times, this epoch that commences with an empty tomb within which the women seek him in vain and hastens toward the day when every eye shall see him - now the day is at hand.  The Morning Star is in the sky, and dawn is just over the horizon.  And it is closer, now: closer than when Paul wrote.  Soon it will be day.

So wake up.  Live like a daytime person.  Shake off sleep, stop living like the night is endless.  Don't indulge in behaviour that makes sense only in the darkness, but prepare yourself.

It will be soon, even if that means another thousand years of waiting.  The night is far gone, even if it stretches for millennia to come. The day is at hand.

Advent theology

Recent conversations I've been having with people around the merits (or demerits) of classical theism have driven home to me again that theology, like everything the church is called to do, is an advent discipline, which is to say, it's grounded, provisional, and eschatological.

Theology is grounded because it is based in the original advent of Christ.  We in the church have seen something of God, and therefore we must speak.  Because it matters that we speak faithfully - that what we say conforms to what God has revealed - we have theology, a discipline which aims to critique our talk about God so as to achieve that faithfulness.  What that means is that theology is far from being an anything-goes affair.  The real God has really revealed himself, and it matters that when we speak of him our speech reflects his revelation.

Theology is provisional because we live between the times.  We look back to Christ and rejoice in what he has done, but we acknowledge that we still await our redemption.  That means that we have to recognise two things.  One is our own continuing sinfulness and weakness.  Everything that we say is open to critique, and nothing that we say will perfectly express God's being and action.  The other is the movement of history.  Things that were said in the church yesterday cannot just be repeated today as if they definitely still made sense.  Human speech which was faithful to God's revelation yesterday may be unfaithful if simply repeated verbatim today.  It is not as if God has changed!  But in this between-the-times world, nothing stands still for long.  Words change their meaning, cultural resonances shift, philosophies rise and fall.  We must speak today, knowing that the church of tomorrow must speak again and afresh.

Theology is eschatological because we look forward to seeing Christ.  On that day, theology will become defunct, as we will know even as we are known.  Or, to put it another way, the human discipline of theology will give way to the divine theology, which will once and for all correct our faulty notions and purify and complete our stumbling efforts to speak.  Faithful theology looks forward to its own dismissal, its service done and no longer required.  The goal, after all, never was theology as a discipline, but knowledge of God as a relational reality.

Those who wait

My friend Tanya Marlow has written a book about waiting.  Waiting, which we're so bad at.  Waiting, which is just a part of life.  Waiting, which is essential to our faith.  Honestly, it's not the sort of book I normally read (it's all creative and stuff, and I usually take my theology straight up and a little more staid) - but I think you might benefit from reading it.  Yes, you.  Because you're waiting too, aren't you, for something?

The majority of the book is given over to re-tellings of the stories of four Biblical characters - Sarah, Isaiah, John the Baptist, and Mary.  The stories are narrated in the first person, and each split into five short chapters.  There is some great writing here, and a sense of immediacy which really pulls you into the world of the Bible.  Importantly, on only a few occasions (e.g. the first chapter of the Mary narrative) does the imaginative detail end up carrying the main point of the chapter - always a risk with these sorts of reconstructions!  The story-telling here is genuinely inviting us to look again at the Bible, without on the whole obscuring the Biblical narrative behind its own story-telling.  

And this may not be that exciting to many readers, but I was really pleased to have an appendix in which Tanya explains some of the interpretive choices she has made, and some of the ways in which she has avoided making interpretive choices (e.g. what exactly happened to Sarah in Egypt?)  Having that working on display is both a fascinating insight into the creative process, and a great reminder that Tanya is a responsible exegete and insightful theologian as well as a story-teller.

So, waiting.  How useful it is to be reminded that waiting for God to act has been a central experience of the fathers and mothers of our faith throughout the centuries!  Through the lenses of these stories we see different aspects of what waiting means: disappointment, delay, doubt, disgrace.  No doubt different stories will resonate with different people; perhaps listening to and engaging with the stories that resonate less immediately with us will help us to understand better the struggles of others.  But Tanya is not just reflecting on how hard it is to wait.  We are also reminded through these stories that we are waiting for someone - for God - to act: and we are reminded that he does indeed act, even when we don't see it.  It is worth it.

