Heaven is the creation inconceivable to man; earth is the creation conceivable to him...
If man does have another origin than this earthly one, and another goal than that of returning to the earth again, then it is on the basis of the reality of the covenant between God and man...
[The] covenant is as old as creation itself. When the existence of creation begins, God's dealing with man also begins.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.52-54
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The Politics of Spreading Excitement
The president of the United States can fire nuclear missiles in any direction he likes but he cannot ban gas guzzling automobiles with wheels bigger than Texas.
The irony facing every occupant of the Oval Office is that although he or she is perhaps the most powerful leader in the world, they are hamstrung at home by a system of checks and balances which could have been devised by Franz Kafka.
This phenomenon of paltry power on the doorstep but colossal influence overseas has encouraged many presidents to globetrot and stay away from the deep quagmire of domestic politics.
President Obama has gamely ventured into this swamp and is determined to finally give America the type of healthcare system you would expect to find in the world’s biggest economy. He has also inherited a war in Afghanistan which has the potential to derail domestic and international ambitions.
Despite these monumental challenges, he appears to have grasped where the true power of the presidency is found.
Unlike a Prime Minister who leads a strictly whipped party towards specific goals, he is a head of state with the greater power to command the public imagination.
When Presidents Clinton and Bush got locked in battles of legislation their presidencies were stripped of velocity. But a president can use the pulpit of the White House to create a culture where people like the idea of free healthcare or slower climate change and politicians compete to make this happen.
His presidential campaign was not noted for its spectacular policy pledges, but he himself came to symbolise a change in the values and ambitions of the nation.
And with his first state dinner, he has chosen not to honour a British or German leader but the Prime Minister of India. He welcomed the leader of the world’s biggest democracy in Hindi and musical entertainment came from AR Rahman, best known for his soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire.
Obama saluted both Gandhi and Martin Luther King and the spectacular gala cast the rise of the new superpower as an exciting and enriching prospect for the world.
If he can get Americans to think positively about globalisation there will be less clamour for protectionism and greater confidence among investors to grasp new opportunities.
Europe desperately needs such an invigorating vision of the future which will contrast with the gloom of post-imperial decline.
Extremists at different ends of the ideological spectrum have starched sentiments of hope and excitement out of the idea of multiculturalism.
Immigration is now seen as a problem rather than an opportunity and social change is now associated with threats instead of progress.
The challenge for the next generation of leaders in politics, the arts and religion is to encourage not just tolerance but celebration of diversity. The battle for the imagination is the struggle to plant hope where others would sow fear.
The irony facing every occupant of the Oval Office is that although he or she is perhaps the most powerful leader in the world, they are hamstrung at home by a system of checks and balances which could have been devised by Franz Kafka.
This phenomenon of paltry power on the doorstep but colossal influence overseas has encouraged many presidents to globetrot and stay away from the deep quagmire of domestic politics.
President Obama has gamely ventured into this swamp and is determined to finally give America the type of healthcare system you would expect to find in the world’s biggest economy. He has also inherited a war in Afghanistan which has the potential to derail domestic and international ambitions.
Despite these monumental challenges, he appears to have grasped where the true power of the presidency is found.
Unlike a Prime Minister who leads a strictly whipped party towards specific goals, he is a head of state with the greater power to command the public imagination.
When Presidents Clinton and Bush got locked in battles of legislation their presidencies were stripped of velocity. But a president can use the pulpit of the White House to create a culture where people like the idea of free healthcare or slower climate change and politicians compete to make this happen.
His presidential campaign was not noted for its spectacular policy pledges, but he himself came to symbolise a change in the values and ambitions of the nation.
And with his first state dinner, he has chosen not to honour a British or German leader but the Prime Minister of India. He welcomed the leader of the world’s biggest democracy in Hindi and musical entertainment came from AR Rahman, best known for his soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire.
Obama saluted both Gandhi and Martin Luther King and the spectacular gala cast the rise of the new superpower as an exciting and enriching prospect for the world.
If he can get Americans to think positively about globalisation there will be less clamour for protectionism and greater confidence among investors to grasp new opportunities.
Europe desperately needs such an invigorating vision of the future which will contrast with the gloom of post-imperial decline.
Extremists at different ends of the ideological spectrum have starched sentiments of hope and excitement out of the idea of multiculturalism.
Immigration is now seen as a problem rather than an opportunity and social change is now associated with threats instead of progress.
The challenge for the next generation of leaders in politics, the arts and religion is to encourage not just tolerance but celebration of diversity. The battle for the imagination is the struggle to plant hope where others would sow fear.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Rollins on Wednesday
If we fail to recognise that the term 'God' always falls short of that to which the word is supposed to point, we will end up bowing down before our own conceptual creations forged from the raw materials of our self-image, rather than bowing before the one who stands over and above that creation.
Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, p.19
Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, p.19
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Ratzinger on Tuesday
Loneliness is undubitably one of the basic roots from which man's encounter with God has risen.
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.106
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.106
Monday, November 23, 2009
Barth on Monday
Creation is grace... The existence of the creature alongside God is the great puzzle and miracle... That there is a world is the most unheard-of thing, the miracle of the grace of God...
