The old lady at the temple

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshipped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem. Luke 2:36-38

How old was Anna? Eighty-four, having been widowed after seven years of marriage? Or had she been a widow for eighty-four years after seven years of marriage? Luke 2:36-37 can be translated either way. But of course it doesn’t matter; whatever, she was a very old woman!

And we meet her here in the Jerusalem temple, along with Simeon, some six weeks after Jesus’ birth. Both she and Simeon are deeply devout Jews, and they greet Joseph and Mary as Mary comes to undergo the purification rites which were required by Jewish law for new mothers.

She occupies just three verses of the Bible, but she is worth thinking about, and not just because of her great age.

For one thing, she is called “a prophetess”. There’s a Jewish writing dating from about this time which says that “seven prophetesses have prophesied to Israel… Sarah, Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah and Esther”, which puts Anna in pretty select Old Testament company.

Perhaps the nearest equivalent we might think of today would be a nun: a woman marked out by her life-long dedication to God.

We are told that Anna “never left the temple”. I doubt if we should take that literally – though, who knows, I suppose there is a possibility that, recognising her ministry, the temple authorities had given her living quarters somewhere around the temple precincts.

As well as her “worshipping night and day” and “fasting and praying”, you could even describe her as a preacher; she was happy to speak publicly “about the child” to those who came to worship.

All of which reminds us of the important role of women in the Bible, both Testaments…

The first people to proclaim the good news of Jesus risen from the dead were women (Luke 24:1-12). The first person to meet him was a woman, Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18). Read Romans 16:1-16 – that long list of names – and you see that over a third were women, and they were obviously greatly valued by Paul.

Then there’s Lydia the businesswoman, Paul’s first convert in Philippi, clearly a formidable woman whose hospitality Paul was glad to accept (Acts 16:11-15). And that married couple specially precious to him, Aquila and Priscilla. (Is there any significance in the fact that, five of the seven times their names are mentioned in the New Testament, it’s “Priscilla and Aquila”: the wife put before the husband? Just asking…!)

Pointing this out doesn’t, of course, settle the vexed question of the role of women in the church – that debate will no doubt continue for a long time. But perhaps it should deter us from being too dogmatic on the matter.

There’s no getting away from the fact that, in spite of the heavily male-dominated cultures of the time, the Bible presents us with a number of women gifted with real leadership qualities - and, like Anna, used by God. Is there a danger today that, in some churches, women’s wisdom, gifts and talents are left unused?

A second reflection… I wonder how Anna came to discover her prophetic calling? Let me speculate for a minute…

Her life was shaped by sadness. Losing her husband so young, and being a widow so long, is pretty sad, isn’t it? Perhaps her early vision in life was the conventional one of being wife and mother. (Well, perhaps she did have children – we aren’t told.)

But it’s as if widowhood led to all her mental and spiritual energies being channelled into a focus on God and his purposes for Israel. I picture her as a familiar figure to everyone who came to the temple for either regular worship or for occasional pilgrimages as “that old lady who’s always around the place praying for our nation” - and being held in respect and even awe.

Would she have developed this ministry if she hadn’t been widowed? Would she have been there to greet Joseph and Mary that day? We don’t know, but quite possibly not; her life would have been occupied with other important things.

So what…? Well, this reminds us that God can take the sad and even tragic events of our lives and use them to open a new door into something we had never expected or wanted. The obvious example, thinking now of men as well as women, is those who never find a marriage partner though they long for one, or whose marriage breaks down, and who are drawn into some ministry for which God equips them.

Or it could be an accident or a serious illness, a big career disappointment, or some other unwelcome turn of events. How many people serving on the mission field never dreamed of such a ministry until a life-changing event?

Can you recall a time which changed everything for you, and even left you thinking “My life has been ruined”? Nothing will ever completely take the pain away, and there’s no point in pretending. But is it time to do what Anna must have done, and to turn all your focus onto God your loving father, and to ask, “Lord, what do you have in mind for me? Please show me”?

You could be in for a wonderful surprise!

Father, thank you for all the godly old people who bear the battle-scars of Christian discipleship and who have been an inspiration and challenge to me. Help me to respect and honour them and to be a better follower of Jesus because of their example. Amen.

God's mystery men

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judaea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked “Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him”. Matthew 2:1-2

There are few people in the Bible more mysterious than the wise men. They raise all sorts of intriguing questions, many of which we can only guess at.

Who were they? What is a “magus” (that’s the singular of Magi)? “Wise men”, philosophers, teachers, scholars? Probably all of those. Were they priests? If so, not in any sense recognised by the Bible. They came following a star – so were they astronomers, or astrologers? Was there even a more sinister aspect to their activity? – after all, Simon in Acts 8, sometimes called “Simon Magus”, is described as a “magician” or “sorcerer”; and is not portrayed in a good light.

Where did they come from? Well, that’s easy – Matthew says quite clearly “from the east”. Well, yes. But it’s a big place, the east! Babylonia? Arabia? Persia? Persia seems as likely as any, but we don’t really know.

How many of them were there? Oh, that really is easy – three, of course! But, hang on a minute, Matthew never says that. Oh yes, three gifts are mentioned: gold, frankincense and myrrh. But there’s nothing to suggest it was one gift per wise man; who knows, perhaps there were a dozen of them (a bit of a squeeze, then, round Jesus’ manager).

Perhaps most intriguing of all: what kind of relationship did these men have with God? Clearly they were used and blessed by him, but everything suggests that they were gentiles rather than Jews, Israelites. Did they know God in any sense that we would recognise? And why would they be so interested in signs that pointed to a little nation like Israel?

What, if anything, did they expect from this new-born “king of the Jews”? What did they do about their great discovery when they got back home? Did it change them, did it shape the rest of their lives, and if so by what means; or did it simply become a long-cherished memory?

