"In Heaven it is Alwaies Autumne" (Donne)

1. Winter

Here my beginnings, the dark solitude

Of mine own self; my bleak captivity,

The lonely reaches of my barrenness,

The numbing mists of settled misery.

Here dreamt no promise. Nullified by cold,

All hopes aborted ere conception known.

Only the bitter tracery of trees

Etched the close skies that loomed with weight of stone.

No fruit, no flower, never hope of life.

Never a breeze to whisper of the spring.               10

No soft of moisture but the leaden snow,

Weight of despair to blanket everything.

To blanket, with the winding-sheet of death,

All loveliness that longed to germinate,

Lest there should be some seed to seek the sun,

Some tendril of delight should infiltrate.

Lest life, or hope, should enter through some crack,

All, all was sealed with polar lifelessness.

Here sang no birds. Here, never nest was built.

Here music could find nothing to express.              20

All was stark desolation. All was waste.

All was the ice-bound desert of the heart.

Never came thaw to this frigidity,

Nor any sun, renewal to impart.

2. Spring

Then, at the solstice of my wretchedness,

Broke a new dawn that splintered fixed despair.

Warmth, from outside all worlds that I had known,

Softened the ice, and quickened the dead air.

Life laughed aloud in the sweet waters' song,

(Waters that danced, rejoicing to be free.)            30

Tendrils of promise frolicked in the wind,

Turbulent with a green vitality.

No more did the oppressive shroud of snow

Smother the glory of the singing earth.

I was made one with verdure newly born.

I was delivered; I was brought to birth.

I knelt and drank my fill from living streams;

I walked with wonder where the flowers sprang.

Trees put off all their dreary nakedness;

Birds their cantata'd alleluias sang.                       40

I was a day-old lamb. I skipped the hills

With feet of joy. My wool was washed so white,

I tasted innocence and found it sweet.

I knew myself reborn into delight.

I knew, or thought I knew, all blessed truth

In its simplicity. I was so young,

I had the leaping energy of love,

And I was glad to thaw me in the sun.

3. Summer

Some early growth must wither in this heat,

Burnt by the bare, remorseless light of day.           50

But, a fertility that dazzles me,

Overrules any losses or decay.

Often made weary by unvaried light,

Still, to call this sun mine, I will rejoice;

Glad in its splendour even when it burns,

Knowing its fullness is my only choice.

This is the season of my labouring;

Season of toil, when I am often spent.

Yet, I see harvest-promise on the trees,

And, in that sureness, I am well-content.              60

Never such freedom as the grass that springs

Quick from its cutting, lush to rise again.

Never such hope as that within my heart,

Ever renewed, though I'm cut down by sin.

And, though my blossom time shall not return,

Yet I shall glory, for I look ahead,

Towards a sun so bright it shall not burn,

But make me one with perfect light instead.

4. Autumn

Here is completeness. Here, the plenitude

Of heart's desire made perfect. No decay               70

Lessens its bounty now, nor ever shall;

Harvest of joy that will not go away.

Here is the end of journey, end of toil.

Here is the fruit whose flower was so sweet

Its scent beguiled the darkest hours of want;

Now, in fulfilment, I will take and eat.

Now I will drink, nor ever thirst again.

Love is the liquid of my soul's desire,

Immersed in which, I taste all true delight,

Fresh and untainted, perfect and entire.               80

No clouds adulterate the clarity

Of the blue consummation of a sky

Crystalled, that  worship's vision may pass through,

And, into everlasting glory, fly.

Who could wish other than this fruitfulness,

Fullness of mercy in maturity?

Here is no withering, but joy on joy;

Grace into grace for all eternity.

My Philosophy of Ministry

(draft version)

I believe that Jesus came to set the captives free.

I believe that our first and greatest freedom is to know Jesus as Lord and Saviour.

After this comes freedom from all our other captivities: from doubt, fear, resentment, sinful desires, deep woundedness and every other kind of human brokenness.

I believe that we live and minister in the now-and-not-yet of the Kingdom of God, where His grace breaks in but all things are not yet made right.