But man is the witness; he who is allowed to be where God is made glorious, is not a merely passive witness; the witness has to express what he has seen. That is man's nature, that is what he is able to do, to be a witness of God's acts.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.45, 49
But man is the witness; he who is allowed to be where God is made glorious, is not a merely passive witness; the witness has to express what he has seen. That is man's nature, that is what he is able to do, to be a witness of God's acts.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.45, 49
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Velvet Hope
The Velvet Revolution of November 1989 is a true fairytale of democracy in which the winter-cold grip of a Communist dictatorship melted when peacefully confronted with the passion of playwrights, scientists and students.
But Václav Havel, the poet and absurdist dramatist who was catapulted into the position of President of Czechoslovakia at this incredible time, today declines to hold up the revolution as proof that evil will inevitably rot away.
Despite having lived through a moment in history many still perceive as a near-miracle, he does not encourage oppressed dissidents to hope that things will get better.
For Havel, hope is a very different creature from optimism. It is not about expecting tomorrow to be easier than yesterday, but it is having a confidence that the values you prize are sure and true.
He put it this way: “Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”
If the US State Department and the CIA had tried to identify likely leaders of an overthrow of Soviet rule in Czechoslovakia, I doubt they would have picked a Velvet Underground-loving bohemian working as a stagehand.
But this is the story of Havel. His adventures of the mind put him on a collision course with the totalitarian state.
As President Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright put it, hope is inherently audacious.
Now an elder European statesman, Havel refuses to address present day activists with the “If I can do it so can you” swagger with which a billionaire might lecture infant entrepreneurs.
Instead, this year when meeting a group of human rights activists from China, he told them:
Conventional wisdom now dictates that a miracle is needed to secure a global deal on climate change at the upcoming Copenhagen summit. But according to Havel’s play-book, the absence of optimism is not a good reason to give up hope. Instead, we need dreamers to slog on.
But Václav Havel, the poet and absurdist dramatist who was catapulted into the position of President of Czechoslovakia at this incredible time, today declines to hold up the revolution as proof that evil will inevitably rot away.
Despite having lived through a moment in history many still perceive as a near-miracle, he does not encourage oppressed dissidents to hope that things will get better.
For Havel, hope is a very different creature from optimism. It is not about expecting tomorrow to be easier than yesterday, but it is having a confidence that the values you prize are sure and true.
He put it this way: “Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.”
If the US State Department and the CIA had tried to identify likely leaders of an overthrow of Soviet rule in Czechoslovakia, I doubt they would have picked a Velvet Underground-loving bohemian working as a stagehand.
But this is the story of Havel. His adventures of the mind put him on a collision course with the totalitarian state.
As President Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright put it, hope is inherently audacious.
Now an elder European statesman, Havel refuses to address present day activists with the “If I can do it so can you” swagger with which a billionaire might lecture infant entrepreneurs.
Instead, this year when meeting a group of human rights activists from China, he told them:
“[One] may never reckon with the situation changing tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or in 10 years. Perhaps it will not. If that is what you are reckoning with, you will not get very far. However, in our experience, not reckoning with that did pay in the end... I think that is important. In a peculiar way, there is both despair and hope in this. On the one hand we do not know how things will end, and on the other, we know they may in fact end well.”In an era of pragmatic politics, this is a reminder we should pursue the goal we are convinced is right and just – not merely the one which seems rich in electoral mileage.
Conventional wisdom now dictates that a miracle is needed to secure a global deal on climate change at the upcoming Copenhagen summit. But according to Havel’s play-book, the absence of optimism is not a good reason to give up hope. Instead, we need dreamers to slog on.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Rollins on Wednesday
[R]evelation ought not to be thought of either as that which makes God known or as that which leaves God unknown, but rather as the overpowering light that renders God known as unknown. This is not dissimilar to a baby being held by her mother - the baby does not understand the mother but rather experiences being known by the mother...
We are like an infant in the arms of God, unable to grasp but being transformed by the grasp.
Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, p.17
We are like an infant in the arms of God, unable to grasp but being transformed by the grasp.
Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, p.17
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Ratzinger on Tuesday
Christian faith lives on the discovery that not only is there such a thing as objective meaning but that this meaning knows me and loves me, that I can entrust myself to it like the child who knows that everything he may be wondering about is safe in the "you" of his mother. Thus in the last analysis believing, trusting and loving are one...
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.80
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.80
Monday, November 16, 2009
Barth on Monday
We do not know what love is and we do not know what freedom is; but God is love and God is freedom. What freedom is and what love is, we have to learn from Him... He does not need the other and nevertheless he loves.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.30
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.30
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Vietnam's Shadow
The first President Bush celebrated the end of the first Gulf War with the victory statement: “By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"
The “syndrome” – the fear of getting dragged into intractable wars of dubious ethical validity – descended upon Washington DC like a fog as the US death toll climbed towards its 58,000 climax and the hope of outright victory evaporated.