Questions, questions, questions.

God hasn’t seen fit to give us answers, but there are certainly good things that we can draw from the story. Here are three…

First, they remind us that Jesus is for all people, not just for Israel, the Jews. Oh yes, he is indeed “the King of the Jews”, but according to the Old Testament, God called Israel in the first place to be “a light to lighten the gentiles” (for example, Isaiah 49:6), not just his own people. And so their King is to be everyone’s king – and that includes you and me.

Are you yet a subject of King Jesus?

Second, they encourage us to be persevering in our search for God. We don’t know the full extent of the difficulties and dangers of their journey; but we do know that they didn’t give up until they found that manger. John tells us that at Jesus’ birth “the true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world” (John1:9). The human race may be sunk in deep darkness; but every human being has some access to his light, however faint it may be.

One of the greatest things the baby of Bethlehem ever said, thirty years later, was “Seek and you will find”. In those five little words there is both a promise (“you will find”) and a condition (“seek”). You could translate it “If you seek, you will find”. Those are words to be taken absolutely at face value!

Are you seeking that light of God day by day?

Third, they remind us to bring our best to Jesus. There are various theories about the significance of the gold, frankincense and myrrh. But there is no doubt that they were costly, precious items.

Jesus, then, is worthy of the best we have; and, even if we don’t have a lot of gold, frankincense and myrrh (not me, anyway), there can surely be nothing more precious than our humble, whole-hearted faith and obedience and love.

Are you a whole-hearted Christian today?

Real challenges there. But for me, the sheer mysteriousness of the wise men is the most appealing aspect of their story. They remind us that there are things about the ways of God with men and women that we haven’t even begun to understand.

They put me in mind of that strange and rather wonderful man “Melchizedek king of Salem” (Genesis 14), to whom even Abraham paid tribute – who on earth was he! Or of that rather sinister figure Balaam (Numbers 22-24), used by God to speak truth, but certainly no Amos or Isaiah or Daniel. Even of grumpy old Jonah, God’s bad-tempered prophet.

Some forms of Christianity like to have everything pinned down: logical, mechanical, cerebral, conveniently dished up on a doctrinal plate. As a result they tend to squeeze every last drop of mystery out of their understanding of God and his workings. They fail to see that the Bible is designed by God to fire our imaginations and to challenge our attitudes and behaviour as well as to instruct our minds. They leave little room for silence and wonderment, for questionings and even doubtings.

This is a pale reflection of the kind of “religion” we find in the Bible, both Old Testament and New. It is Christianity with a whole major component missing. It is a form of Christianity that breeds ill-nourished disciples.

Here’s a question: will we meet the wise men one day in heaven? They never “believed” in Jesus in the New Testament sense. But I find it very hard to say No. Don’t you?

We thank you, O God, that you are a God who moves in mysterious ways. While we hold fast to the great central truths of our faith, help us at the same time to be open to the mysteries which we don’t fully understand, to sometimes be silent in your holy presence, not to be afraid to ask questions and even challenge stale and second-hand views – at all times to be open to the life-giving movement of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

The strangest nativity story

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John 1:1

To all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God… John 1:12-13

I picture the apostle John, an old man, shuffling into his study to start writing his account of the good news of Jesus – what today we call the Gospel of John.

He knows that Matthew, Mark and Luke have already written at some length, and has probably read parts at least of their books…

Matthew chose to start with the long family-tree of Jesus – name after name after name! – before putting Joseph and Mary centre-stage.

Mark chose to skip over the events of Jesus’ birth and youth, and to plunge straight into the ministry of John the Baptist by the River Jordan, thirty years on.

Luke chose to begin by introducing the elderly parents of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth.

So now John picks up his pen; and slowly he writes: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”.

What’s this! No angels or shepherds? No star or wise men? No Joseph or Mary? No Jesus, indeed (he doesn’t get a mention by name until verse 17, well into Chapter 1). What a strange way to begin his story!

Why does John do this?

The clue is in the first three words: In the beginning. You don’t need to know your Bible by heart for that to ring some pretty loud bells. No: the very first verse of the Bible tells us that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”.

It’s as if John is saying something like this to his readers…

We all know the creation story in Genesis 1– what God did before the dawn of time. Well, now in my book I’m going to tell you another creation story, a story of new creation.

That first creation went horribly wrong. The whole of the Old Testament is a record of how that happened - from Adam and Eve in the Garden, through Noah and the flood, to the choosing of a special nation, Israel. They were called to demonstrate the character of a holy and loving God to the whole human race, but they became no better than humanity as a whole.

God could have washed his hands of his entire creation project. But he didn’t; he chose to start again; and the beginning of that new, pure, clean, holy creation is what I and certain others have seen with our own eyes (verse 14) and what we want to tell you about.

When God started that first creation, what instrument did he use? Answer: his Word. Read through Genesis 1 and you see how again and again “God said… and it was so”. The Word of God is truly of awesome power; he spoke, and it happened.

And what I want you to know is that that word was not simply a breath issuing from the mouth of God - though it certainly was that - but was, and is, a person, a he not just an it, a Person who sums up the very essence of God’s being: “the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (verses 1-2).

The truly staggering thing I want to get across to you is that this Word-who-is-a-Person “became flesh and made his dwelling among us”. Yes, truly! Still more, “we have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth (verse 14)…”

That’s my feeble attempt to grapple with what I think must have been going on in John’s mind when he sat down to write. No doubt I’ve grasped only a millionth part of it, but while I’m sure John loved and valued all the details about Bethlehem, and the star, and Joseph and Mary, and baby Jesus lying in the manger, it’s clear that over his long life he has done some serious praying, thinking and probing.

