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.

FIEC Leaders' Conference 2018: A reflection

The FIEC Leaders' Conference is always good value.  For those of us in small churches, it's great to be part of a fellowship of churches that extends across the country and includes local churches of all sorts of shapes and sizes.  To actually meet with people from some of those churches is an encouragement.  I suspect that larger churches also benefit from being made aware of the need in other places.  Just as an expression of real fellowship in the gospel, and a chance to be with brothers and sisters from different places, the conference is invaluable.  I enjoyed that aspect of it this year.

And that's before you throw in the actual programme.

This year Don Carson preached two extraordinary sermons from Isaiah.  Extraordinary in length and content!  I thought the first one, from Isaiah 6, was never going to end - and I didn't hugely mind.  Having said that, the content was hard, or at least heavy.  It may be that, like Isaiah, we are called to preach in a context where people are blinded and deafened.  It may be that we will have to keep going without seeing much in the way of fruit.  The Holy Seed of Isaiah 6 didn't bear fruit for 700 years...  Am I up for it?  Will the vision of the glory of God in Christ (which Isaiah saw) sustain a lifelong ministry whatever the apparent results?

On the other hand, The Don took us to Isaiah 40 to remind us that it might happen.  We can't assume nothing will happen.  Is God still on the throne?  Yes, yes he is.  And the happenings of the world are insignificant in comparison to his great and good plans.

David Robertson led a couple of great seminars on evangelism in the local church.  The second seminar, thinking about evangelism and engagement in the public sphere, was particularly helpful.  I was reminded of The Pastor as Public Theologian by Vanhoozer and Strachan.  I suspect this is a much neglected aspect of the role of the Pastor, and one which I personally need to think about how to engage with.  David suggested that the devil has over-reached in our culture!  By going after gender, Satan has overplayed his hand, and thrown everything into a confusion which may well be ripe for the gospel.  Looking around at the curious alliances which the whole transgender thing has pulled together, I think there may well be something in that.  I think Bonhoeffer's Ethics speaks into this situation.

Of the other plenary sessions, the standout for me was Johnny Prime on Acts 4 and the importance of "together prayer".  Our churches are, I think, losing sight of the importance of corporate prayer.  Prayer meetings are poorly attended.  We can get more people to a business meeting than a prayer meeting!  CCC people, if you're reading this, expect me to be on your back about this in the next few weeks.  Johnny reminded us of Spurgeon's opinion that "we shall never see much change for the better in our churches in general until the prayer meeting occupies a higher place in the esteem of Christians."  Together prayer matters; it might, in the final analysis, be almost the only thing that matters.

The only thing that niggled for me in the conference was the music - which isn't a reflection on the people leading it, whose voluntary service we have to appreciate.  It's just that there isn't a common evangelical songbook nowadays, or an agreed style.  I didn't know about a third of the songs, and some that I did know had had their lyrics chopped about by someone more interested in accessibility than poetry or theological integrity.  And the theme of some of these new songs just seems to be 'our God is bigger than your god'; triumphalism run riot.  I wonder whether it might be possible in future to have different styles of 'sung worship' in different meetings to better reflect the breadth of the Fellowship?  As it was, I felt alienated at those points which ought to have represented the high point of unity in praising the Lord - and I doubt I am the most conservative leader within the FIEC.

But that's a quibble, really, and a tricky (impossible?) thing to settle to everyone's satisfaction.  On the whole, I return from Torquay encouraged, challenged, ready to go again.  The overall message was that there is a lot to do, an awful lot, and we need to crack on; but we also need to ensure that we are cracking on in deep dependence on the Lord.  If that message gets through to the churches represented at the conference, and if the Lord Jesus applies it powerfully to our hearts, the ripples that go out could be significant for the FIEC, for wider evangelicalism, and for our culture.  We'll see.

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.

Won't shout, won't stop

When God sends his Servant, according to Isaiah 42, he will be gentle:

He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a faintly burning wick he will not quench...

By contrast with the frenzied activity of the idolater, God's Servant is serene.  By contrast with the harshness of the rule of idols, God's Servant is gentle.  The images are of such extraordinary care - he won't snap off the bent over reed; he won't snuff out the candle which is sending up a thin column of smoke.  God's Servant is almost excessively gentle.  He will bind up and preserve.  He won't write off anything that has the least good in it.