The book is rounded off by a fifth section, which moves away from story-telling to apply some of the insights we've hopefully picked up along the way into our own personal stories.  This section is brief but astute; I could have had more of it.  Then there is a second appendix with questions for group Bible study, which highlights that this book could be used in lots of different ways.  It would work really well as an advent course for homegroups, for example.

So, no, I wouldn't normally read this sort of book, but I'm glad I read this one.  The theme is important, and Tanya is just the person to tackle it.  And despite my general preference for a weighty theological tome, I wonder on reflection whether this isn't just the way to write about waiting - because after all, the wait isn't just a doctrine, but a lived experience of groaning and hoping.

As Tanya helps us to pray:

Lord Jesus,

Who waited for centuries in the light of heaven

Nine months in the warm darkness of a womb

And three days in a tomb

Be with us in the waiting, we pray.

Advent IV: The Blessed Virgin

That Christ was born of a virgin means the complete contradiction of all human possibility.

It is not as if God could not have brought his Son into the world in another way.  We need to remember that Jesus was truly and fully human, and there is no obvious reason why he could not have been born in the usual manner, with a human biological father.  But the exclusion of human initiative and activity at precisely this point underlines what is happening here: God himself is taking the initiative, God himself is coming to save.

We need to see clearly that the role of the virgin Mary is not to be the height of humanity, the chosen product of human history, prepared by grace and made ready (or perhaps even worthy!) to be the Mother of God.  Far from it.  That she is the Mother of God is the accomplishment of divine fiat.  Not even her faith and acquiescence represents a cooperation with God.  The angel, after all, doesn't come with an offer which she can accept or refuse, but with an announcement: this is happening!  Mary's own 'fiat' is to her credit, but it is only an echo of the divine.  All is grace.

When Christ returns, and rights all wrongs, and ushers in eternal life - well, that too will be a one-sidedly divine accomplishment.  All our working and watching and praying will not bring in the new age.  At best, all of those things are just our own echo of the divine 'fiat', our acknowledgement that in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, all is done.  Like the blessed virgin after the annunciation but before the birth in Bethlehem, we have heard God say that it will be, and we have said in response: so be it.

And after that, the wait.

Comfort ye my people

One of those mornings when the lectionary readings just line up rather nicely.  From Isaiah 51:

“I, I am he who comforts you;
who are you that you are afraid of man who dies,
of the son of man who is made like grass?"

 And from 2 Thessalonians 2:

Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word.

Note that it is God himself, with and through the Lord Jesus Christ, who gives objective comfort - the eternal comfort that comes from having hope.  And it is to God himself, with and through the Lord Jesus Christ, that Paul turns to ask that the Thessalonian Christians might have that comfort as a present, subjective reality.  (And implicitly Isaiah's preaching is doing the same: since it is God who comforts Israel [objectively], let Israel be comforted by God [subjectively]).

Comfort is a very Advent-y word.  It carries with it the sense that there is darkness and grief - it isn't joy or celebration, it's the arm around the shoulders when things are tough.  It's someone walking alongside you through the hard times.  That God does this, both by giving us objective reason to be comforted and by subjectively comforting our hearts - that is glorious.

Advent III: Prepare the way

The voice of one crying in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord!'

That there will be a figure coming ahead of the Lord, one to prepare his way, is a theme of Isaiah's prophecy, and also Malachi 3 and 4.  The New Testament sees John the Baptist as fulfilling this role.  He is to prepare the way, to make things ready for the Lord when he comes, to prepare a people who are ready to receive him.

But who was prepared?  Just a few, I suppose - there were those who followed John initially and then became disciples of Jesus.  According to the fourth gospel, some at least of the apostolic band may have been amongst them.  And maybe there was some sort of general preparation going on, some sort of shaking loose of some of the common assumptions of first century Judaism, perhaps a little expectation-raising.  But in the end, even the prepared don't seem very prepared.  The disciples fail to grasp the mission of Jesus until after the resurrection - arguably until after Pentecost.

Who was prepared, really?

John the Preparer stands in a curiously ambivalent light.  There is the John who cries 'behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!', the first to acknowledge the identity and mission of the Messiah.  This is the same John who is happy for his own reputation to be diminished, so long as the fame of Jesus is increased.  He is the herald, the friend of the bridegroom, and as such the greatest born of woman.