Just as destructive to morale and national confidence was the revelation – 40 years ago today – that at least 109 Vietnamese civilians had been murdered by the US Army in the My Lai Massacre.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s discovery stands today as an epoch-defining work of journalism. It proved that even a nation founded on the lofty ideals of the US Constitution was not immune to the corrupting barbarism of the war-zone.
Vietnam became an icon for military and ethical failure. Anyone wishing to put the brakes on a military intervention just needed to mention it could be “another Vietnam”.
It is ironic that President Bush Sr’s immediate response to the victory in Kuwait was that he had banished this “syndrome”. Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, pursued a strategy forged from his experiences in Vietnam.
The so-called Powell Doctrine stated that military force should only be used when vital national security interests are threatened; the goal is obtainable; a clear exit strategy exists; there is broad US and international support; and all non-violent options have been exhausted. He also believed in the use of overwhelming force to ensure the enemy capitulated as quickly as possible with minimal US casualties.
The doctrine was enforced with discipline when the US agreed a ceasefire as soon as Saddam Hussein’s forces had quit Kuwait. The Bush White House resisted the temptation to pursue the dictator back to Baghdad.
The post-September 11 destruction of the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the swift toppling of the Taliban Government adhered to many of the principles of doctrine. But just as the second President Bush’s invasion of Iraq appeared to flout key elements, the lack of a clear exit strategy in Afghanistan and the shaky public and diplomatic support must be of grave concern.
The abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and alarm at the use of rendition have not only been ethical failures but have been strategic disasters that weakened morale and diplomatic fire-cover. The equivalent of a My Lai incident at this stage of the troubled campaign would be catastrophic.
The Powell Doctrine took on board the lessons of Vietnam that the second Bush administration was wrong to forget. But this needs to be expanded so that the protection of the dignity and safety of civilians and prisoners is recognised as a moral necessity and a strategic necessity.
The “syndrome” – the fear of getting dragged into intractable wars of dubious ethical validity – descended upon Washington DC like a fog as the US death toll climbed towards its 58,000 climax and the hope of outright victory evaporated.
Just as destructive to morale and national confidence was the revelation – 40 years ago today – that at least 109 Vietnamese civilians had been murdered by the US Army in the My Lai Massacre.
Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s discovery stands today as an epoch-defining work of journalism. It proved that even a nation founded on the lofty ideals of the US Constitution was not immune to the corrupting barbarism of the war-zone.
Vietnam became an icon for military and ethical failure. Anyone wishing to put the brakes on a military intervention just needed to mention it could be “another Vietnam”.
It is ironic that President Bush Sr’s immediate response to the victory in Kuwait was that he had banished this “syndrome”. Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, pursued a strategy forged from his experiences in Vietnam.
The so-called Powell Doctrine stated that military force should only be used when vital national security interests are threatened; the goal is obtainable; a clear exit strategy exists; there is broad US and international support; and all non-violent options have been exhausted. He also believed in the use of overwhelming force to ensure the enemy capitulated as quickly as possible with minimal US casualties.
The doctrine was enforced with discipline when the US agreed a ceasefire as soon as Saddam Hussein’s forces had quit Kuwait. The Bush White House resisted the temptation to pursue the dictator back to Baghdad.
The post-September 11 destruction of the al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and the swift toppling of the Taliban Government adhered to many of the principles of doctrine. But just as the second President Bush’s invasion of Iraq appeared to flout key elements, the lack of a clear exit strategy in Afghanistan and the shaky public and diplomatic support must be of grave concern.
The abuses at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and alarm at the use of rendition have not only been ethical failures but have been strategic disasters that weakened morale and diplomatic fire-cover. The equivalent of a My Lai incident at this stage of the troubled campaign would be catastrophic.
The Powell Doctrine took on board the lessons of Vietnam that the second Bush administration was wrong to forget. But this needs to be expanded so that the protection of the dignity and safety of civilians and prisoners is recognised as a moral necessity and a strategic necessity.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Rollins on Wednesday
The only significant difference between the aesthetic idol and the conceptual idol lies in the fact that the former reduces God to a physical object while the latter reduces God to an intellectual object.
Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, p.12
Peter Rollins, How (Not) to Speak of God, p.12
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Ratzinger on Tuesday
I am convinced that at bottom it was no mere accident that the Christian message, in the period when it was taking shape, first entered the Greek world, and then merged with the inquiry into understanding, into truth.
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.78
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.78
Monday, November 09, 2009
Barth on Monday
...God is always the One who has made Himself known to man in his own revelation, and not the one man thinks out for himself and describes as God.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.15
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.15
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Revolutionary Readers
Idealistic visions of the Middle East morphing into a parallel Europe with Belgian-style democracies are rarely articulated in these days of electoral fraud in Afghanistan and persistent tragedy in Iraq.
But to look at the region in this moment of turmoil and say it is irreparably locked into a culture of medieval feuding, theocratic passions and tribal tyranny is equally wrong.
Yes, circumstances are shaped by history, but individuals possess the power to astonish in every generation.
Foreign policy chiefs beset by gloom should take the afternoon off and stand in the quiet of the British Museum Reading Room.
Among the men who entered this arena of learning were Karl Marx, Lenin, and Mahatma Gandhi.