And out of it all emerges this baffling, dazzling statement: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was [not only] with God… the Word [actually] was God…”

Let’s sum it up…

The Word which banished the darkness at the moment of creation – “Let there be light! And there was light” (Genesis 1:3) – is the same Word who comes to earth as a baby to banish the darkness that ruins our beautiful world, and also the darkness that spoils your heart and mine. He comes offering “grace and truth” (verse 17) – which is all about love, forgiveness, mercy and cleansing. He comes to start a new creation – a new “beginning” – in your life and mine.

But… he can only do that by our invitation. Just as you can’t enjoy a Christmas gift until you receive it, so you can’t enter into that grace and truth until you have received Jesus into your heart by humble, childlike faith (verses 11-13).

Have you yet done that? The invitation still stands. What better time than at Christmas? The Word of God waits not just to speak to you, but to come and live within you. He waits to make you a new person, the person you were always meant to be. Why not receive him now?

Here’s a prayer you might like to pray…

O holy child of Bethlehem,/ Descend to me, I pray./ Cast out my sin, and enter in;/ Be born in me today./ I hear the Christmas angels/ The great glad tidings tell;/ O come to me, abide with me,/ My Lord Immanuel! Amen.

Struggling - but not failing!

Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labour in the Lord is not in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:58

I don’t know who or where it came from, but this little message popped up on my iPad the other day: The fact that you’re struggling doesn’t mean you’re failing.

It was obviously meant as a word of encouragement for anyone who’s finding things hard at the moment. And after a moment’s thought I responded in my mind: Yes; thanks for that!

Not that I feel that I’m particularly struggling at the moment. But I do share with I imagine most people that sense of heaviness: the coronavirus of course, the short days and long nights, the cold and wet of midwinter, political instability, bad news from pretty well everywhere around the world. These aren’t easy times, are they?

Many people do feel that they’re struggling; that they really aren’t coping with the build-up of pressures. A pastor friend told me that in ministry at the moment “you have to do twice as much work for half the return”. He described his work as “a nightmare”. I have no illusions where I might be if I weren’t safely retired.

I think the apostle Paul would have welcomed that message. The fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the church in Corinth is one of the longest in the New Testament, no fewer than 58 verses. It’s all to do with the greatest theme imaginable: the bodily resurrection of Jesus – plus the fact that through faith in him we share in his resurrection, his victory even over death itself: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?... thanks be to God! He gives to us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (verses 55-57).

You would think that’s a great note with which to wind up the resurrection theme. But no; he chooses to tag on his little word of encouragement - and back down to earth you come with a bump. Never read 1 Corinthians 15 without including verse 58!

What does Paul tell his readers?

First, there’s a word of what used to be called “exhortation” – urging, spurring on. He tells his readers to “stand firm”, not to be easily blown over or knocked down. They are to “let nothing move them”. I think of one of those magnificent trees that even the most howling gale can’t uproot.

Some people, of course, might want to reply, “It’s all very well talking like this, Paul. But that’s my whole problem: I’m not standing firm. I’m barely coping. Sometimes I feel I’m going under. I just don’t know how much more I can take”.

Fair enough: and I think Paul would have had nothing but sympathy for anyone who said that. He had, after all, been there himself – just look at the first chapter of his second letter to Corinth, where he plainly states that “we despaired of life itself” (“despair” isn’t a word you normally associate with Paul, is it!).

No, this isn’t an easy “pull-yourself-together” scold for anyone who is genuinely suffering with some kind of depression. But it is a rallying-call for any of us who might be tempted to throw up our hands and give up.

That leads to the second thing: a reminder that often the way through a bad patch is to roll up our sleeves and buckle down to some worthwhile task. We are to “give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord”.

Again, this isn’t intended to crush the person who is simply no longer physically or mentally capable of such service; what they need is love, support, understanding and prayer. But it is a reminder that under normal circumstances “where there’s a will there’s a way”, and we are to look for that way. As someone has said, it is often not God’s way to bring us out of dark times, but to bring us through them. And we end up all the stronger as a result.

Do any of us need to ask God to give us some new part to play, some personal ministry to take on: perhaps something very simple and ordinary, but “the work of the Lord” all the same? As the saying goes, it’s better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

The third thing is a word of encouragement: “your labour in the Lord is not in vain”.

Perhaps this is the worst thing about feeling heavy-spirited and pessimistic: things which once we used to do cheerfully and gladly – well, now we struggle to summon up any motivation. It all seems a waste of time and of what little energy we may have, so why bother? what’s the point?

Well, says Paul, there is a point. Even the tiniest, most insignificant thing we do for the glory of God will bear fruit. True, we may never see that fruit, but that doesn’t matter: God sees it, and he uses it to bring joy, hope and peace into someone else’s life.

If we take 1 Corinthians 15 seriously it helps us to glory in the joy of resurrection. But it helps us to glory too in the joy of serving our loving Father and our fellow-men and women.

Loving Father, in my heaviness of spirit please enliven and energise me to do even the smallest and most feeble things, trusting that they are valued both here on earth and even in heaven. Amen.

Christmas carols - a blessing or a bore?

I will sing with my spirit, but I will also sing with my understanding. 1 Corinthians 14:15

Christmas carols… I don’t know about you, but I have rather mixed feelings about them.

On the one hand, some of them are really good – their words are meaningful and convey solid teaching, and their tunes too are often attractive.

Others, though, are schmaltzy and sentimental, and bear very little relation to what Christmas is about. They sometimes even contain false ideas – my all-time non-favourite is “Away in a manger”, with that line about “little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes”. Every time I’m expected to sing that, I want to stand up and shout out, “What do you mean, no crying he makes? Of course he cried! He was a human baby as well as the Son of God! Needed to have his nappy changed too, just in case you’re interested.” (Anything to enhance the Christmas spirit, you understand.)