And yet, even in that phrase, something else is said: the least in the kingdom is greater than John.  The imprisoned herald openly questions whether this truly is Messiah.  There is something odd about the fact that John continues to have a band of disciples even after Messiah has come.  Ought not the forerunner to have completely given way?  Biblically this tension isn't resolved until the apostle Paul baptizes some disciples of John in Ephesus, years later.

It strikes me that even the ministry of John, the Preparer, the one who makes ready - even his work by itself is a dead end, a kind of cul-de-sac, a preparation which leaves nobody prepared.  It is only as Jesus himself pushes forward into the situation that the preparation of John has genuine light shone upon it.  The preparation proves to be ineffective except where it is taken up by a new and special work of grace; a work of grace which shows itself to have no need of preparation at all.

I'm struck this morning that this is Christian ministry: preparing, making ready, clearing the way - and knowing all along that nobody will be prepared, and nothing will be made ready, and the way will remain blocked, unless Christ himself comes and makes our work effective.

Advent II: Might not die

The syllogism: All men must die, Caius is a man, therefore Caius must die, is no doubt an illuminating statement of pagan wisdom.  But it is not a statement of Christian wisdom...  It cannot be, because it overlooks the parousia of Jesus Christ...  (IV/3.2, 924).

People often think that the most characteristic claim of Christianity is that there is life after death.  The Christian gospel, based on the resurrection of Christ, does indeed make that claim.  But if it has become characteristic, that is because we Christians have lost sight of the bigger, and more outrageous, claim that the gospel makes about the end of human life.

We believe that we might not die.

Indeed, every Christian must believe, on the grounds that the resurrected Christ has promised to return, and that this return will be the final, consummating event of human history as we know it, that there is a possibility that nobody else will die.

From the perspective of the NT, the whole of history is now hastening towards the final revelation of the glory of Jesus Christ in his coming.  In that perspective, there is a sense in which the 'normal' way for an individual human history to come an end now - in conformity with the end which we expect for general human history - is with the return of the Lord.  Death is a hanger-on, a left-over from an earlier age, an age which still looked forward to the cross and did not yet look out with triumph from the empty tomb.

You might not die.

Advent I: Contentment?

How do we hold together the Bible's call to be content in all circumstances with the fact that the Bible itself points us towards a glorious future hope for which we are to be yearning and looking forward?  How can we be content in the here and now, whilst acknowledging that we don't now have the one thing which we truly need and (at least sometimes) want - the presence of the Lord Jesus?  How can we be content in a broken world that is full of both suffering and evil (not to mention our broken selves, which are similarly stuffed full of woe and wickedness), whilst seriously and genuinely waiting for the redemption of creation?

The answer must have something to do with the relationship between the first and second coming of Christ.  One way of thinking about this relationship might go something like this: Jesus came to get the ball rolling on salvation, and he will come back to put the finishing touches to it; in the meantime he is, through the church, carrying on the plan.  On this scheme, I can understand the discontent that we are meant to feel - it's the discontent of a half-done job - but not the radical contentment to which we are called.

I think the Biblical relationship is more like this: Jesus came to accomplish salvation; there is nothing left to do, and the point of the continuation of history is just to give space for people to come to acknowledge his salvation, enjoy it, and bear witness to it.  His second coming will be to reveal that salvation as it has already been accomplished, thus rolling back the darkness of sin and suffering which still clouds our view of his victory, and vindicating both himself and all those who have trusted in him.  Contentment, then, is based on the accomplished work of Christ - everything needful has been one.  Yearning is based on the hidden nature of this accomplishment - we want to see him glorified!

And if that's right, then one aspect of advent must be mission.  We want to see him in glory, acknowledged and worshipped for all he has done.  That will happen, and we can rest in the knowledge that it will happen.  But a part of our waiting will surely be to bear witness in the darkness to his great light, so that we already see him glorified in the lives of people who come to know him.

