A holy hatred? (2)

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. ‘Tear it down,’ they cried, ‘tear it down to its foundations!’ Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. Psalm 137:7-9

Last time I offered a couple of thoughts that might help us as we try to come to terms with the shocking end of Psalm 137. First, don’t sugar it over – it’s there in scripture and must be taken at face value. And second, keep in mind that outbursts of emotion are rarely the final word in fraught situations. Psalm 137:7-9 is, so to speak, merely a snapshot in a still-moving sequence of events – it is not given to us to justify a spirit of vengefulness.

The third thought, the one that I didn’t have space for, is: bear in mind that there is a difference between hatred and malice on the one hand, and a desire for justice on the other.

Hatred and malice are always wrong, whatever the circumstances; a desire for justice is always right, because justice is precious to God. If, in these verses, we make allowance for the understandable passion of the moment, can we not say that the psalmist is in fact pleading for justice rather than thirsting for revenge?

Is that wishful thinking on my part? I hope not! Bear with me, please…

Regarding the Edomites, let’s not fail to notice that verse 7 is, in essence, a prayer to God himself: “Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did, on the day Jerusalem fell…” The writer doesn’t curse the Edomites, but prays that true justice – God’s justice – will be brought to bear on them.

It’s as if he is saying, “Lord, you know how I feel about the Edomites and their malice and gloating on that terrible day. Well, there’s nothing I can do to sort them out! But what I can do is to leave them in your hands, and simply pray that you, who are perfectly just, will do what I can’t do”.

Even in relation to the cruel Babylonians, he doesn’t see himself as personally enjoying the experience of “getting his own back”. He is, once again, pleading for justice in the God-given form of “eye for eye and tooth for tooth” – “according to what they have done to us” - gruesome though that is in this particular case.

“Happy is the one who repays you…” he cries out to the Babylonians. Who precisely he has in mind by “the one who repays you” isn’t entirely clear, but I like to think that that too is in fact a reference to God himself.

In a word, if the white heat of rage has already cooled somewhat, perhaps he has reached the point of saying, “Well, now it’s in the hands of God, and I must do my best to leave it just there”.

In our fallen world, this may be the best we can hope for in all sorts of situations. After the fall of apartheid in South Africa a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” was set up to try and deal justly with the backlog of anger and hatred that it had left behind. The Commission knew its limitations… Did it deliver a completely harmonious society? - of course it didn’t. Was every wrong righted? – of course not. But better, surely, to edge towards some kind of harmony than to allow bitter enmity to fester.

Why not pray for a similar thing today for Israel and Gaza once the immediate horrors are over? True, it’s hard to imagine an Israeli prime minister and a Palestinian president joining hands in a search for a lasting and just peace – indeed, it seems nothing less than dreaming of the impossible. But is not our God one who works miracles? He is the one who “makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, ‘Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth’” (Psalm 46).

What applies to international affairs applies also to personal circumstances. Perhaps you or I have had an injustice done to us by somebody. Perhaps we are nursing bitterness. Perhaps we need to recognise that that can only poison us inwardly. Why not take a deep breath and dump our bitterness (yes, really!) into God’s lap? “Lord, I know so-and-so will seem to have ‘got away with it’. But so be it! I leave it with you, the perfect judge. I trust you to deal with it with your perfect, holy judgment”.

To repeat: we can easily confuse judgment, a bad thing except when in the hands of a perfect God, with justice, a value precious in his eyes; as the prophet Amos put it, “Let justice roll on like a river, and righteousness like a never-failing stream” (Amos 5:24). And as God himself has declared: “I, the Lord, love justice” (Isaiah 61:8).

Dear Father in heaven, I remember how Jesus said ‘Blessed are the peace-makers’. Help me to be one of that number every day of my life – and please hear my prayer for justice and peace in every corner of our troubled world. Amen.

O Lord, your tenderness,/ Melting all my bitterness,/ O Lord, I receive your love./ O Lord, your loveliness,/ Changing all my ugliness,/ O Lord, I receive your love… Graham Kendrick

A holy hatred?

Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. ‘Tear it down,’ they cried, ‘tear it down to its foundations!’ Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks. Psalm 137:7-9

One thing I value about the Bible is its honesty. Or perhaps I ought to say, I think I do; for I must confess that I wobble a bit when I come to passages like the end of Psalm 137. What terrible, horrible words these are! The image of babies being smashed to pieces by marauding soldiers leaves you just shaking your head, doesn’t it? What’s this doing in the Bible?