I believe that God has given to the Church the ministries of Word, Sacrament and Prayer as Means of Grace to a broken world, to reveal through them the powerful, unstoppable love of the Father, the redemptive love of the Son and the transformative love of the Holy Spirit.

I believe that God has liberally poured out on His people the gifts of the Spirit to equip us to engage in His work, but that these gifts cannot produce godly fruit unless they are used in loving servanthood.

I believe that God has equipped and called me to work within the structures of the church to minister to His people, to speak forth His love and show forth His grace, and to encourage them with the wonder of the great Hope that is set before us.

Peace

Always, everywhere he went around Jerusalem, he could not escape dragging pain of the truth. It hurt, it hurt on so many levels that as soon as he grew numb, resigned to the ache that could not be denied, it would assault him from a different direction entirely, and once more cut him into shreds.

No one believed him. Not only did they not take him seriously, that would be bad enough, they had always tended to be a people who honoured God with their lips while their hearts were far from him, (and if their pious hypocrisy was an affront to his heart, what must it be to God?) but they didn’t even pretend to believe him. Openly they mocked his words, laughing in his face when he warned them of the calamity to come. Their tame prophets declared peace and prosperity, Jerusalem was a splendid city and a return to the glory-days of Solomon was just over the horizon. They could not see that their prosperity was built on the shallowest of foundations and that their days in the promised land were numbered because they cared so little for the keeping of God’s covenant. “You say, ’Peace! Peace!’ when there is no peace,” he said to them, but they brushed aside his words like an annoying foolishness.

And that was the deeper problem that tore at his heart. Jerusalem was going to fall, and it would be terrible. Babylon was coming, and this time they would not be spared, as they were in the time of the Assyrians, when Sennacherib’s army decamped overnight. This time it would be for them as it had been for the northern kingdom of Israel then. A time of horror, grief and great pain would soon be upon them; they would be taken away into exile and no longer live in the land that God had promised to their ancestor Abraham. They had deliberately misunderstood the covenant, they thought that as long as God’s temple stood within their city they were safe. Yet this generation would not know peace because they had forsaken the God of Peace, the Lord their Righteousness.

Jeremiah wept and trembled for the agony that was to come, and the destruction of the beloved city. He grieved for these people who were so unprepared for calamity because they would not listen to his prophetic warnings. Darkness lay ahead.

Yet,even in this, despair was not the final answer. One day, beyond the cognizance of this present generation, Babylon would fall in her turn, punished for her idolatrous rapacity. Then the exiles would return, and there would be peace. And one day the Lord Himself , the branch of David, would come among them, and some would know him to be, as Isaiah had foretold, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. So he waited. And as he waited, he lifted his tear-drenched eyes and remembered afresh that God was still, even in the midst of tragedy and horror, the one who had hold of his heart, and would keep it:

“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed

For His compassions never fail

They are new every morning

Great is Your faithfulness.”

In those words he found his peace.

Transformation

At least the gate was called Beautiful for a reason, and it gave him something to look at, something to look up to. He had no place in the Temple itself, he was a helpless cripple and couldn’t get up the steps, but each day his friends would carry him to his spot by the gate, and there he would beg. And (he was trying hard to be positive here) it was a good place to beg.  People went into the temple feeling guilty and seeking God’s favour; people came out of the temple feeling right with the world and at peace. Both states of mind could be great motivators for generosity. Or not.

A man who crouches there, in his beggar’s rags, by one of the busiest places in the city, and a place which attracts both rich and poor and almost all the visitors from other places, overhears more than most, and gets to feel the mood and tenor of the city as instinctively as a doctor taking a pulse. What else did he have to occupy his mind? And the mood of the city was not tranquil. Always, always, at least in his lifetime, there had been the steady chafing of the Roman presence, but it was the kind of chafing a man learns to live with and make the best of, like a rough wool cloak that irritates the skin but keeps out the biting cold. But this was a new unrest. He remembered the rumours that had flown around just before Passover, when Jesus of Nazareth had entered the city on a donkey – a gesture that meant nothing to the Romans, but sang with Messianic significance to the Israelites. Could this be the one? Could he?