But my main problem is twofold. First: we only get to sing Christmas carols for a very brief period of the year; once Christmas is over we pack them away, so to speak, with the tinsel and decorations, and it’s a whole year before we sing them again. And second: when we sing them, we sing them even more mindlessly than usual, precisely because we know them so well. When was the last time you ever seriously thought about the words you were singing?

All right, enough of the grumpy stuff. I do in fact want to make a positive point: very simply, that our songs and hymns can nourish our souls in wonderful ways if only we can learn to focus on the words and take them to heart – “singing with the understanding”, as Paul puts it. I’ve got space for just two examples…

First, O little town of Bethlehem, by Phillips Brooks (1835-1893).

I find the third verse especially helpful…

How silently, how silently/ The wondrous gift is given!/ So God imparts to human hearts/ The blessings of His heaven./ No ear may hear His coming;/ But in this world of sin,/ Where meek souls will receive him, still/ The dear Christ enters in.

The essence of the gospel is there: our world is fallen and sinful, but salvation is offered to us, as a gift, purely by the mercy and grace of God. All he asks is that our “meek souls” (is your soul meek?) should “receive him” (have you yet received him?). Humility, repentance and a childlike trust – it is these that open the door for God himself to enter our lives and make us new people.

Second, From the squalor of a borrowed stable, written by Stuart Townend in 1999.

All right, the experts will tell you (and no doubt rightly) that it probably wasn’t a “stable” at all, that it probably wasn’t “borrowed”, and that it very likely wasn’t “squalid” either; but let’s allow a bit of a nod to the story as traditionally told!

In fact this lovely song isn’t strictly a Christmas carol at all, because although it starts with the birth of Jesus, the remaining verses take us right through his earthly life and finish with him crucified, risen from the dead, and “standing in the place of honour”. Yes, you can sing it all year round! – but I wonder how many of us do? Oh to sing it one Sunday in July!

Every verse is full of meat, and worth reflecting on. But for me perhaps the most powerful words are the ones that speak of Jesus as “filled with mercy for the broken man” (all right, a bit sexist there). It then goes on: “Yes, he walked my road and he felt my pain….” I love the sheer simplicity of that. Just ten words, each of one syllable, yet somehow they convey perfectly that Jesus came to share our earthly troubles and to suffer not just for us but also with us.

I said earlier that one of the down-sides of the carols is that we know them so well that we sing mechanically without noticing the words. But it occurs to me that there is perhaps an up-side too – because we don’t have to look at the words, we can close our eyes as we sing. And this can give us a stronger focus and help us not to be distracted. And that, in turn, may help us to pray with a deeper intensity.

Go back to “O little town”. The final verse is a prayer direct to Jesus: O holy Child of Bethlehem,/ Descend to us, we pray!/ Cast out our sin and enter in,/ Be born in us to-day./ We hear the Christmas angels/ The great glad tidings tell;/ O come to us, abide with us,/ Our Lord Emmanuel!

Words worth treating as a prayer? I think so! Words worth closing your eyes for? I think so! Here’s a suggestion: next time you sing those words, close your eyes, perhaps raise your hands, and sing them as if you’ve never heard them before.

But… sing them with all your heart, mind and soul.

Happy Christmas!

Thank you, O God, for the men and women whom you have gifted with poetic and hymn-writing talents over two thousand years of Christian history. Help me to value and appreciate them, and to benefit from what they wrote. Amen.

No easy answers

Jesus took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them. Mark 10:16

Where was God when Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, age 6, was tormented to death by the people who were supposed to be looking after him?

It’s an uncomfortable question to ask, isn’t it? - especially for those of us who are Christians and who believe in the God revealed to us in Jesus. Why didn’t God do something?

An uncomfortable question indeed. But a question I think we must, in integrity, face up to. For many people who are not Christians will ask it in their minds if not out loud. What would we say if one of them decided to put us on the spot: “Where was this God of yours? this God you make so much of? How could he allow such a terrible thing to happen? How could he stand by while Arthur staggered around wailing ‘There’s no-one to look after me. There’s no one to feed me’?

“You say he is all-powerful – which means, surely, he could have stopped it happening. And you say he is all-loving – which means, surely, he would have stopped it happening. So either he is not all-powerful or he is not all-loving. Not much of a God! Or perhaps he just doesn’t exist at all…”

Any answer we offer would probably be along the lines of the freedom God has given to human beings to do evil if they so choose. We are not robots, pre-programmed always to do the perfect will of God; no, we are free agents, and if we choose to do evil there are bound to be repercussions. In this particular case the consequence happened to be the horrible suffering of a little boy.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes is therefore a terribly prominent example of what human evil can do; horrible, terrible things are, after all, happening all over the world every minute of every day. At this very moment something equally horrible could be happening just round the corner from where you or I live – we just aren’t aware of it.

Such an answer to the person questioning us would be true. But it gives cold comfort. The fact is that Christianity has existed for two thousand years; and throughout those two thousand years some of the holiest and wisest Christian people have struggled to offer an explanation of “the problem of evil”. And none of them has succeeded fully.

One twentieth-century theologian wrote a book called Love almighty and ills unlimited, which was an attempt to tackle the question head-on. But while the title captured the mystery nearly perfectly, and while the book argued at a high level - both humble in spirit and philosophically sophisticated, using scripture thoughtfully and human reason too - no-one would claim it got to the bottom of things.

So what’s the point of someone like me writing my little blog? Probably no point at all. My only excuse is that it seems almost cowardly to be confronted with such a question and not try at least to grapple with it. (I claim poor, suffering Job as my inspiration.)