We should force obsessions about terrorist training camps from our minds for a few moments and reflect on the truly explosive power of the ideas which were kindled by these figures in the realm of the mind.
Who in the early years of the 19th century would have predicted that the visions dashed out by Marx would spring like mesmeric grasshoppers into countries as diverse as Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and Angola and define the geopolitics of the 20th century?
President George W Bush was onto something when in his second inaugural speech he said: “America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.”
Marx’s manifesto for secular liberation found disciples in societies which we might dismiss today as irretrievably ensnared in corruption, barbarism and superstition.
People on almost every continent proved willing to die in pursuit of the dream of a European thinker who stood squarely in the Enlightenment tradition.
Only the most committed zealots expect a popular revival of Communism, but the lesson of this colossal experiment is that archaic societies are not immune to new ideas for good or ill.
That other alum of the Reading Room, Mahatma Gandhi, proved brave leadership can avert slaughter and murderous revolution in powder-keg conditions – and win freedom.
In the United States, Martin Luther King and his galvanisation of black churches provided a method of challenging injustice which stood in stark contrast to the violent route chosen by the venerated leaders of the American Revolution.
The situation in the Middle East may appear hopeless but the South Africa of the Sharpeville era was also deemed destined for destruction. Instead, Nelson Mandela – a man drenched in Shakespeare – rose with a new vision.
As Bush believed, democracy, European standards of justice and even reconciliation can emerge against Himalayan odds. But for such a reality to catch fire the spark must be lit from within.
We cannot drop such a revolution onto the landscape from a B-52, but perhaps we could sponsor a Reading Room in Kabul?
But to look at the region in this moment of turmoil and say it is irreparably locked into a culture of medieval feuding, theocratic passions and tribal tyranny is equally wrong.
Yes, circumstances are shaped by history, but individuals possess the power to astonish in every generation.
Foreign policy chiefs beset by gloom should take the afternoon off and stand in the quiet of the British Museum Reading Room.
Among the men who entered this arena of learning were Karl Marx, Lenin, and Mahatma Gandhi.
We should force obsessions about terrorist training camps from our minds for a few moments and reflect on the truly explosive power of the ideas which were kindled by these figures in the realm of the mind.
Who in the early years of the 19th century would have predicted that the visions dashed out by Marx would spring like mesmeric grasshoppers into countries as diverse as Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba and Angola and define the geopolitics of the 20th century?
President George W Bush was onto something when in his second inaugural speech he said: “America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude, or that any human being aspires to live at the mercy of bullies.”
Marx’s manifesto for secular liberation found disciples in societies which we might dismiss today as irretrievably ensnared in corruption, barbarism and superstition.
People on almost every continent proved willing to die in pursuit of the dream of a European thinker who stood squarely in the Enlightenment tradition.
Only the most committed zealots expect a popular revival of Communism, but the lesson of this colossal experiment is that archaic societies are not immune to new ideas for good or ill.
That other alum of the Reading Room, Mahatma Gandhi, proved brave leadership can avert slaughter and murderous revolution in powder-keg conditions – and win freedom.
In the United States, Martin Luther King and his galvanisation of black churches provided a method of challenging injustice which stood in stark contrast to the violent route chosen by the venerated leaders of the American Revolution.
The situation in the Middle East may appear hopeless but the South Africa of the Sharpeville era was also deemed destined for destruction. Instead, Nelson Mandela – a man drenched in Shakespeare – rose with a new vision.
As Bush believed, democracy, European standards of justice and even reconciliation can emerge against Himalayan odds. But for such a reality to catch fire the spark must be lit from within.
We cannot drop such a revolution onto the landscape from a B-52, but perhaps we could sponsor a Reading Room in Kabul?
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Ratzinger on Tuesday
Christian belief... means opting for the view that what cannot be seen is more real than what can be seen. It is an avowal of the primacy of the invisible as the truly real, which upholds us and hence enables us to face the visible with calm composure - knowing that we are responsible before the invisible as the true ground of all things.
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.74
Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, p.74
Monday, November 02, 2009
Barth on Monday
One may, of course, be confused and one may doubt; but whoever once believes has something like a character indelibilis. He may take comfort of the fact that he is being upheld. Everyone who has to contend with unbelief should be advised that he ought not to take his own unbelief too seriously. Only faith is to be taken seriously; and if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, that suffices for the devil to have lost his game.
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.12
Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline, p.12
Sunday, November 01, 2009
Donegal Day
When you're in Donegal on a day of driving rain you can see where the inspiration for the pint of the black stuff may have come from.
It was a delight to spend a day with dad looking for mountains which were lurking behind the darkest of clouds. For any visit to Ireland to work you have to prize the journey as much as the destination.
I'm sure the Poisoned Glen looks beautiful in brilliant sunshine, but there's mystery in this horizon of mist and water.
A ruined church overlooks the lake, inhabited by a very friendly wolf-like dog.
It has some of the best picture frames in the country.
It really was wet. But the clouds lifted for a moment when we visited the birthplace of St Colmcille. And Glenveigh, the scene of appalling evictions in the not so distant past, today shines in its stillness.