Answer: being honest, that’s what. This is exactly the kind of thing that happens in warfare, modern as well as ancient. Indeed, what drew me back to Psalm 137 today was the news from Israel/Gaza about children being deliberately targeted for destruction. Nothing changes when it comes to human sinfulness, nor will it until Jesus returns, as he himself makes clear (Mark 13:7). That’s just being realistic, being honest.

The psalm as a whole moves from a mood of beautiful, sad melancholy in verses 1-6 (“By the rivers of Babylon we sat; we wept when we remembered Zion (Jerusalem). There on the poplars we hung our harps…”) to what comes like a kick in the teeth in these closing verses. I find myself wishing it had ended at verse 6.

But it didn’t, so honesty forces us to look it full in the face and see how we can make sense of it. It is, after all, part of God’s word.

The historic background is what is usually called “the fall of Jerusalem”, God’s city, to the Babylonians, in 587 BC: “On the seventh day of the fifth month, in the nineteenth year of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon, Nebuzaradan commander of the imperial guard… came to Jerusalem. He set fire to the temple of the Lord, the royal palace and all the houses of Jerusalem…” (2 Kings 25:8-9). And then he carted off the people into exile where, in this psalm, we find them weeping by the rivers of Babylon.

If you would like to know why the Edomites also came in for Israel’s censure (verse 7), the place to go is the little prophecy of Obadiah, especially verses11-14.

But I think the question we need to grapple with is: How should we as Christians respond to verses 7-9, given that they seem to exude nothing but raw hatred, a desire for revenge, and given that this is so alien to the spirit of Jesus, who has taught us to love and forgive our enemies?

I can only speak for myself, of course, and I claim no authority in doing so. But here are some thoughts that occur to me…

First, don’t try and sugar it over.

The fact that it’s in the pages of scripture doesn’t mean that “it’s all right, then”. The fact that the Bible describes such feelings of rage and vengefulness doesn’t mean it approves of them!

Second, remember that words spoken in the heat of emotion are not necessarily the final word in any situation.

Which of us, having seen the horrors of the fall of Jerusalem, not least the cruelty inflicted on children – especially perhaps if they were my children! – wouldn’t feel this way? Wouldn’t something be seriously wrong with us if we didn’t?

And similarly, who can blame people on both sides in the Israel-Gaza fighting who have understandable reasons for longing for revenge? Both sides have suffered injustice, whether a slow grinding injustice over decades, or a sudden appalling shock. Or both, of course.

You and I have probably known times in life when we too have suffered injustice, and it has left us seething with anger. Can we honestly claim that we have brought that anger to God – indeed, to the cross – and thus attempted to “process” it in a Christian fashion? Have we succeeded in draining every note of bitterness from our hearts, or are we still nursing dark, ugly secrets behind smiling faces?

The person who wrote Psalm 137 is unknown to us. But if we were to meet him we would probably find he was no different from you or me: that is, in great need of the grace and mercy of God in dealing with fierce but understandable anger.

There’s a third thing that needs to be said, but I’m running out of space – so I do hope you will join me again next time…

Father, our hearts are heavy as we follow terrible events in the middle-east and elsewhere. We pray that you will have mercy on us all, that you will raise up men and women who are true peace-makers, and that even through very sinful and imperfect national leaders you will bring a measure of peace and justice. Amen.

Good workmanship?

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15

I heard a story recently about a man who visited a church one Sunday and heard a sermon where the preacher didn’t once mention the name of Jesus. He decided there and then that this wasn’t the church for him.

Every Christian – certainly me - is likely to agree with that man’s disappointment, not to say disgust. Preaching a “Christian” message without even bringing Jesus into it! – outrageous!

But wait a minute… The story as told didn’t contain any information about the theme or content of the offending sermon. But I can’t help wondering… did Jesus figure prominently in the service as a whole – the prayers, the readings, the songs and hymns? Was the sermon from a little-known passage in the Old Testament? May we assume that God was mentioned many times? (And even if all those things were so, would it have made it any better?)