Prisoner of Hope

Perpetua was woken, as usual, by the warmth of the sunlight slipping in between the bars on her solitary high window.  She rose immediately, and began to pace the perimeter of the round cell.  This was the best part of the day, and there was no knowing when it would end.  In earlier times, in the first weeks and months - years? - after she had arrived here, morning had been the time for prayer.  She still prayed, but now she paced as well.  Important to exercise.

It was only minutes before the heavy oak door opened.  As usual, there were two figures waiting in the doorway.  As usual, they were masked.  Perpetua remembered when they had not worn masks; she remembered human faces.  Now just blank masks, which made her wonder, in her few idle moments, how the people under them could see.  But she did not ask about the masks.  Any questions along those lines brought punishment.  Instead she rose and, as usual, followed the figures out of the cell, under the stone lintel which was carved on the inside with a single word: hope.  This, after all, was the doorway out of prison.

One of the two figures walked ahead of her, whilst the other took the usual place behind.  Perpetua knew the route and walked it without thinking.  She briefly wondered whether the figure ahead of her was not that of a woman, but about that too it was forbidden to ask or speculate, and she quickly killed the thought process.  Better not to think what she could not say.  She shuffled slowly - why did they always walk so slowly now? - down the dark corridor, noticing again the broken statues which stood along the edges in the deeper shadows.  They had no heads.  Perpetua knew what was coming.

The darkness of the corridor opened up into the light of the arena, and the silence was replaced by the murmur of thousands of human voices.  The first time she had been brought here, they had roared with anger.  Now the volume barely rose as she entered and followed her guide to the centre of the arena.  Why did they keep coming here to see her?  From the noise they seemed uninterested.  She wished she could see their faces.

Perpetua's two escorts retreated, leaving her standing alone in the middle of the sand-covered floor of the vast arena.  She turned to face the far side, where there was another opening to another corridor.  She knew what to expect now.  After a few minutes the first one appeared.  She did not know how they moved or by what mechanism they were made to speak.  They appeared to be half-carved statues, but she knew that they were really ancient figures.  When first she came here they had been complete, and colourful - some beautiful, some gaudy, images of animals and people and things.  Now they looked weathered and indistinct, as if they had been exposed to the elements for centuries.  How long had it been?  How could they have changed so fast?

The voices had changed too, but not the demand.  The first time - the first hundred times - she had been here, the statues had spoken with varied voices, one seductive, one commanding, one pleading, but all with the same demand: 'worship me!'  Back then, she had proudly defied them.  Now she did not respond at all as the first mis-shapen thing ground its way towards her and uttered its demand, in a broken, hissing voice that seemed as weathered as the statue itself.  After a few seconds, as usual, the thing moved away from her to the edge of the arena.  Perpetua waited.  There would be another, and another.  Hundreds of broken statues, all with the same demand.  She would not listen.

Soon the edge of the open arena was lined with objects, all hissing together: worship us!  Perpetua waited for it to end.  It always ended.  But today seemed longer than usual, and the voices seemed to be rising higher.  She knew that nothing was served by speaking, and she tried to remain silent, but the hissing, creaking voices...  Why wouldn't they stop?  A cry burst from her.

'How can I worship you when I don't know what you are?  Do you even know what you are?  Are you anything at all?'

There was silence in the arena.  Absolute silence.

And then the two masked figures were there, one on either side of her.  They took an arm each, not too gently, and dragged her away, back to the door from which she had entered the arena.  The spectators made no sound; the broken statues were still. It was over for today.

As they reached the door to the cell, Perpetua glanced upward, as she always did.  Here on the outside, the lintel was also carved with one word: surely.

'Even so' she muttered as she passed underneath, and the heavy door swung shut behind her.

Anti-Advent

Suppose there is, ultimately, nobody coming to save us.  Suppose there is, at the end of the day, no absolute hope.  Suppose that when it comes down to it, all will end in oblivion.  Well, then, what need for renunciation and restraint in the present?  If that is the case: eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!

You can do what you want, have what you want, be what you want.  No holding back.  The only price is giving up any shred of meaning, any shred of hope, any last vestige of significance.

It makes sense, and of course if you are convinced that this is how reality is, this is how you'll live - one way or another.  It may not look like unbridled excess; that might not be what you want.  But it will mean self-indulgence, even perhaps the self-indulgence of frugality, even perhaps the self-indulgence of generosity and genuine love.  Nothing means anything, and there is no hope: so why not just live for yourself and the things that you choose to value in the fleeting moment which you have - as you make your way all too quickly from darkness into darkness.