But neither will he stop in his mission to transform the world:

He will not grow faint or be discouraged
till he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his law.

In his quiet and gentle way, God's Servant will persist in his dealing with the world, without faltering or turning back, until his kind and gentle rule is acknowledged throughout the world.  He won't quit.  Not with individuals, though they be reeds which are ever so be bruised and candles which barely smouder.  Not with all creation, though there seems to be every reason to despair of his ultimate success.  He will press on until he brings it about, because that is what has been given him by God.

What a Saviour Jesus is - what patience and what perseverance!  Christians, let's be encouraged that this is how he deals with us and with the world; and let's be imitators of him as we live out our witness to his goodness.

Really dead

The day Christ spent in the tomb is all about this: he was really dead.  It wasn't a trick.  The Romans didn't half-execute anyone.  He was dead.  He had utterly succumbed to the brutality and horror of life in a sinful world.  More: he had experienced in full the curse of God which lies on a rebellious race.  He was dead.

He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.  He descended into hell...

Today is the proof that he tasted death.  And here's the thing with death: you don't get the full flavour unless you drain the cup, right down to the bottom.  There is the bitterness, in the last swallow.  There is the vile taste that catches in the throat.  He tasted death.

For everyone.  He drank it down for everyone,

And he will swallow up on this mountain
the covering that is cast over all peoples,
the veil that is spread over all nations.

Isaiah 25:7

Burdens

Hardly an original thought, but it struck me again reading Isaiah 46 the other day - God carries us, and we do not carry God.

Everyone has a functional deity, even the most ardent atheist.  Everyone has something, or someone, for which they live.  Everyone has that place to which they go for security, meaning, identity.  Even if the nature of that god is pretty hazy, it is always there.

The claim made by Yahweh, the God of Israel, is not that he is the only god per se, but that he is the only living god, the only god who acts and intervenes, the only creator and sovereign.  Therefore all other gods are mere idols, things of human invention and bereft of life and power.

In Isaiah 46, the case is proved by carrying.  Here are the idols of Babylon:

Bel bows down; Nebo stoops;
their idols are on beasts and livestock;
these things you carry are borne
as burdens on weary beasts.

Idols are carried along, because they can't carry or save themselves. Babylon, says the prophet, will fall, and when it does people will scramble to save their gods, the gods who could not save them or themselves...  It is a pathetic picture, but of course it makes sense.  These gods cannot save human beings; they are themselves the products of human beings.

Yahweh. on the other hand:

“Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel,who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb;even to your old age I am he, and to grey hairs I will carry you.I have made, and I will bear;
I will carry and will save."

God created Israel, and he will carry Israel.  He will save.

It seems a key diagnostic question: in my relationship with my god, who does the heavy lifting?

Perhaps this is easier to get wrong than we think.  In our lives, do we expect to find God carrying us, or do we expect to have to carry him?  In our Bible reading, do we mainly look to be 'challenged', rather than comforted or encouraged?  (An aside to preachers: it is a cheap win for us, 'challenging' people.  People naturally feel both guilty and like they need to fix it; are we encouraging them in that?  When did we last preach purely to comfort people?  When did we last end a sermon by proclaiming peace rather than activity?)  In all our living and doing, are we prepared to lean on him, the God who carries us?

Sanctus

The concept of holiness is all about the existence of boundaries, and the enforcement of those boundaries.  Leviticus is perhaps the book of the Bible which most clearly illustrates this.  The Tabernacle set up, with its Most Holy and Holy Places, symbolises the fact that God is separate.  The Priestly system reinforces this.  At the same time, the Levitical legislation separates Israel as a people from those around them, and creates and enforces a number of boundaries within the people, between clean and unclean.

There appear to be three main boundaries: firstly the boundary between God and not-God, or the Divine and the created - this boundary is implicit in Leviticus, and brought to the fore in the Deuteronomic and prophetic denunciation of idolatry; secondly, the boundary between Righteous and unrighteous - this is really the same thing, but viewed from the perspective of fallen humanity, and therefore if you like ethically rather than ontologically; and thirdly, the boundary between the dedicated and the ordinary - this can be positive (a thing is positively set apart for God and therefore not for ordinary use) or very negative (as in the judgement on the peoples of Canaan, in which some peoples are found to be so corrupt that they are to be devoted wholly to the Lord by destruction rather than treated as 'ordinary' enemies of Israel and Israel's God).  This third notion of holiness - instrumental holiness, if you like - runs through Old and New Testaments, but isn't what I'm talking about here.  I have in mind the distinction between God and creature, and between Righteous and unrighteous.