We turned the car towards Dunfanaghy where the sun had already sunk and there feasted and read the Irish Times. It wasn't a technically ideal day for sightseeing, but it was a privilege to see the world beneath the clouds.
It was a delight to spend a day with dad looking for mountains which were lurking behind the darkest of clouds. For any visit to Ireland to work you have to prize the journey as much as the destination.
I'm sure the Poisoned Glen looks beautiful in brilliant sunshine, but there's mystery in this horizon of mist and water.
A ruined church overlooks the lake, inhabited by a very friendly wolf-like dog.
It has some of the best picture frames in the country.
It really was wet. But the clouds lifted for a moment when we visited the birthplace of St Colmcille. And Glenveigh, the scene of appalling evictions in the not so distant past, today shines in its stillness.
We turned the car towards Dunfanaghy where the sun had already sunk and there feasted and read the Irish Times. It wasn't a technically ideal day for sightseeing, but it was a privilege to see the world beneath the clouds.
God Gave Us Hope
Imagine one night
That a meteorite crashes
Through the skies,
Blazing a trail so bright it turns
Darkness into day.
Suppose it smashes into a mountain
And shakes the country
So that people sit up in their beds
And ask “What happened?”
Then picture the scientists and journalists
Rushing to the meteor
And stopping in their tracks,
Amazed at the glow
Coming through its cracks.
In the shell of this giant rock is a light
Which shines a new colour.
This is not a new shade of
Red, green, blue or yellow.
This is something new.
So it is with hope.
You will not find the word “hopeful” in the Bible.
When the writers spoke of hope
They were not talking of vague optimism.
No, these people glimpsed the plans of God.
They knew their lives - our lives - were not like a film
Spooling towards the moment when the screen fades to black.
No, God’s plans would crash into our reality and shake the foundations of everything.
The vision was so glorious centuries of prophets
Were dazzled with the new colours of his glory and grace.
They did not know the precise details of how history would unfold,
Or that the cry of a baby in a manger would be the
Fanfare of God’s revolution,
But they had reason to believe that time and space were caught up
In the purpose and power of a loving God.
That certitude -
That gift of knowledge -
Is hope.
It is the expression of trust
In the God whom Jesus taught us to call
Father.
Hope is not denial of the sin, darkness
And downright dread,
Which can wake us in the night like a stab to the heart.
Hope is not faith in human progress
Or a spurious cheeriness
In the face of disaster, scandal or oppression.
But hope is the knowledge that a God of justice reigns;
That he loves;
That his standards are true and his promises are real
And that the destiny of the cosmos is in his hands.
When the people of Israel were
In captivity in Babylon,
Everything seemed hopeless.
They had been hauled away from Jerusalem,
The holy city,
And were now enslaved by pagans.
Psalm 137 captures their despair:
From a human point of view,
The destiny of the Jewish people seemed dashed
On the rocks of a foreign empire.
But part of the challenge for any follower of Yahweh
Is to learn to see the world from his point of view.
He sent his prophet Jeremiah with this message:
What more could a person desire?
Is this not what all of us long for?
Humanity is haunted by dread,
The opposite of hope.
How many of us have the chilling fear
That all that awaits is the dying of loved of ones
And the crumbling of dreams?
How many of us regularly wonder if we do have a
Hope and a future?
How often could we join Job in crying these words:
The book of Job is perhaps the most ancient in the Bible.
But is not his gasp of existential despair something
All of us can hear on the streets of our city?
Has not every one of us known the moment
When we grasp for purpose
And exclaim Job’s words:
This is the reality we know.
And this is the reality to which the God of the Bible speaks.
And this is the hopelessness from which Christ rescued us.
Bob Dylan,
One of the poets of the 20th century,
Had it right when he declared:
“[He] not busy being born
Is busy dying.”
In this couplet there is the echo of Job’s lament:
“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
And they come to an end without hope.”
And in death
There is the terror of extinction.
Everything within us cries out that we are programmed
For a deeper reality,
A longer life
And a more meaningful existence.
When a dog dies,
He curls up in peace.
But when a human passes away
Like a dying animal
Everything seems wrong.
Dylan Thomas said in his famous poem:
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
The spluttering nature of death,
Which has haunted our world since the Fall,
Seems an offence against the wonder
And design of nature.
As the writer of Ecclesiastes said:
Is that not only does this state of affairs
Seemed wretched and wrong
To every human on he planet,
God, too, grieves at the sorrows of
Sin, pain and death.
In Eden,
God once walked with Adam and Eve
In the cool of the day.
Yet in Genesis,
We see the first people hiding from their Maker,
Suddenly ashamed of their nakedness.
The greatest grief in this scene is God’s.
He knows the true horrors of sin
That humanity has released in the world.
He knows what it will cost to conquer evil
And ransom the people he loves.
And when God comes to this world as one of us,
When he stands with Mary and Martha and
Sees their sorrow at the death of their brother, Lazarus,
He weeps.
The tears of the creator fall in his creation.
Yes, in these pages our God weeps in the face of death.