It makes sense.

I just don't understand why so many people seem so cheerful about it.

Waiting, hoping, and just saying no

Advent is obviously about waiting.  In so far as it is about waiting, it is also about hoping.  Christian waiting is not a vague sense that something might happen and we'd better stick around for it.  It is the knowledge that the Son of God who came once to bear the sins of many will return to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.  That is a certain hope, and it is that hope which informs the character of our waiting.  It is not quite the anticipation of a child waiting for Christmas - there is more solemnity to it than that, because we know the gravity of the event for which we wait.  Neither is it the frustrated waiting of the man waiting for the bus - we know that Christ is not being held up anywhere, or delayed by anything beyond his will and control.  And again, it is not the bored waiting of the woman who just wants this meeting to end - because the person for whom we wait demands that as we wait we also work, joyfully in his service.

It is a waiting coloured by hope, a waiting which takes on the character of the event for which it waits, a waiting which builds in us the character of the one for whom we wait.  It is solemn and joyful and resting and confident and active.

And it teaches us to say no.

It is not popular nowadays to point out that Christianity involves a lot of renouncing, a lot of self-limiting, a lot of saying 'no'.  Some of that is saying no to things which are bad and destructive, but an awful lot of it is also saying no to things which, in themselves, are good and legitimate enjoyments, but which are not right for us now.  It is sacrificing present enjoyment for the future hope.  Whether it is the 'no' to food of the Christian committed to fasting, or the 'no' to sex of the Christian committed to celibacy, or the millions of other little 'noes' that build up, this is a life of renunciation.  It is a life of denial.  And that is okay.  Because of the hope.  All of this saying 'no' is, in one sense, just waiting - deferring enjoyment and pleasure until he comes.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

Waiting

One of the most useful things, for me, in following the liturgical year, is that emotionally I'm not able to be everywhere at once.  The year helps me to order things, and brings an emotional focus to the different seasons.  So what am I meant to be feeling in Advent?

I've been thinking about waiting in the Psalms.  Waiting implies a situation which is not yet what you believe it ought to be.  For the Psalmists that is generally opposition to themselves and to God, but what has struck me as I have been reading over the Psalms which deal explicitly with waiting for God is that the feel of them can be very different.  Take Psalm 33, for example.  This is a Psalm of joyous worship - "shout for joy in YHWH you righteous!" - and absolute confidence - "he is our help and shield".  But there is still waiting.  "Our soul waits for YHWH".  Confidence here leads to waiting.  Because God is good, and sovereign, and cares for us, we will wait for him.  This is expectant, eager waiting.

Psalm 62 has a slightly different feel.  Without a doubt, the Psalmist is struggling in some way; it seems from opposition around him - "how long will all of you attack a man?"  But there is still a certain serenity about it.  "For God alone my soul waits in silence".  It seems to me that this is patient, enduring waiting.

Psalm 69 is different again.  Here the Psalmist's situation seems more desperate - "the waters have come up to my neck" - and his cry more anguished - "save me, O God!"  If he waits for God, it is not so much eagerly or patiently, but because he is forced to.  "My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God".  This looks like urgent, anxious waiting.

In Psalm 39, it feels as if the Psalmist has almost given up.  He waits for God only because nobody else can help him, since his problem is fundamentally his own sin and guilt.  "And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?  My hope is in you.  Deliver me from all my transgressions."  This feels to me like resigned, enforced waiting.

Then there are Psalms 74 and 79, with their impassioned "how long, O YHWH/God?"  The concern here is wider; it is not so much to do with the Psalmist's personal situation as it is with the state of the world, and particularly the way in which God is dishonoured - "is the enemy to revile your name forever?"  This is impatient, zealous waiting.

Waiting for God does not have one particular emotional or situational profile.  I am working on what that means for me personally, but I am encouraged that God meets us where we are - whether that is quietly confident in him, hugely saddened by the brokenness and rebellion of the world, or frustrated and impatient with his apparent inaction.