When we say that God is Holy, we mean both that he is inherently the reality denoted by these boundaries - he is God and not creature, he is righteous and not unrighteous - and at the same time that he is the active enforcer of these boundaries - he will be God and not creature, he will be righteous and not unrighteous.  Tied up with this latter is the idea that God will be seen to be God, and the Righteous One.  He will vindicate himself by enforcing these boundaries.

That is why an encounter with God in his holiness is a terrifying thing.  Think Isaiah before the altar.  As the Seraphim sing out 'Holy, Holy, Holy', he can only respond with 'Woe is me!  For I am lost!'  The fear is not unjustified - to come before the Holy One in an unworthy manner is death.  This fear is also the reaction to Jesus amongst those who understand who he is. The God who will be God over against his creature, and who will maintain and display his righteousness over against sinners - this Holy God, the God we encounter in Christ - he is to be feared.  God's holiness seems to demand separation.

And yet...

Throughout Isaiah's prophecy, God is 'the Holy One of Israel'.  As the Holy One he is, God binds himself to unrighteous Israel.  In just the same way, as the Holy One he is, God binds himself to his fallen creation.  He will be Holy in our midst, not Holy without us.

Where is the logic?

In John 17, Jesus declares that he sanctifies himself - sets himself apart as Holy - so that his people might be sanctified.  He enforces the boundary between God and creature, and between Righteous and unrighteous, by bringing them into the closest connection and yet being consistently God and consistently Righteous.  I think it would be fair to say that at the cross he is the boundary.  His existence is the Holiness of God, God in his active Holiness maintaining his right over against his rebellious creation.

It is just like Leviticus said it would be.  Why build this tent to keep God apart from the sinful people?  It was so that he could go with them!  The boundary is enforced because without it God cannot be with his people.  God maintains himself over against us so that he can confront us and relate to us.

God's Holiness in Christ should make us first fearful, and then thankful.

A holy sadness

Perhaps it is just the Lenten trek through Jeremiah, or perhaps it is something that has been growing over time.  Whatever the cause, I am developing a new appreciation for sadness.  There is something deeply real about sadness.  It is not grief, per se - it is not dragged out of you by a particular catastrophe.  It is the background awareness that much is not right (even if all is well in one's immediate surroundings), and that many are suffering (even if one's own life throws up only the most trivial inconveniences).  At its most basic level, sadness is a reaction - an appropriate reaction, although not the only reaction necessary - to a fallen world.

A man of sorrows.

There is a lot of sadness in the gospel.  It is not all joy and laughter, even if it is ultimately that.  "Then again Iluvatar arose, and the Ainur perceived that his countenance was stern; and he lifted up his right hand, and behold! a third theme grew amid the confusion, and it was unlike the others.  For it seemed at first soft and sweet, a mere rippling of gentle sounds in delicate melodies; but it could not be quenched, and it took to itself power and profundity,  [It became] deep and wide and beautiful, but slow and blended with an immeasurable sorrow, from which its beauty chiefly came."  (Seriously, read the Silmarillion).

Surely he has carried our sorrows.

Thinking a lot at the moment about what it means to stand with the world of sadness, but still within the light of the gospel.  Not to feel the sadness - to pretend that the sadness is completely undone - is, I think, to betray the world.  It is not to walk the way of the cross.  To indulge the sadness, on the other hand, is to be unbelieving.  Is everything sad going to come untrue? asks Sam Gamgee.  No, and yes.  Untrue, but not unreal.  Frodo has to go to the havens; the saved world is not for him to enjoy.  Sadness, but not all tears are evil.  Sadness does not have the last word, but it has the penultimate word.

To be sad, to be low, not for oneself but for the world.  Vicarious sadness.  Feeling the sadness that we all ought to feel.  And knowing that it is through sorrow that God brings joy.

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,