But in a few chapters time, he will conquer it forever.
As Jesus himself put it:
A thousands comets,
Each in a colour never glimpsed by human eyes,
Have blazed into the inky night of our lives.
There is the revelation that God loves a world
Humanity curses.
There is the invitation to take God at his word,
To trust in him,
And not perish.
This is more than the uneasy hope
Of a reincarnation
Or a second chance on another planet.
We have the new hope of eternal life.
Jesus, in his life, death and resurrection,
Has taken the guilt of our sins.
And His Holy Spirit is at work in our hearts,
Healing us of the instinct to hate
And the desire to rebel.
But this is more than a cosmic repair operation.
Jesus is not like a coastguard who fishes you from the sea
And drops you off at your house with a warning
Not to be so foolish again.
No, he is taking us to his own home,
To delight and live in the glory of a healed kingdom.
As CS Lewis said in his 1947 work Miracles:
You are that dripping, precious thing.
We may have been stuck in sludge in darkness,
But God sees you as a jewel which will
Shine in eternity
For millennia after our sun has died.
God wants us to live in this hope.
Religion without hope is just a drug,
Like Novocaine,
Easing the ache of existence.
But the Apostle Paul wrote to the first Christians in Corinth:
This hope is a real as the stone in your shoe.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, he wrote:
It is a cliché to say that death is the last taboo in the secular West
But we force it from our thoughts.
Yet centuries of Christians have regarded death as the journey
Leading to the revelation of their hope.
The 17th century spiritual writer Jeremy Taylor noted:
“It is a great art to die well.”
While in exile in Wales he wrote a book on the subject, Holy Dying:
Joy exploded
As miracles were worked
And God’s love revealed.
Something similar should happen
Among the people who have this hope burning in their hearts.
We are not supposed to keep
The Love of God a secret.
Like elves on the night of Christmas Eve,
We exist to distribute the gift of this knowledge
Into homes on every continent.
Paul praised the Colossian Christians for
The “faith and love that spring
From the hope that is stored up for you in heaven”.
He wrote in his world-changing letter to the Romans:
A hope and a future,
Joy and peace,
These are the gifts of a great God who loves to give.
What a joy to be called into a community
Which “overflows with hope”.
But while we long to be filled with joy and peace,
What should we do when
The dank chill of dread
Creeps over us,
No matter how much we might want to blaze with hope?
We should cling to God’s promises as the bedrock of reality
And refuse to let to doubt and despondency
Relativise away our hope.
Paul described hope as a helmet -
Head protection which guards the brain from damaging thoughts.
The writer of the epistles to the Hebrews
Called it an anchor,
Something to stop us drifting towards shipwreck.
This does not mean we will not be buffeted,
Bruised, disorientated and dazed
By all of the vicissitudes
That can blast into the path of anyone alive on earth.
Just as Jesus shared in the cruellest sufferings conceivable,
There is no guarantee Christians will escape
The traumas and terrors
Which define the existence of millions.
For we are not people who look forward to escaping the world.
Somehow, the hope we carry
Is good news for all of creation.
The joy which gurgles in the church today
Is a life which will one day make the cosmos dance.
As Paul wrote in the eighth chapter of Romans:
We are part of a community shaped by hope.
The greatest theologians, prophets and apostles
Elders, Sunday schoolteachers, caretakers,
Rainbow-strap-wearing worship-leading guitarists -
All of us -
Like a community of caterpillars,
Await the transformation
Of ourselves
And the world.
These are the days when the cosmos is in the chrysalis.
But what a crazy yet beautiful glory.
What a joy to live in hope.
As the 16th century Bible translator and martyr William Tyndale
Put it in his rendering of 1 John 3:1,
"Beholde what love the father hath shewed on vs
That we shuld be called the sonnes of god."
That a meteorite crashes
Through the skies,
Blazing a trail so bright it turns
Darkness into day.
Suppose it smashes into a mountain
And shakes the country
So that people sit up in their beds
And ask “What happened?”
Then picture the scientists and journalists
Rushing to the meteor
And stopping in their tracks,
Amazed at the glow
Coming through its cracks.
In the shell of this giant rock is a light
Which shines a new colour.
This is not a new shade of
Red, green, blue or yellow.
This is something new.
So it is with hope.
You will not find the word “hopeful” in the Bible.
When the writers spoke of hope
They were not talking of vague optimism.
No, these people glimpsed the plans of God.
They knew their lives - our lives - were not like a film
Spooling towards the moment when the screen fades to black.
No, God’s plans would crash into our reality and shake the foundations of everything.
The vision was so glorious centuries of prophets
Were dazzled with the new colours of his glory and grace.
They did not know the precise details of how history would unfold,
Or that the cry of a baby in a manger would be the
Fanfare of God’s revolution,
But they had reason to believe that time and space were caught up
In the purpose and power of a loving God.
That certitude -
That gift of knowledge -
Is hope.
It is the expression of trust
In the God whom Jesus taught us to call
Father.
Hope is not denial of the sin, darkness
And downright dread,
Which can wake us in the night like a stab to the heart.