True, the absence of the name of Jesus still seems strange. But I have to admit that as I thought the story over I decided  that, just in the interests of being fair to the preacher, I would like to have heard the whole thing.

My mind went to some advice of Paul to his protégé Timothy, a younger pastor still learning his trade, so to speak. In 2 Timothy 2:15 Paul tells him, among other things, to “correctly handle the word of truth”. That’s something the preacher in the story didn’t do, it would seem.

But again, wait a minute… We have to stop and ask a question: What precisely does it mean to “correctly handle the word of truth”?

The word that many Bibles translate as “correctly handling” is very unusual; it has the word “cut” or “carefully shape” at its root – think of a farmer cutting a straight furrow, or a road that has been cut straight. It suggests that Timothy here is being advised to take scrupulous care over the work he puts into his preaching: nothing sloppy or lazy. What he says when he preaches is to be not only true to scripture (we take that for granted) but also appropriate, relevant to everyday life, couched in clear intelligible language and honouring to God. Skilfully cut.

But even on that showing it still seems odd if the name of Jesus is not heard. But then another question occurred to my mind: Is it possible for a sermon to have too much of the name of Jesus?

That, surely, is an even more outrageous suggestion! But bear with me, please.

I have heard sermons where the preacher has seemed absolutely determined to squeeze the name of Jesus in at every possible opportunity – never mind how artificial and contrived it is. It’s as if the preacher has thought during preparation: “Never mind what this passage is actually about, my chief job is to lift up the name of Jesus… – so I’m going to find him here by hook or by crook!”

But isn’t the whole Bible, both testaments, all about Jesus? Well, yes and no.

Yes, in the sense that the Old Testament as a whole leads up to him, and the New Testament as a whole looks back to him. But No, not in the sense that every single verse or even every story, passage or chapter speaks of him. To speak as if it did is to make a mistake regarding the interpretation of the Bible.

It’s true that Luke tells us (Luke 24:27) that on the road to Emmaus the risen Jesus explained to the two bewildered disciples “what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself”. But “in all the scriptures” surely means “in scripture as a whole” (focussing particularly in this instance on “Moses and the prophets”). If Jesus had, that night, expounded every single Old Testament verse, the exposition would have gone on for days!

So yes, it is possible for a sermon to mention too often the name of Jesus, if that involves twisting and distorting the natural meaning of the text.

The vital message for us preachers is: Let scripture speak! Let it say just what it wants to say. Don’t try and make is say something which, at that particular moment, it has no intention of saying. Don’t foist upon it a meaning it doesn’t carry. The Bible, certainly, is a divinely inspired book. But it is not a magic book, and we shouldn’t treat it as if it were.

There are many traps and pitfalls into which preachers and teachers can fall – and I reckon that in my time, alas, there aren’t many I have managed to avoid. So it’s hardly my right to find fault with others. But it’s very easy for us to fall into patterns of preaching without consciously thinking about what we’re doing and why exactly we’re doing it.

All of us therefore need to pay attention to Paul’s advice to Timothy to “correctly handle the word of truth”. And as we struggle to do that, please, you who listen, be patient with us and bear with us! Above all, pray for us, for we sorely need it.

To ponder… When did I last pray for my minister?

Father, we thank you for the gift of your Word, the Bible, and we recognise how vital it is. Please pour out your Spirit on those who teach and preach it, and help all of us who listen to understand it, absorb it, and apply it day by day. Amen.

Two truths to savour

In Christ all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form, and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. Colossians 2:9-10

In these two verses (actually one verse plus half a verse) Paul makes two statements, both of them quite extraordinary. Because they take up just twenty-one words in our translation (merely fifteen in Paul’s Greek) they are easy to skim over. But that would be a serious mistake.

I heard of an old-fashioned Scottish preacher who used to ask his congregation to take a Bible truth and “suck it like a sweetie” – no crunching it or swallowing it whole, but really getting the full flavour and richness. In that spirit I invite you to slow down and read these two statements as if you have never read them before, and so allow them to work their work as the Holy Spirit sees fit.

1.   The first statement is about Christ: in him all the fullness of the deity lives in bodily form.

That takes some getting our heads round. Various commentators do a good job of explaining what it means. But in fact no better explanation is needed than one given by Jesus himself during his time on earth.