But no, within less than a week they were calling for his death, and the results were enough to make a crippled beggar shudder. Crucified, dead and buried, this Jesus, and Roman order had been restored  and the Passover crowds had behaved themselves. The next rumour was slower to spread: it was whispered rather than shouted, as if no one quite knew what to do with it. But in a town like Jerusalem tales of empty tombs and overwhelmed soldiers don’t keep secret forever, and there was much muttering and nervous glancing over shoulders. And then, at Pentecost, everything changed again ..

He shifted position slightly to try to ease the constant, wearing pain, then reached out his hands in supplication as he saw two friendly-looking men approaching. Using the traditional beggar’s whine (did people realise how humiliating that was?) he wheedled for money. They neither hurried past ignoring him, or threw a stray coin at him. Instead they stopped right there, turned and looked him full in the face. Very few people ever did that – and a man notices when he is something from which men turn away their eyes. “Look at us!” said the taller one, and he gazed at them in expectation.

“I don’t have any silver or gold to give you.” He paused, and the cripple, disappointed, felt as if his very soul was being searched. But the man hadn’t finished. “I will give you what I do have, though. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, rise up and walk!”

This was not at all what he had expected, and he sat there stunned. Besides, he didn’t know how to get up and walk! But these people weren’t just empty words. A strong hand, calloused by fishing nets, reached out to him and pulled him up. Immediately his feet and ankles were strong, and his pain was gone. Tentatively, he tried walking a few steps, expecting his legs to buckle under him any second – but they didn’t! So excited, he walked, ran, leapt, dancing around in wonder like a little child, straight into the temple precincts. Many people recognised him, and were amazed at his transformation. And a new rumour, sweet as the promise of heart’s desire, ran through the streets of Jerusalem.

The Return

It hadn’t been very long at all, but so much had changed. Not in the town, it was the same as ever, another typical Galilean village; no, it was his role and purpose that had changed. When he left they had known him simply as the carpenter’s son, a nice guy if a little ‘different’, who had done the right thing supporting his mother and younger brothers until the boys were old enough to assume full responsibility. In the humdrum world of daily work, the simple world of ordinary people he had simply been taken for granted, and the oddities of their family history were largely overlooked.

But now his reputation had preceded him, and he could see the questions in his former neighbours’ eyes. They were remembering how his mother was pregnant too soon, they were remembering how his whole family had disappeared down to Egypt for a while, they were remembering little ways in which he had seemed unusual as a child. The rumours had been flying all round Galilee: the deaf who could now hear, the blind who could now see, the lame and the paralysed who were walking again. Wasn’t there something a little bit strange about that? Not quite sound, not quite ... reliable? And in the sideways glances their unspoken question shouted, “Who does he think he is?”

Now he looked around at them, gathering their attention as he stood before them. Then he looked down at the scroll and began to read, “The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor ...” He read through that glorious proclamation of the freedom and healing that were God’s signs of His Messiah, then he sat down and said, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

He could feel their shock turning to anger, and the deep, resentful scepticism that lay behind it. Their thoughts were written clear across their hardening faces: Who did he think he was? He was a child of shame; his mother, who’d always seemed to be more pious than the rest of them, had been the very one who’d had to move her wedding forward. And what had he ever done for them? It was all very well to go round healing people in Capernaum (mere fishermen!) but what miracles had he ever done for the people of Nazareth all the time he had been with them? Didn’t they have first claim on him?

“No prophet is accepted in his hometown,” he told them. Hadn’t it always been the way? Men were contemptuous of the familiar, and resented one of their own claiming to be something more. Also, they always thought they had ownership. If they had ‘put up’ all those years (as they saw it) with someone who wasn’t quite one of them, there was an expectation that they should, at the very least, have a share in the rewards. That the prophets of God belong to God alone, go where He sends them, and give the glory to Him alone, was something they had no interest in knowing. In fact, the very idea enraged them.

His words about Elijah and Elisha only inflamed them further. How dare he! In one accord, just as a herd of wild creatures turns on one they perceive to be an outsider, they rose and drove him out of the synagogue, through the town and up towards a precipice. There was murder in their hearts, but it was not his time to die, and he slipped through their midst and departed, leaving them alone with their futile anger in a world grown mysteriously greyer.

