The source of strength

He was 75 years old when the call came to leave everything he had known and follow the guidance of an invisible God to a place he did not know, which would become his inheritance. He was to take his barren wife with him, and somehow, though they were both already old, he would be the father of a great nation. And through this absurd choice, which shocked his friends and acquaintances into scornful laughter, he would somehow become a source of blessing to all the nations of the earth (what did that even mean?). And so the old man packed up his whole life and stepped forward into impossibility. By faith he allowed his whole world to be turned upside down. And when, after the long hard years of waiting, the child of promise was born to them, he was willing, at the command of that same God, to lay down the life of that child, though every promise he had been given was dependent on that child’s life. Where did he find the strength? His eyes were fixed on another kingdom, a kingdom which could never fail, whose builder and maker was the Lord.

Another time, another place, another man. This one was eighty years old, and his life had become a bitter story of failure. It had all started so well, with his life miraculously spared and his adoption into the royal family of the very nation that had enslaved and mistreated his people. But in a moment of fierce anger he had acted impetuously and thrown all his advantages away. The last forty years had been spent herding the flocks in a forgotten corner of the desert. But now he was summoned by a miraculous sign to return to the very place he had fled, to face down the royal power in its stronghold, and demand freedom for his people> He did not even believe himself a fluent speaker, yet he was called to declare the impossible before a king. Where did he find the strength? His eyes were fixed on another kingdom, a kingdom which could never fail, whose maker and builder was the Lord.

Another time, another place, another man. This one was only about 33, and he had already put aside all the joys of heaven to walk in the pain and weakness of humanity. Now, in the middle of the night, he knelt in an olive grove, and the agony of his submission was so intense that the sweat fell from him like drops of blood. He knew what lay ahead. He knew that when he left that garden he would be going forth to face false accusations, jeering crowds, abandonment, torture and death. “Nevertheless,” he said, “your will be done.” Where did he find the strength? His eyes were fixed on another kingdom which could never fail, whose builder and maker was the Lord, and so, for the joy that was set before him, he walked forward, with deliberate intent, into all the agony of sin and death.

The Gannet

The flight – the gloried rush of piercing joy

Across the glinting, sun-smiled waves to skim

Sharp as the pointed arrow of His grace,

Into the full abundance which is Him.

Then from joy’s height to fall, swift as His love,

Into the ocean, fathomless, unknown.

The offering of the self – fierce, absolute,

Where every last defence is overthrown.

And is this terror? No, it is delight

Into the boundless bounty so to fall,

And find all sustenance is waiting there

For at the downmost point is given all.

(I found this poem this morning in an old notebook. I have no idea when I wrote it, but probably in New Zealand, about 10 years ago, when we saw the gannets plummeting out of the sky to fish)

The Still Place

No matter how busy he got (and some days were busier than he had ever imagined could be possible), he always found time for this, time apart from the throngs around him, time apart from the endless questions, the endless reports that he must receive with sober judgement, the endless decisions, significant or meaningless, that he had to constantly make. Here, alone with his harp, he breathed out the pain, the frustration, the personal hurts and confusion, and breathed in the love and mercy of his God. Here he was restored, here the jumbled pattern of his days resolved into sense and meaning. He took his tears to God, and his anger, and that terrible sense of helplessness which is the grinding stone for everyone who finds themselves a leader.

Tonight he was pensive, looking back across the years of battle and bloodshed, and remembering how simple it had seemed when he was just a shepherd boy, out on the hills with the flocks, and his harp, and the heartbreaking beauty of God. But what if he turned it around?  What if he were the sheep and it was the Lord Almighty who was his shepherd, feeding him, leading him protecting him? What if … ?

He ran his hands across the strings, and his fingers found their joy. “The Lord is the shepherd,” he sang softly into the night air. No, that wasn’t it, there was a false note there. He faltered, paused and started again. “The Lord is MY Shepherd,” he sang. Yes, that was better, both the notes and the meaning rang true. And suddenly the song was flowing, in him and through him. “I shall not want”, “green pastures,” “still waters” – the words tripped from his tongue and the music flowed through his fingers. This was it, these were the words that put flesh and mortal understanding onto the secret gladness of his faith, clothing it with a form that gave some expression of the mystery that was his life and breath, the mystery that God would bend down into relationship with a broken man. He could see how the images fitted: the soul restored (oh yes!) the righteous path determined.

“Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.” He paused. What could he say about that? But no, that also was true. He gazed into the darkness and saw it – “You are with me, your rod and your staff …” He breathed deeply, but he would not flinch from it. The deeper the pain, the more glorious was the mercy that carried him through. “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.” He remembered the rage of Goliath and the spears of Saul. He remembered cruelty, and fear, and blood shed far too easily, as if a man’s life counted for nothing. He bowed his head, unashamed of his tears. But God had been there, with him, even in the ugliest places. He raised his eyes and gazed, unafraid, into the infinite darkness of the skies, and, for a moment, it was as if he saw eternity open, and a glory that negated and washed away every pain and struggle:

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” It was the song of his heart, and he would teach it to his people that it might be their song too.

Ordinary Grace

Here, where the warp meets weft,

The liminal space, between breathing out and in,

Where the lines of the floorboards grow weary,

The place of our deep confusion,

His mercy falls.

Here, where we cease to be children,

Where we catch the ball that no one threw,

Where we ask the unspeakable questions,

Ignoring our own tears,

His mercy falls.

Here, where we pause before blank canvas,

Where anticipation meets uncertainty,

Or the world is wrenched awry in one sharp moment,

Glimpsing the true obscenity,

His mercy falls.

Here, where we find our ends

Are merely new beginnings when horizons sway.

Where preconceptions clash with life,

Betrayed by our own fear,

His mercy falls.

Here, where we see familiar loves,

With unfamiliar eyes, marvelling and doubting,

Where our hearts tear open, and he meets our wound with his,

In the dawn forever breaking,

His mercy falls

For me the Son of God is dancing

For me the Son of God is dancing,

He calls me forward into light.

He sings above my shattered spirit,

And bids me leave the fears of night.

For me the Son of God is dancing,

His clouds turn pink across the sky,

His rain is washing all our sorrow,

His stars coruscate in reply.

For me the Son of God is dancing

Above, beyond, below, before.

His steps are measured to my weakness

To rise, return, redeem, restore.

For me the Son of God is dancing

So graceful is his gracious grace –

He leans down from the highest heaven

To raise me up and wipe my face.

For me the Son of God is dancing,

His love has danced through death and hell.

My heart is dizzied by his splendour

And hears his whisper, “All is well.”

For me the Son of God is dancing,

His rhythm is eternity.

And mercy shapes his every movement,

And he desires to dance with me!

One Afternoon

I stood there, in the great darkness, still making out the shape of the terrible cross and the shape of my son, my precious, precious son, hanging there. I couldn’t see it all the time of course. Tears have a merciful way of blurring our sight. But there are some things love does not allow us to turn away from, some places that love insists we stay, because sometimes our presence, and the mute witness of our grief, is the only thing we have left to give.

It was a long time ago that the ancient prophet had spoken to me, beholding my newborn son, but his words had been fixed in my heart, and now I tasted their full awfulness, like I was drinking down wormwood and gall. “And a sword shall pierce your heart, yours also”, he had said. I had not realised that this was what he meant, I had thought it fulfilled in the ordinary pinpricks of life, the growing pains of seeing your child go in ways you had never expected (though why I had ever thought a carpenter’s shop would be enough for this miraculously wrought child seems a great foolishness to me now!) But now I knew that sword, sharp as a Roman gladius, had stabbed into my vital organs, and twisted them into excruciating agony. The least I could do was stand there and keep watch, that terrible afternoon, in a place beyond courage, where only love could hold me there.

