To make things new that never were

We name you wind, power, force, and then,
imaginatively, ‘Third Person.’
We name you and you blow…
blow hard,
blow cold,
blow hot,
blow strong,
blow gentle,
blow new…
Blowing the world out of nothing to abundance,
blowing the church out of despair to new life,
blowing little David from shepherd boy to messiah,
blowing to make all things new that never were.
So blow this day, wind,
blow here and there, power,
blow even us, force,
Rush us beyond ourselves,
Rush us beyond our hopes,
Rush us beyond our fears, until we enact your newness in the world.
Come, come spirit. Amen.

Walter Brueggemann, Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth.

Loss is indeed our gain – Lent (2)

The pushing and shoving of the world is endless.

We are pushed and shoved.

And we do our fair share of pushing and shoving

in our great anxiety.

And in the middle of that

you have set down your beloved suffering son

who was like a sheep led to the slaughter

who opened not his mouth.

We seem not able,

so we ask you to create the spaces in our life

where we may ponder his suffering

and your summons for us to suffer with him,

suspecting that suffering is the only way to come to newness.

So we pray for your church in these Lenten days,

when we are driven to denial –

not to notice the suffering,

not to engage in it,

not to acknowledge it.

So be that way of truth among us

that we should not deceive ourselves.

That we shall see that loss is indeed our gain.

We give you thanks for that mystery from which we live.

Amen.

A prayer for Lent from the ever excellent Walter Brueggemann. Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth. Fortress Press, 2003.

a Bible meme

I've been tagged by Sam on this:

Name the five books (or scholars) that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible. Note that these need not be your five favourite books, or even the five with which you most strongly agree. Instead, I want to know what five books have permanently changed the way you think.

1. Search the Scriptures
This book was my introduction to daily Bible reading in the 1970s. The Bible is broken down into daily readings and accompanied by some questions intended to unpack the text and encourage reflection on how the passage relates to life today. I spent two weeks one summer in 1982 with a friend driving through France and each day we had a short time reading the Bible and praying using the pattern set by Search the Scriptures. I still have the three volumes in my study and my leather bound RSV Bible, a gift from my parents, notated with my answers to the Search the Scriptures questions. I’m afraid I took more than three years to work my way through it.

2. Jude: Dick Lucas
Dick Lucas is the former Rector of St Helen’s Bishopsgate and has been a key figure in the evangelical movement alongside John Stott. I played drums in a band that provided music for the youth events at the Keswick Convention in the early 1980s and I remember hearing Dick give a series of Bible expositions on the letter of Jude. This was my first experience of sustained expository teaching and it quenched a real thirst to wrestle with the Bible in a concentrated systematic manner. I still have the tapes of Dick’s Bible readings on Jude. Although I disagree with some of his application the key point that stood out for me at the time was his insistence that we cannot understand the New Testament, particularly a letter like Jude, without a thorough knowledge of the Old Testament. Throughout my studies, teaching and ministry this lesson has never been forgotten and is continually reinforced. I am grateful to Dick Lucas, Leith Samuel, John Stott and others for the way their passion for the scriptures enthused me among many others.

3. Romans: James D. G. Dunn
I went to study Theology at Durham University in 1982 just as Jimmy Dunn was appointed Lightfoot Professor of Divinity; a post he held until 2003. It is difficult to overstate just how important Dunn’s teaching and writings have been in shaping my understanding of the Bible and theology in general, but his were the lectures I never missed over three years. I literally hopped to his lectures on Romans during my second year when I broke my leg playing football. Dunn wrote his commentary on the Greek text of Romans during my time in Durham and so I had the privilege of hearing his work before it was published. He used to teach from his draft script, with a pencil behind his ear and as he spoke would occasionally make an alteration or note as he lectured and responded to our questions and comments. The commentary is brilliant because it works at so many levels; the analysis of the Greek, the unfolding of Paul’s theology and the application of each passage and exploration of its significance. I took so much for granted listening to a great Biblical scholar developing the New Perspective on Paul along with E. P. Sanders and Tom Wright. Dunn’s lectures were also very accessible as he taught with a clear structure which is reflected in many of his books. One final comment on Dunn, he practised what he preached and had a real engagement with the surrounding communities in the North East, reflected in his book The Kingdom of God and the North East of England.