Hope is not faith in human progress
Or a spurious cheeriness
In the face of disaster, scandal or oppression.
But hope is the knowledge that a God of justice reigns;
That he loves;
That his standards are true and his promises are real
And that the destiny of the cosmos is in his hands.
When the people of Israel were
In captivity in Babylon,
Everything seemed hopeless.
They had been hauled away from Jerusalem,
The holy city,
And were now enslaved by pagans.
Psalm 137 captures their despair:
“By the waters of Babylon,
There we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.
On the willows there
We hung up our lyres.
For there our captors
Required of us songs,
And our tormentors, mirth, saying,
‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion!’
How shall we sing the Lord's song
in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget its skill!
Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth,
If I do not remember you,
If I do not set Jerusalem
above my highest joy!”
From a human point of view,
The destiny of the Jewish people seemed dashed
On the rocks of a foreign empire.
But part of the challenge for any follower of Yahweh
Is to learn to see the world from his point of view.
He sent his prophet Jeremiah with this message:
“[I] know the plans I have for you,A future and a hope.
Declares the Lord,
Plans for welfare and not for evil,
To give you a future and a hope.
Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me,
And I will hear you.
You will seek me and find me,
When you seek me with all your heart.”
What more could a person desire?
Is this not what all of us long for?
Humanity is haunted by dread,
The opposite of hope.
How many of us have the chilling fear
That all that awaits is the dying of loved of ones
And the crumbling of dreams?
How many of us regularly wonder if we do have a
Hope and a future?
How often could we join Job in crying these words:
“So I have been allotted months of futility,
And nights of misery have been assigned to me.
When I lie down I think, ‘How long before I get up?’
The night drags on,
And I toss till dawn.”
The book of Job is perhaps the most ancient in the Bible.
But is not his gasp of existential despair something
All of us can hear on the streets of our city?
Has not every one of us known the moment
When we grasp for purpose
And exclaim Job’s words:
“If the only home I hope for is the grave,
If I spread out my bed in darkness,
If I say to corruption, You are my father
And to the worm ‘My mother’ or ‘ My sister’
Where then is my hope?
Who can see any hope for me?
Will it go down to the gates of death?
Will we descend together into the dust?”
This is the reality we know.
And this is the reality to which the God of the Bible speaks.
And this is the hopelessness from which Christ rescued us.
Bob Dylan,
One of the poets of the 20th century,
Had it right when he declared:
“[He] not busy being born
Is busy dying.”
In this couplet there is the echo of Job’s lament:
“My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
And they come to an end without hope.”
And in death
There is the terror of extinction.
Everything within us cries out that we are programmed
For a deeper reality,
A longer life
And a more meaningful existence.
When a dog dies,
He curls up in peace.
But when a human passes away
Like a dying animal
Everything seems wrong.
Dylan Thomas said in his famous poem:
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
The spluttering nature of death,
Which has haunted our world since the Fall,
Seems an offence against the wonder
And design of nature.
As the writer of Ecclesiastes said:
“He has made everything beautiful in its time.The message of the Bible
He has also set eternity in the hearts of men;
Yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Is that not only does this state of affairs
Seemed wretched and wrong
To every human on he planet,
God, too, grieves at the sorrows of
Sin, pain and death.
In Eden,
God once walked with Adam and Eve
In the cool of the day.
Yet in Genesis,
We see the first people hiding from their Maker,
Suddenly ashamed of their nakedness.
The greatest grief in this scene is God’s.
He knows the true horrors of sin
That humanity has released in the world.
He knows what it will cost to conquer evil
And ransom the people he loves.
And when God comes to this world as one of us,
When he stands with Mary and Martha and
Sees their sorrow at the death of their brother, Lazarus,
He weeps.
The tears of the creator fall in his creation.
Yes, in these pages our God weeps in the face of death.
But in a few chapters time, he will conquer it forever.
As Jesus himself put it:
“For God so loved the world,With these words,
That he gave his only Son,
That whoever believes in him
Should not perish
But have eternal life.”
A thousands comets,
Each in a colour never glimpsed by human eyes,
Have blazed into the inky night of our lives.
There is the revelation that God loves a world
Humanity curses.
There is the invitation to take God at his word,
To trust in him,
And not perish.
This is more than the uneasy hope
Of a reincarnation
Or a second chance on another planet.
We have the new hope of eternal life.
Jesus, in his life, death and resurrection,
Has taken the guilt of our sins.
And His Holy Spirit is at work in our hearts,
Healing us of the instinct to hate
And the desire to rebel.
But this is more than a cosmic repair operation.
Jesus is not like a coastguard who fishes you from the sea
And drops you off at your house with a warning
Not to be so foolish again.
No, he is taking us to his own home,
To delight and live in the glory of a healed kingdom.
As CS Lewis said in his 1947 work Miracles:
“[One] may think of a diver,
First reducing himself to nakedness,
Then glancing in mid-air,
Then gone with a splash, vanished,
Rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water,
Down through increasing pressure into the
Death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay;
Then up again, back to colour and light,
His lungs almost bursting,
Till suddenly he breaks surface again,
Holding in his hand the dripping,
Precious thing that he went down to recover.”