What strikes me is this. While we naturally look for explanations to hard questions like this (and that’s not wrong – God has given us minds, after all), explanations are rarely what we find in the Bible (think Job again). But what we do find, often, are stories. And in this case I find it hard not to think of the beautiful story of the parents bringing their children to Jesus – a greater inspiration, of course, than Job! - and of Jesus’ anger when the disciples tried to turn them away.

It appears in each of Matthew, Mark and Luke, in slightly different forms.

Luke tells us that Jesus “called the children to him” and pronounced that “the kingdom of God belongs to such as these”, but not that he did anything, though it is obviously implied that he “placed his hands on them” (Luke 18:15-17).

Matthew spells it out that Jesus “placed his hands on them” (Matthew 19:13-15). Can you see him?

But Mark adds another little detail: not only did Jesus place his hands on the children, but “he took the children in his arms”, where the word used carries the idea of “enfolding” them - “cuddling” them might be a good translation (Mark 10:13-16).

Of course the story doesn’t directly tackle the tragedy of what happened to little Arthur. But would it be wrong to apply it to such things? It’s hard to think so.

So… I find Mark’s extra little detail very comforting. I see in my mind’s eye Arthur Labinjo-Hughes enfolded now in the arms of Jesus, free of all pain and with every memory of his suffering completely erased.

Does that mental picture fully answer the question, Where was God when these things happened? No, of course not. Am I guilty of building teaching not on scripture but on wishful thinking? I hope not.

I think, simply, that it is the nearest the Bible comes to giving us an answer. Certainly it is the best I can come up with. Would anyone like to offer something better? Or tell me where I may be wrong? Please feel free!

Lord Jesus, thank you for the compassion you feel for the sufferings of the human race – a compassion which was enough to take you to the cross. As we grapple with the mystery of pain, please fill our hearts with your compassion, and even where we are unable to fully understand, to do all we can to bring that compassion to those in pain. Amen.

Soften my heart, Lord, soften my heart.

From all indifference set me apart.

To feel your compassion, to weep with your tears.

Come soften my heart, O Lord, soften my heart.

Graham Kendrick

A tale of two women (2)

At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!...” Luke 1:39-42

We thought last time about the dramatic meeting between Mary the mother-to-be of Jesus and Elizabeth the mother-to-be of John the Baptist: a tale of two women, I called it. We focussed on the moment when Mary greeted Elizabeth, and the baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaped as if in joyful greeting of the one whose forerunner he was destined to be. No mere coincidence in the timing there!

Thinking about the two couples, the elderly Zechariah and Elizabeth and the young Joseph and Mary, we saw how God loves to reward humble, obedient and determined faith, and also how he delights to work through very ordinary people – people, perhaps, just like you and me.

But there is more to enjoy in this little episode, so I felt I wanted to return to it.

For one thing, it is a story of human friendship.

To call Elizabeth and Mary “friends” is of course to understate the nature of their relationship: in Luke 1:36 Elizabeth is described as Mary’s “kinswoman” or “relative”, and given the difference in their ages, they were hardly a couple of contemporaries, “friends” as we tend to think of it.

But Luke makes a point of telling us that Mary’s visit lasted for three whole months (1:56), which suggests a truly intimate closeness, even allowing for the much deeper nature of extended family life in their world.

Wouldn’t we love to know what they talked about! We can only guess. But we can be sure that they were good for one another - Mary no doubt offering practical support, and Elizabeth, after her long life of trust in God, offering Mary the reassurance she may have needed as she came to terms with the staggering thing that was happening to her.

(And anyway, why shouldn’t people belonging to different generations also be genuine friends?)

I especially like the fact that Elizabeth shows not a scrap of jealousy of the younger woman who is very shortly to take centre-stage while she fades into the background. She exclaims “in a loud voice… Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (1:42-3).

How generous-spirited am I - are we - towards others whose destiny is to outshine us?

Whatever, those three months together speak to me of the beauty and value of friendship - of the fact that none of us can negotiate the twists and turns of life alone, but need the support and love of others. And I find myself thinking, as I get towards the end of my life, of the many people who have been wonderful friends to me.

The Bible doesn’t have a lot to say about friendship. But there is a touching little observation in Ecclesiastes 3:9-10: “Two are better than one… if one of them falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity anyone who falls and has no-one to help them up”. Yes, pity them indeed!

Two very obvious questions arise: Do I value my friends as much as I should? and, How good a friend am I to others? Jesus said to his disciples “I have called you friends” (John 15:15). We could not wish for a better role-model, could we!

A second strand in this story is the role of the Holy Spirit.

That loud shout that I have just quoted came after “Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (1:41). When the angel Gabriel had visited Mary to tell her what was going to happen, he put it down to the work of the Spirit: “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…” (1:35). And when John was born and Zechariah’s tongue was released (he had been struck dumb as a rebuke for his unbelief) we read that he “was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied” (1:67). The Holy Spirit is at the heart of everything.

Of all the Gospel-writers Luke perhaps shows most interest in the Holy Spirit – it was he, after all, who went on to write the Acts of the Apostles (which could very well be entitled the Acts of the Holy Spirit) and described that momentous Day of Pentecost when the Spirit was poured out on the infant church (Acts 2).

The Holy Spirit is an enormous topic over which Christians may not always agree. But if he (I find it impossible to say “it”!) is about anything, that thing is life. The Spirit is in fact the very life and energy of God himself, the very breath and power of God. And apart from him everything is dead.

It is for want of the Spirit that churches shrivel and die, that prayer goes cold, that preaching bores and leaves its hearers unmoved.

So as we soak our minds in this lovely story of God at work in these two women, bringing miraculous life by the power of the Holy Spirit where none could be expected, why don’t we pray…

Father, I recognise that all I am and all I attempt is worthless and dead apart from your Holy Spirit. Please, in your generosity, grant me a fresh outpouring of your Spirit – even more, please grant to your church another Pentecost, a fresh baptising of your Spirit. Amen.