4. Theology of the Old Testament: Walter Brueggemann
There are plenty of Old Testament scholars who have enriched my understanding and appreciation of the Old Testament but few have changed the way I view the Old Testament like Brueggemann. I love reading and using Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth, Brueggemann’s collection of prayers used before his lectures, but the most influential book is Theology of the Old Testament. The book begins with a magisterial overview of Old Testament theology before embarking on the central thesis of the richness of Israel’s testimony about God. This is a book that demonstrates why the reading of the Old Testament is so important in Christian worship and study. What comes through in this and other works is Brueggemann’s living faith and commitment to the purposes of God. I have seen students who, after a morning session exploring Brueggemann’s arguments, can’t wait to get back to the parish to preach and teach the Old Testament.

5. Daily Study Bible: William Barclay
I’m cheating here and naming two scholars. William Barclay’s Daily Study Bible, 17 commentaries on the New Testament, was his attempt at making the best Biblical scholarship available to the average reader. I ‘borrowed’ these books from my father and they have been a valuable aid in my preaching, teaching and leading of Bible studies. I don’t always agree with Barclay’s theology but these little books are packed full of relevant historical background and pithy illustrations. When struggling to prepare a sermon I have often found inspiration in a comment or story from Barclay which has set me off in a particular direction.

..... for Everyone: Tom Wright
Tom Wright is in the process of completing a ‘for Everyone’ series of New Testament Bible commentaries and in many ways he is the heir to Barclay. Wright gives a fresh translation of a passage and then explores the context and background with appropriate and often challenging applications. So good are these little books that my dog has taken to trying to eat them and there are several part chewed volumes dotted around our house. Seriously it is an amazing undertaking from one of our foremost Biblical scholars and it is so encouraging to see Wright making the latest and best scholarship available and accessible for personal or group use.

And finally....
My father wouldn’t describe himself as a scholar, but he loves reading and preaching from the Bible and he knows it inside out. I can’t remember a time when a Bible was not either close at hand or in his hand and I can trace my love of the scriptures to my parents. Dad has a gift for getting to the heart of a passage and relating it to the lives of the congregation, whether in the parish church or in the prison chapel where much of his ministry has been based. Even on holiday he can’t resist the opportunity to preach and unfold the scriptures, turning the cruises that he and my mum enjoy into a busman’s holiday. My mother’s devotional reading of the Bible has also had a big impact on me and so I would argue that much of my own approach to the Bible has come from my parents almost by osmosis.

I tag Jonathan Evens, Tim Goodbody, Graham Tomlin, Chris Tilling and +Alan Wilson.

ours is a seduced world

God of all truth, we give thanks for your faithful utterance of reality.

In your truthfulness, you have called the world ‘very good.’

In your truthfulness, you have promised,

‘I have loved you with an everlasting love.’

In your truthfulness, you have assured,

‘This is my beloved Son.’

In your truthfulness, you have voiced, ‘Fear not, I am with you.’

In your truthfulness, you have guaranteed that

‘Nothing shall separate us from your love

in Jesus Christ.’

It is your truthfulness that we love.

And yet, we live in a world phoney down deep

in which we participate at a slant.

Ours is a seduced world,

where we call evil good and good evil,

where we put darkness for light and light for darkness,

where we call bitter sweet and sweet bitter (Isa 5:20),

where we call war peace and peace war,

so that we rarely see the truth of the matter.

Give us courage to depart the pretend world of euphemism,

to call things by their right name,

to use things for their right use,

to love our neighbour as you love us.

Overwhelm our fearful need to distort,

that we may fall back into your truth-telling about us,

that we may be tellers of truth and practitioners of truth.

We pray in the name of the One whom you have filled

with ‘grace and truth.’ Amen.

Walter Brueggemann: On reading Jeremiah 23 / October 29, 2001

In The Prophetic Imagination Walter Brueggemann declares:

‘the task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us’.