To my soul, during Advent

Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Since you want to be amongst those who are saved, consider how you can stir yourself up to eagerly await the return of Christ.  You know very well how hard it will be.  You know all of the distractions - sinful things and things which are in themselves good - which you habitually use to keep your mind in the present and on the earth, away from endings and ultimate things.  But for this season, please, spend some time thinking about reality.

Meditate on the terrible things that happen in the world.  Consider that evil people prosper, and those who want to do good are often powerless.  Think about the fact that wickedness is part of the warp and woof of human society, built in to the very structures designed to restrain it.  Do not excuse these things, or resign yourself to them, but consider evil to be evil in truth.  Remember that only the coming of Christ will do away with wickedness, and only the coming of Christ will bring down those who do rather well for themselves out of their evil.  And pray, 'Come, Lord Jesus' - without vindictiveness towards those you see as evil, for who knows what side of the divide they will stand on in the end; but with compassion towards those who are broken by the sinfulness of humanity.

Consider the groaning of creation.  Think about each 'natural' disaster, and remember that it isn't natural.  Each terrible headline speaks of the bondage of creation, of the hideous ripples spreading out through all of created reality from the first sin of humanity.  Remember that only Jesus will bring creation to its longed for rest, and pray 'Come, Lord Jesus' - with hope for a renewed and perfect world.

Spend some time reflecting on your own sinfulness.  Think how many times you have failed your own standards, and then remember that your standards are far too low.  Think about how often you have had to cry to God from the depths of sin for mercy.  Consider the ongoing corruption in your heart, that taints even the good things you try to do.  Think about how hard it is to pray, how difficult to praise, how painful to serve.  Remember that only Jesus can deliver you from that wretched man, yourself, and pray 'Come, Lord Jesus' - in expectation of your own perfection.

Think about the face of Christ.  You have not seen it yet, but you know that one day, when he appears, your transformation will be complete as you see him as he is.  And pray, 'Come, Lord Jesus' - knowing that that will be heaven.

O Dayspring

O Dayspring, splendour of light eternal and sun of righteousness:
Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

Enlightenment is a funny concept.  The images it conjures up for me are radically contradictory.  On the one hand, the eastern sage - the cliche of films without number - who is possessed of a supernatural calm and a deep spiritual awareness of his one-ness with the Universe; on the other hand, Immanuel Kant - the spokesman par excellence for the European cultural movement known self-consciously as 'the Enlightenment' - daring to know, having the courage to think for himself, mastering the universe through understanding.

These two figures have two things in common.  One is that they are driven by autonomy.  The spiritual figure, for all his sense of one-ness with all that is, seeks and finds that one-ness within himself.  It is not so much that he is part of a larger whole, as that he is the whole, and vice versa.  The more rationalist figure, committed to the throwing off of authority, deems his own mind to be the source and criterion of truth.  Both figures claim to have light, but neither can really claim to be enlightened; on neither of them does light fall from without.

The other similarity is that neither of them perceives the world to be a place of darkness.  It is not that they are oblivious to the presence of evil or suffering, but fundamentally evil and suffering are treated as soluble problems, issues waiting to disappear.  Perhaps they will be shown to be imaginary, or perhaps they will be shown to be really good once we see or feel the big picture.  Or perhaps we will just see them as problems to which we can set our intellects; hurdles to be overcome.  Fundamentally, the world is a place of light, and that of course stems from the fact that fundamentally both figures see themselves as having light within themselves.

How different the perspective of Scripture - the people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned.  Indeed, we must not seek to walk by lights we have kindled ourselves.  Christ alone enlightens, as a light entering a dark place,

O Key of David

O Key of David, and sceptre of the house of Israel,
who opens and no one can shut, shuts and no one can open:
Come and bring the prisoners from the prison house,
who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death.

That Jesus opens is wonderful news; that he shuts seems to me right now to be even better news.  Open a door, let the prisoners out - but where will they do, and what will they do?  What if the prisoners are sinners?  What if they - we - are so accustomed to darkness that they would wander back into the prison without a second thought?  A life set free in this way is a shapeless, under-determined, and ultimately desperately dangerous life.

But Jesus also shuts, and no one can open.  He bars the way back into darkness.  Try as we might, we can't go back to where we were or who we were before.  God has come into our world, and that can't be undone.