A tale of two women

At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!...” Luke 1:39-42

No man, of course, can even begin to imagine what it’s like to be a pregnant woman. You probably need a variety of words to capture it: frightening, wonderful, awe-inspiring. And when the baby first moves or kicks in the womb – what a moment that must be! To think that the age-old miracle of new life is being acted out inside your body…

It’s commonplace, of course; it happens millions of times every day; it’s the most ordinary thing in the world. But try telling that to the mother! No, it’s the most special, amazing thing imaginable.

The opening chapters of Luke’s Gospel are, among other things, a tale of two pregnant women: Elizabeth and Mary. And each of them is giddy with amazement.

It’s Elizabeth that we meet first. The wife of a priest called Zechariah, she is old and well past the age of childbirth: she and Zechariah’s prayers for a child have not been answered. But Zechariah, going about his priestly duties in the Jerusalem temple, receives an angelic visitor who frightens him out of his wits and then staggers him with a message: “Do not be afraid… your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John…” (Luke 1:11-13).

John – more usually known to us as John the Baptist - is destined to have a short and difficult life; indeed, a troubled and often unhappy life. But he is sent to earth by God for a unique role; he is the one who paves the way for Jesus, the Messiah of the Jews.

And so Luke moves on to Mary and her husband-to-be, Joseph (Luke 1:26). As with Zechariah, the announcement of the angel – named in this case as Gabriel - is alarming to Mary: she knows enough about human biology to realise that something very unusual is going on here. But Gabriel reassures her, and tells her about “Elizabeth your relative”. The encounter ends with a simple statement of trust and submission: says Mary, “I am the Lord’s servant… May your word to me be fulfilled” (Luke 1: 38).

For me the highlight of the story is the moment Elizabeth’s baby “leaped in her womb for joy” as the two women greeted one another. The cynic will say, no doubt, that it was just coincidence that baby John stirred at that precise moment; but I don’t think Luke meant that. No, this was a wonderful prophetic foreshadowing of what was to come – you could say, of what John described more fully in John 1:29.

God is on the move as never before!

So… a story about two women and their husbands. But it has much to say on various levels, and especially much about the character of the God we believe in.

Let’s highlight a few things…

First, God rewards persevering faith.

I think we can assume that Zechariah and Elizabeth had long since stopped praying for a child. And there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that; nothing wrong with reaching a point where we say “God’s answer seems to be No”.

But I think we can also assume that many years earlier they had prayed fervently for a child; and also that they had been a truly prayerful couple throughout their lives, even after that particular hope had died in them.

And now – completely unexpectedly, their prayer is answered after all.

It’s as if sometimes God puts our prayers “on hold”, saving up the answer for the perfect moment known only to him. So let’s ponder this: a prayer you prayed twenty-five years ago – a prayer you have forgotten ever praying – may be answered tomorrow.

Second, God delights to work in and through ordinary people.

Both couples in this story are of humble origins. Though Zechariah was a priest, and that sounds pretty important, we need to remember that priesthood was a status you were born into as a male descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses, rather than one you were called to, as we tend to think of spiritual leadership today.

Mary comes across as a typical young woman, perhaps little more than a girl, who finds it hard to grasp why God should “be mindful of the humble estate of his servant” (Luke 1:48). And Joseph was a carpenter, a craftsman whose work would have given him a respected place in the town of Nazareth, but not as a leader.

The point being… God loves to use those whose only “qualification” is humble trust in him and glad obedience to him: think David in the Old Testament; think Simon Peter in the New.

And then, perhaps, ask the question: how qualified am I? Who knows what God might have in mind for some of us? How open are we to some possibility at present beyond our imaginations?

I’ve run out of space, and there is more still to glean from this beautiful story. So please re-join me next time!

Thank you, Father, for Elizabeth and Mary and their husbands. As I reflect on their wonderful stories, help me to look at my own very ordinary life and to believe that with you all things are possible. Amen.

The God you can't escape

God… is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and have our being. Acts 17:27-28

“I don’t believe in God. But… I say my prayers every night not because anyone is listening, but because I always have. Cathedrals fill me with wonder, graveyards with reverence”.

Now, what kind of silly person could say that? How daft is it to offer prayer to a God who you don’t even believe exists?

Answer: the highly intelligent and well-respected journalist Matthew Parris, in a recent column in The Times newspaper. I always turn to his column because he usually writes impressive good sense.

I’m sure he wrote those words with a mischievous smile on his face, knowing full well their absurdity and looking forward to the reaction they might (and did) provoke.

His column that day was, in essence, a lament for Anglican Christianity, which he dearly loves, but which, in his view, has nothing to do with God. He was condemning recent efforts in the church to reinvent itself by reaching out to non-churchgoers with new methods and non-traditional approaches.

What, of course, he failed to recognise is that the kind of “Christianity” which he values so highly has nothing - literally nothing - to do with the Christianity we find in the New Testament and throughout history. It’s like one of those “working museums” you find dotted around the country – quaint, interesting places for a visit and a bit of entertainment, but otherwise of no importance.

It would be silly of us to argue with Parris - he himself wouldn’t expect us to take him too seriously. But his comments triggered a couple of thoughts which I think do deserve to be taken seriously.

First, what if that liking for various outward trappings of “religion” is in fact a sign of something deeper and truer within all of us that people like Parris need to recognise?

What if that pleasure in “saying my prayers”, that sense of awe in beautiful buildings, in stained-glass windows, in the power of the Bible, in that sense of peace in strolling round a graveyard – what if all that turns out in fact to indicate something of infinite depth and importance? - a true spiritual longing, a hunger and desire for the creator of the universe and the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ? What then?