Brueggemann explores the patterns of prophecy in the Old Testament in order to inspire and challenge the church to engage in such ministry today. The teacher is also the practitioner and this prayer from Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth is a powerful example of Brueggemann’s prophetic sensitivity to contemporary culture. There is beauty and goodness in our culture, though one would be hard pressed to recognise this from the picture mediated to us through the press and broadcast industry. Yet, there is also a sense that we live in an age where we no longer know what is true and what is false and where public policy and private judgement are dictated by what is perceived to be popular and what we can get away with.

Brueggemann calls us to re-orientate ourselves and our society around the One who is truth, the One who can be trusted. The prayer suggests that our flight to the ‘pretend world of euphemism’ is driven by fear and fear does seem to be a dominant feature of our culture. Politicians react to the agenda set by the media, guided by the Daily Mail test rather than by conviction and increasingly terrified of rejection. The press, pandering to the cynicism of a public which they have engendered, publish what they think sells; driven by the need to maintain or increase circulation figures in an era of diminishing returns. Broadcasters abandon the calling to produce what informs, educates and entertains, for fear that viewers and listeners will abandon what does not offer instant gratification.

Ours is a Seduced World is a prophetic call to hear the truth about ourselves and so be released to speak and embody truth, not in a spirit of judgementalism but in the conviction that ‘the truth shall set you free’.

pentecost 09

Woke up this morning to the sound of a rushing mighty wind and tongues of flame outside the bedroom window; it’s Pentecost! Turns out the Holy Spirit hadn’t descended on the house but a Virgin hot air balloon had. These balloons are frequent visitors and occasionally one comes down very low over the fields, always a bit risky given the phone lines and power cables.

Anyway, it is Pentecost when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, so here’s another Brueggemann prayer:

To make things new that never were

We name you wind, power, force, and then,
imaginatively, ‘Third Person.’
We name you and you blow…
blow hard,
blow cold,
blow hot,
blow strong,
blow gentle,
blow new…
Blowing the world out of nothing to abundance,
blowing the church out of despair to new life,
blowing little David from shepherd boy to messiah,
blowing to make things new that never were.
So, blow this day, wind,
blow here and there, power,
blow even us, force,
Rush us beyond ourselves,
Rush us beyond our hopes,
Rush us beyond our fears, until we enact your newness in the world.
Come, come Spirit. Amen.

Walter Brueggemann: Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth.

and then you - walter brueggemann

We arrange our lives as best we can,

to keep your holiness at bay,

with our pieties,

our doctrines,

our liturgies,

our moralities,

our secret ideologies,

Safe, virtuous, settled.

And then you –

you and your dreams,

you and your visions,

you and your purposes,

you and your commands,

you and our neighbours.

We find your holiness not at bay,

but probing, pervading,

insisting, demanding.

And we yield, sometimes gladly,

sometimes resentfully,

sometimes late…or soon.

We yield because you, beyond us, are our God.

We are your creatures met by your holiness,

by your holiness made our true selves.

And we yield. Amen.

This is the first of a collection of prayers by Walter Brueggemann from a book called Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth. What is so remarkable about these prayers is that they were uttered by Brueggemann before his seminary class; the lecturer humbly committing himself and his students to God.

Edwin Searcy the editor of Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth makes the following comment:
'The care that Brueggemann gives to his prayers testifies to the crucial importance that he places on the living covenantal conversation. For him biblical texts offer the mother tongue of the divine-human conversation. In his prayers for class and for worship, Brueggemann speaks his mother tongue of praise and confession, lament and gratitude, despair and faithfulness. Listening to his practiced voice we rediscover ancient ways of speaking honestly before God.'

Bruggemann, reflecting on a life spent in teaching, identifies something crucial that those of us who are involved in theological education and training for ministry constantly need to remember:
'The church at prayer is the only adequate matrix for theological education.'

And Then You is a prayer that I read again today and it spoke to the frustration I feel about so many of the debates and arguments, controversies and petty squabbles that we get caught up in as the church. God calls us to yield before him in awe and reverence, humbled by his holiness and grace.