I remembered other afternoons, woven of sunshine (had the sun now vanished forever?), the texture and shape of the life we had shared together – those early years in Egypt, when nothing but the pangs of exile had shadowed our lives, the return to Nazareth and the ordinary years (apart from the odd incident when he had stayed behind in the temple when he was twelve – a foreshadowing of the day when he would go forth into the world). There was the wedding in Cana, and the afternoon when I saw him do his first miracle, the water became wine, and nothing in the world was ever quite the same again. I remember the crowds that gathered to his teaching, and the endless, endless parade of the sick and the broken who came to him for healing. None of them were here now except the women who stood with me, and John, the only one of the men who remained. In the dreadful darkness we could count our number, and we were very few. There were no miracles that day, though I had half expected there would be, only the bitterness of all our hope being laid down in the grave. How could this possibly be God’s plan?

And there was silence, and there was darkness, and he cried his last, and all I had left to give my beloved son was a grave borrowed from a generous stranger. I discovered then that there is a place beyond pain where one has almost ceased to be human, and there, as it was, I pitched my tent.

But I did not stay there. For on the third day, on the most beautiful morning of the world, that dreadful afternoon was undone, or, rather, the emptiness it had carved out was filled and overflowing, with the best wine which he had saved till last. This was what it was all for – this! For this I had borne the shamed months of my pregnancy, for this I had endured exile, for this I had watched my son alienate all the powers of the land, for this I had stood in the terrible darkness. And I drank deep of a joy from beyond this world, which had now broken into this world. For my son, who had been dead, was alive, and now he lives for evermore

The Heart of the Matter

Killing men was all in a day’s work. Like all Romans of his class he had done his stint in the army and worked his way up the political ladder. He had been ending men’s lives either with his own sword, or by commanding the swords of those under him, all his adult life. By definition, the glory of Rome was what he was there to promote, and any life that did not contribute to Rome’s glory was worthless by definition, and to be disposed of with no more thought than you would give to killing a hen that no longer laid. Why should this time, this man, be any different?

Alright, he didn’t like the hole and corner business of midnight trials and early morning summons. He was a suspicious man by nature, and this aroused all his suspicions. What were the Jewish leaders up to? And the prisoner, now he looked at him squarely, looked nothing like the typical insurrectionist. In fact, he had probably never been in a real fight in his life. So what was going on?

There was something he wasn’t being told, and he was in no mood to be played with, or treated as just a rubber stamp for their internal problems. Had they forgotten who was in charge? And there was something about this man, neither cringing nor defiant, but simply standing there, as if he were not the one on trial at all, that intrigued him. He wasn’t going to sign off on this one without learning more. He tried sending the prisoner to Herod when he learned the man was a Galilean, but Herod sent him back. He sent him off to be flogged, hoping this would settle the matter, but even though the prisoner returned besmeared with blood and with a crown of thorns on his head (oddly unsettling to look at, even for an old soldier), the mob from the temple still weren’t appeased.  They told him that the man was an enemy of Rome, who had declared himself to be a king, yet, when he questioned the man further, all he would say was that his ki8ngdom was not of this world (whatever that meant!). Further the man would not respond to him, and who in such straits would resist either desperately defending themselves our shouting out their last desperate defiance? This man was different. In fact, he believed this man was innocent, which normally wouldn’t have worried him too much any way. But this time, inexplicably, it did.

But the rabble-rousers of Jerusalem were having none of it. They wanted this man killed, and they threatened to report him to Rome if he didn’t comply. How could the life of one man, however innocent, however different, compare to his own career and his family honour? So he gave the order to have Jesus of Nazareth crucified. But first her ordered a basin of water to be brought to him, and publically washed his hands of the man’s blood. But whether he gave him further thought, or whether he ever came to understand the magnitude of what happened, history does not tell us.

But what history does tell us is that, at that Passover in Jerusalem, the world was changed forever, and the name of Pontius Pilate, Governor of Judea, is remembered with infamy as long as the world endures. He had gone through the forms, but completely missed the heart of the matter. The man he condemned to death was God Himself, and the blood he shed that day was, ironically, the only thing that could have cleansed him from the blood-guilt that no symbolic basin of water could remove. Pilate died in his time and his burial place is unknown save to the vaguest of legends, but the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth is empty, and he lives and reigns for evermore.