Ecclesiastes 3:11 tells us that God has “set eternity in the human heart”. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but it certainly suggests that we human beings are more than just fleshly, earth-bound creatures.

No. We do in fact have “heavenly longings” - as someone has said, humankind is “incurably religious”. And a day is coming when our eyes will be opened to realities at present beyond our wildest dreams, realities that will have us gasping in amazement. A day, indeed, when Parris’s non-existent God will turn out to be the very God before whom we stand as he passes holy judgment on our lives.

People who share Parris’s view would be wise to take seriously Paul’s warning about the danger of “suppressing the truth” – the truth about which God has given them strong and beautiful hints (Romans 1:18).

Second, if it’s true that God has given us such pointers towards his reality, how good are we believers at encouraging our non-Christian friends to notice those pointers?

Think of our worship services. Yes, we sing and pray and listen to God’s word as it is read and taught. But how often do we pause and encourage people to reflect? Are we guilty of cluttering our services with words, words, and still more words? Repetitive words? mechanical words? perfunctory words?

Somebody came to me once and thanked me for the service just ended. At which (pathetic wretch that I am) I felt an ugly little glow of pride – obviously yet another riveting, powerful, Spirit-filled sermon preached. And then he said, “I specially appreciated the times of silence…” Ah. What was that uncomfortable bump I felt?

I didn’t know much about him, but I’m pretty sure he had a busy work-life and quite a lively and noisy home-life. So I suspect that for him the opportunity to be still for a few moments in the presence of God was precious.

Words – even true words – can come across cold and even hard. We fool ourselves if we imagine that once we have pumped people’s heads full of words, words, and even more words it’s a case of “job done”. An act of worship needs time to “breathe”; God’s word, delivered with the power and warm vitality of the Holy Spirit, needs time to be absorbed and to do its work in people’s inmost beings.

Perhaps Matthew Parris, even though he doesn’t realise it himself, is responding to a deep inner need when he says his daily prayers or strolls through a graveyard or sits and ponders the Bible.

Well, he’d better be careful! One day that non-existent God of his might suddenly come alive and give him the shock of his life…

Pray that it may be so!

Father God, we live in times of stress, depression and anxiety, times when many people are struggling with feelings of hopelessness, even despair. Please, by your Spirit, stir the hearts of millions who have previously hardly given you a thought. And help those of us who love and trust in you to live the kind of lives and to speak the kind of words that will make you wonderfully real to them. Amen.

The voice of Jesus

The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep… He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes on ahead of them, and his sheep follow him because they know his voice… Jesus said, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me… John 10:2-4, 11, 14

I have a cousin who is a dairy-farmer. His farm is a one-man business, and that can present problems when he needs to take a break for a few days. Certainly, he can get people to stand in for him, but if he does he finds that the milk-yield of the cows is seriously depleted – it’s almost as if they go on strike until he returns.

Which seems strange. Nearly all modern milking, including his, is done by mechanical means, so what difference should it make who actually attaches the equipment to the cows? But apparently it does.

I use the illustration of the farmer and his cows rather than the shepherd and his sheep because… well, I don’t happen to know any sheep-farmers! But if you read John 10 right down to verse 20 you won’t have any problem seeing the connexion. Jesus describes himself as both the shepherd of the sheep and the gate by which they go in and out, but if he had chosen to talk about cows and their farmer the same essential truths would emerge.

What’s it all about? Trust, that’s what! And trust is at the heart of all good and healthy relationships, so it’s about that too. Lacking it, the cows don’t give their milk, and the sheep don’t follow.

The idea of sheep and shepherds is strong in the Old Testament to describe the relationship between the king and his people.

Moses is recorded as praying that God would appoint for his people a leader “who will lead them out and bring them in, so that the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd” (Numbers 27:16-17). (Compare that with Matthew 9:36, where the heart of the good shepherd is moved with “compassion” – that is, pity and deep sadness – for the big, swarming crowds “harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd”.)

Go to Ezekiel 34 and you find the prophet condemning false leaders as being like worthless shepherds who are only concerned for themselves. And it’s surely no accident that Israel’s greatest king – David - was, in his youth, a shepherd-boy (1 Samuel 16). In adulthood he simply swopped one type of flock for another…

So it’s a very natural parable that Jesus makes use of. What I find particularly striking about it is that four times in verses1-18 Jesus speaks about the shepherd’s voice.

Once when I was a small boy the head-teacher spoke during the assembly about the beauty of human eyes. To prove his point he told us, “There are many things you probably can’t remember today about your mother. But one thing I’m sure of – if I asked you what colour her eyes are, you would answer straight away.”

And I felt bad! Rightly or wrongly, I didn’t have a clue about the colour of my mother’s eyes. I had simply never noticed. Ah, but the sound of her voice – that was a different matter. Eyes, after all, are just there; but a voice is something you relate to. I would be able to pick that out in a roomful of noisy people.

And so it is with the voice of Jesus, our good shepherd; it is more precious to us than we can say.

But… how exactly do we hear it? Not, after all, with our physical ears. There may be times when in fact we don’t seem to hear it at all, perhaps because we have wandered away from him, or because it is crowded out by the many troubles, distractions and noises of our daily lives. But he is always speaking, even when we are not listening, or when our circumstances are such that we cannot hear.

This is where another memory of my early life comes in: as a child in Sunday School, and even more as a young convert, I was encouraged each day to have a “quiet time” of prayer and Bible-reading. That expression has, I think, fallen out of use over the years – people think it sounds a bit twee.

Well, perhaps. But I still think it has a real value, and I am not at all embarrassed to say that even all these years later I still try to make it my practice, and I’m still happy to recommend it to others.