Sheep and Wolves

The lamb, having no appetite for meat,

Does not suspect the wolf.

The wolf, moved by strange hunger,

Eternally suspicious,

Thinks the lamb a hypocrite.

Surely only the self-righteous

Play the public vegetarian?

How shall sheep refute an accusation

We do not even understand?

Our ways are not their ways,

Our hungers not their hungers.

We are black sheep, we have strayed.

We are not wolves.

Clarity of language

Is always the first casualty.

Imbalance of power

Hides dark in the long grasses.

The lamb becomes condemned

For being made of meat,

For being sweet and juicy

And for eating grass.

It is never enough to be innocent

When wolves want blood.

To be .. is to be in the wrong,

To be sheepish is a crime.

Idols? Who, me?

Every one of us is familiar with the second commandment, Exodus 20: 4-5

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵ You shall not bow down to them or serve them...

It is easy to read that and feel confident that we at least got that one right. Most of us haven’t taken a statue of someone-or-other, placed it in some sort of shrine and prayed to it. (If you have then we need to be having a different conversation: one about the supremacy of Jesus and how He desires to be worshiped). So, do we not need to worry about this commandment? Are we so much more advanced than those ancient Israelites who were tempted to run off to worship Baal and Ashtoreth at every opportunity, or who could not wait too long at the bottom of Mount Sinai without creating a golden calf to worship instead of the great God who had so recently showed them His power to redeem with a mighty hand and outstretched arm?

Man-made gods

One common (and very useful) application of this commandment is to look at the things that distract us from serving and following God with all that we are (putting “our whole selves in” as per the Hokey-Pokey). Money, pleasure, possessions, status – the list of potential idols goes on and on and everyone can think of their own additions (or weaknesses). Our human hearts are capable of latching onto anything that seems desirable and making it into the central pursuit of our lives, sometimes with disastrous consequences to our bodies (think of drug addictions for example) or relationships (e.g. the consequences of pornography), but always with disastrous consequences to our walk with God. Just like ancient Israel, we turn so quickly from the One who so powerfully redeemed us to other, more immediate satisfactions – the things that we imagine we just can’t do without.

Those other desires which rule our hearts even while we profess to be following Jesus  are what the Bible calls “the greed which is idolatry” (Colossians 3:5).  For, as Jesus said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matt 6: 21)

Making use of God

But this is not the only form of idolatry. Another problem (which we will be talking about in church in a few weeks’ time – stay tuned!) is when we think that the worship of God is the means to something else (the thing which we really want). We seek the gifts rather than the Giver, and He who created heaven and earth, and in whom all things hold together, becomes regarded as the means to the end rather than an end in Himself. People profess Christianity for because they perceive some other benefits (or perceived side-benefits): health, wealth, social respectability etc, or even to date/marry a Christian.

Misunderstanding God

And there is yet another kind of idolatry, much more rarely discussed, which we should also be aware of: the idolatry of our own theology, i.e. our own understanding of God. I remember being told once, when I was young, that the reason that it is wrong to make a physical image of God is that it limits our understanding of Him, confining Him, as it were, to the particular characteristics   which the artist chose to depict. It is like trying to draw a rainbow in black and white, or reduce a complex, 3-dimensional object to a single 2-dimensional picture. It will always be inadequate, and, if taken literally, it will become misleading, however well-intentioned the design.

God is always more than our conceptions of Him, and He will stretch us, through the truth of His word and the sharp experience of reality, to see Him more clearly, more truly. It was C S Lewis, in ‘A Grief Observed’, written after the death of his wife, who said that it is God, Himself who is the iconoclast (destroyer of images):

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence? The Incarnation is the supreme example; it leaves all previous ideas of the Messiah in ruins."

It is so dangerously easy to make God in our own image, rather than submitting ourselves to be remade in His. It is so dangerously easy to let the immediate gratifications of this world become more important to us than the glories of eternity. It is so dangerously easy to see ‘religion’ as a means to obtain those gratifications. It was Calvin who said that the human heart is a factory for making idols; let us return ourselves, over and over again to the truth of His Word, that our hearts and minds might, more and more, fall in love all over again with the One who loved us and gave Himself for us.