You are that dripping, precious thing.
We may have been stuck in sludge in darkness,
But God sees you as a jewel which will
Shine in eternity
For millennia after our sun has died.
God wants us to live in this hope.
Religion without hope is just a drug,
Like Novocaine,
Easing the ache of existence.
But the Apostle Paul wrote to the first Christians in Corinth:
“If only for this life we have hope in Christ
We are to be pitied more than
all men.”
This hope is a real as the stone in your shoe.
In his first letter to the Thessalonians, he wrote:
“Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant
About those who fall asleep,
Or to grieve like the rest of men
Who have no hope.”
It is a cliché to say that death is the last taboo in the secular West
But we force it from our thoughts.
Yet centuries of Christians have regarded death as the journey
Leading to the revelation of their hope.
The 17th century spiritual writer Jeremy Taylor noted:
“It is a great art to die well.”
While in exile in Wales he wrote a book on the subject, Holy Dying:
“If thou wilt be fearless of death
Endeavour to be in love with the
felicities of saints and angels,
And be once persuaded to believe that there
Is a condition of living better than this;
That there are creatures more noble than we;
That above there is a country better than ours;
That the inhabitants know more and know better,
And are in places of rest and desire;
And first learn to value it,
And then learn to purchase it,
And death cannot be a formidable thing,
Which lets us into so much joy and so much
felicity.
And, indeed,
Who would not think his condition mended if he
Passed from conversing with
Dull tyrants and enemies of learning,
To converse with Homer and Plato,
With Socrates and Cicero,
With Plutarch
And Fabricius?
So the heathens speculated, but we consider higher.
‘The dead that die in the Lord’ shall converse with St Paul,
And all the college
Of the apostles,
And all the saints and martyrs,
With all the good men
Whose memory we preserve in honour,
With excellent kings and holy bishops,
And with the great Shepherd and Bishop
of our souls, Jesus Christ,
And with God himself.
For Christ died for us, that,
Whether we wake or sleep,
We might live together with him.”
This vision of hope excited men and women in 1651,
And I think it can quicken the pulse in the 21st century.
But it does more than that.
God uses this hope to change us from within,
Shaping us into the likeness of his Son.
The apostle John wrote in his first letter:
“Dear friends,Where Jesus walked,
Now we are children of God,
And what we will be has not yet been made known.
But we know that when he appears
We shall be like him,
For we shall see him as he is.
Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself,
Just as he is pure.”
Joy exploded
As miracles were worked
And God’s love revealed.
Something similar should happen
Among the people who have this hope burning in their hearts.
We are not supposed to keep
The Love of God a secret.
Like elves on the night of Christmas Eve,
We exist to distribute the gift of this knowledge
Into homes on every continent.
Paul praised the Colossian Christians for
The “faith and love that spring
From the hope that is stored up for you in heaven”.
He wrote in his world-changing letter to the Romans:
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace
As you trust in him,
So that you may overflow with hope
By the power of the Holy Spirit.”
A hope and a future,
Joy and peace,
These are the gifts of a great God who loves to give.
What a joy to be called into a community
Which “overflows with hope”.
But while we long to be filled with joy and peace,
What should we do when
The dank chill of dread
Creeps over us,
No matter how much we might want to blaze with hope?
We should cling to God’s promises as the bedrock of reality
And refuse to let to doubt and despondency
Relativise away our hope.
Paul described hope as a helmet -
Head protection which guards the brain from damaging thoughts.
The writer of the epistles to the Hebrews
Called it an anchor,
Something to stop us drifting towards shipwreck.
This does not mean we will not be buffeted,
Bruised, disorientated and dazed
By all of the vicissitudes
That can blast into the path of anyone alive on earth.
Just as Jesus shared in the cruellest sufferings conceivable,
There is no guarantee Christians will escape
The traumas and terrors
Which define the existence of millions.
For we are not people who look forward to escaping the world.
Somehow, the hope we carry
Is good news for all of creation.
The joy which gurgles in the church today
Is a life which will one day make the cosmos dance.
As Paul wrote in the eighth chapter of Romans:
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparingWe do not go on this journey of rebirth alone.
With the glory that will be revealed in us.
The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed...
We know that the whole creation has been groaning
As in the pains of childbirth
Right up to the present time.
Not only so, but we ourselves,
Who have the firstfruits of the Spirit
Groan inwardly as we await eagerly our adoption as sons,
The redemption of our bodies,
For in this hope we were saved.”
We are part of a community shaped by hope.
The greatest theologians, prophets and apostles
Elders, Sunday schoolteachers, caretakers,
Rainbow-strap-wearing worship-leading guitarists -
All of us -
Like a community of caterpillars,
Await the transformation
Of ourselves
And the world.
These are the days when the cosmos is in the chrysalis.
But what a crazy yet beautiful glory.
What a joy to live in hope.
As the 16th century Bible translator and martyr William Tyndale
Put it in his rendering of 1 John 3:1,
"Beholde what love the father hath shewed on vs
That we shuld be called the sonnes of god."
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