In fact, the modern popularity of “mindfulness”, for us as Christians, is really just a recognition of our need to “be still, and know that God is God” (Psalm 46:10). To find such a time may be difficult in the busyness of our lives. But it needn’t be lengthy; it need only be sincere and determined. A few minutes with a focussed heart and an open Bible can make all the difference.

So… Is it time you set aside a few minutes in your life to be still in the presence of Jesus and to allow him to speak? A few minutes to deepen that relationship I spoke about earlier? Everything good and wholesome springs from that, just as the sheep learns to confidently follow the shepherd and (if you don’t mind me comparing you to a cow) the cow produces rich, foaming, frothy, health-giving milk.

May God bless us all as we learn to listen for the voice of Jesus!

Lord Jesus, please train my ear through scripture and the Holy Spirit so that it becomes attuned to the sound of your voice, and so that I learn the secret of guidance, obedience – and peace. Amen.

Something to think about

We maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law. Romans 3:28

 

Paul was very clear about “justification by faith”. Here are two statements you might like to think about…

1 We are justified by faith. We are not justified by believing in justification by faith.

2 Justification by faith is not a doctrine you believe in, it’s a discovery you make.

 

And two questions which you might like to discuss with your friends…

1 Are these two statements true?

2 If they are, what follows?

 

I would love to hear what conclusions you come to.

 

Thank you, Father, that my salvation comes purely as a gift of your kindness, mercy and grace. Please bring home to my mind the sheer wonder of that truth, and then help me to express it in my daily living. Amen.

Who on earth was Cyrus? (2)

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfil the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing: This is what Cyrus king of Persia says… Ezra 1:1-2

Last time we saw how there are events described in the Bible which echo the writings of other ancient documents; and the words inscribed on the “Cyrus Cylinder”, discovered at Babylon in 1879, are a case in point. Reading the closing verses of 2 Chronicles and the opening verses of Ezra alongside the words on the Cylinder (you can find it on the internet) is very illuminating!

The big lesson from all this technical stuff was clear: God is in control of history.

The application to 2021 is obvious: as we look around us at modern day events, grim and even heart-breaking as they sometimes are – as we look around us at Afghanistan and China, at Myanmar and Russia, at Nigeria and America, at Poland and Belarus, at the coronavirus and at global warming – how can we not take a serious and prayerful interest in unfolding events? Isn’t it just a matter of Christ-like compassion to do so?

Christian, read your paper alongside your Bible!

Though we can be confident that the end is sure, we must never be complacent – saying, or perhaps just thinking, “Oh well, God is in control, so we don’t need to bother too much”. No! God’s heart must ache over the sorrows that he sees; shouldn’t ours, then, do the same?

But if that is the main lesson of these passages, there are others too that came to mind…

First, the accuracy of the Bible.

King Cyrus didn’t see the events described on his Cylinder in quite the same way as the Bible writers did; it would have surprised him, for example, to learn that “the Lord” had “moved his heart”! – he, no doubt, saw his enlightened policy as purely his own idea. But the two accounts dovetail together well, and that reminds us that, in general, we can trust the essential accuracy of what the Bible says.

Not that there aren’t difficulties and problems in reconciling some biblical accounts with other, secular, accounts: there certainly are, and plenty. Even Bible scholars who hold most strongly to the inspiration of scripture recognise that not all the “contradictions” can be easily explained. But we can be assured that the Bible is, in essence, trustworthy.

Second, God has all sorts of things up his sleeve.

Who, in those dark days five hundred years before Jesus, would have guessed that the liberty of Israel would come about through an idol-worshipping, pagan king! Yet so it was.

True, the prophets of God knew better. If you turn to Isaiah 44:24-45:13 you find Cyrus (yes, the very same man) described as God’s “shepherd” (44:28) and even as his “anointed” (45:1), a title which belongs ultimately to Jesus the “Messiah” (that’s what “anointed” means). But how far that truth had penetrated through to “ordinary” Israelites we cannot know.

The point is that God is a great springer of surprises, and we never know when he might do something that takes our breath away. Isn’t this one reason why we stubbornly persist in prayer, even when God has seemed for a long time deaf to our cries?

God has all the resources of the universe at his finger-tips, so… let’s pray to him… let’s plead with him… let’s shout at him if that’s how we honestly feel (he knows anyway, doesn’t he?)… let’s ask him to wake up (Psalm 44:23-26)… let’s pester him (Luke 18:1-8)… let’s say with wrestling Jacob “I will not let you go unless you bless me” (Genesis 32:22-32), even if we have to say it through gritted teeth.

Our prayers are never in vain, even the “unanswered” ones.

Leading on from that, a third truth: God often gives his people unexpected friends.

As we saw earlier, Cyrus was a worshipper of a Babylonian god called Marduk. In Isaiah 45:5 God makes clear that he is under no illusions about this (God under illusions? what a crazy thought!): “I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you [Cyrus], though you have not acknowledged me…”

As if to say: Cyrus, you may be a died-in-the-wool pagan, but you are going to be my instrument, a friend to my suffering people.

The idea that all the world hates us because we are followers of Jesus is just plain wrong. Didn’t Jesus himself tell his stern and over-zealous disciples - suspicious because someone using Jesus’ name was “not one of us” - that “whoever is not against us is for us” (Mark 9:40)?

Yes, all men and women are sinners in the sight of God and subject to his holy judgment. But in this messy world in which we live, with so many greys as well as blacks and whites, God sometimes in his sovereign grace chooses to use those we might naturally think of as enemies. And I can’t think of a better example of that than King Cyrus the Great of Persia. Can you?

Our God is always faithful. But don’t let anyone ever say that he is predictable…!

Loving Father, please help me always to hold on to you, even when you seem far away. And help me, too, never to tie you down to only what my feeble imagination can conceive. Amen.