In John 14:1-10 he aims to comfort and reassure his disciples, troubled as they are by the thought that he will soon be leaving them to return to “my Father’s house”, heaven itself. Philip latches onto the word “father” and makes a request: “Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us”.

To which Jesus, instead of laughing out loud at the naivety of the request, replies completely seriously, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father”. To see Jesus is tantamount to seeing the Father. Isn’t that exactly what Paul is saying in our verse? Putting it another way: Everything that makes God God (that’s “all the fullness of the Deity”) is wrapped up in this man Jesus of Nazareth.

His disciples weren’t to know it at the time, of course – to them, Jesus was certainly a very special and wonderful man. But - God in the flesh!...

If you had told Mary that she had changed the nappy of God-in-the-flesh I suspect that she would have given you a very odd look. If you had told the twelve disciples that that leader they were following – the one snoring in the night, the one tired and requesting a drink of water from the woman at the well, the one who used his own spit to restore the gift of speech to a needy man – that that man was actually God-in-the-flesh, they too would have found it hard to take.

But that’s how it is, and Paul is just spelling it out. The wonder of it is simple: how available to us God has made himself! (The same truth is spelled out at greater length in Philippians 2:5-11 – if you like, an even bigger sweetie to suck.)

The question that arises is: Have I been looking for God in all the wrong places? In ceremony? In miracles? In learned books? In “spiritual gifts”? In long sessions of fasting and prayer? These aren’t all necessarily bad, of course. But… keep it simple! An old hymn used to say “Turn your eyes upon Jesus…” Do that, and you won’t go far wrong.

2.   The second statement is about us, we who have put our trust in Jesus: in Christ you have been brought to fullness.

Slight differences of translation are possible here, but in essence they boil down to the same thought: it is by faith in Jesus, and ongoing obedience to him, that we find our true selves, our fullfilment.

You may, if you are an older Christian of, say, twenty-plus years’ standing, look back in your life and wonder how it would have turned out if you had never become a Christian. You may, of course, have gained  many of the things this world longs for: money, fame, success, popularity, you name it. These things are not necessarily wrong in themselves, but they can so easily become a snare, a ruining of the Christlike person God always wanted you to be.

Then again, you may be able to see people you once knew as being far from God and indifferent to the things of God – people you see now as truly transformed into the likeness of Christ. You shake your head in real wonder: Who would have guessed it! Who indeed?

Perhaps you find yourself doing that as you look back on your own life. Yes, I may not be perfect - in fact, I’m very certainly not perfect! But neither am I the man or woman I was. Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 5:17 suddenly spring to life: “If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation…” Yes, all that stuff in John’s Gospel about being “born again” really is true!

We are not yet the finished article, that’s a fact. But we are called to live as if we were. In Colossians 3:1-4 there are some great past tenses: we “have been raised” with Christ; we “have died”; our present life “is now hidden with Christ in God”.

Christian, live that life, that resurrection life, that eternal life! – for the finished article, Christlike perfection, is only a matter of time away.

Lord and Father, I confess that I am not the person I ought to be; I am not the person I would like to be; I am not the person you made me to be. But at the same time I am not the person I was, and I am not yet the person who, by your grace, I will one day be. Please help me to live today as what I am: someone dead to sin and raised with Christ. Amen.

Oh Lord, have mercy!

The Lord Almighty… makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says: ‘Be still, and know that I am God…’ Psalm 46:9-10

Oh, how one’s heart sinks! Surely not another war!

We’ve got used to what’s going on in Ukraine. We thought it might last days or possibly weeks; but it’s running into years and there is still no end in sight. And now renewed conflict in the so-called “Holy Land”, right out of nowhere, and the familiar, distressing statistics… so many dead, so many injured, so many missing. Not to mention grim facts that can’t be quantified: the increased intensity of hatred and the burning desire for vengeance in people’s hearts on both sides. Oh, Lord…!

If we are Christians we naturally ask the question “What can we do?”, to which there is no simple answer. Pray, of course; that goes without saying. But somehow – even if wrongly - it seems such a feeble response. See what light we can gain from the Bible, which has much to say about war? Yes; but even there it seems to speak with mixed voices. No wonder many people, including Christians, find themselves slipping into hopelessness and even despair.

But it might be helpful to pull together some of those voices to see what kind of perspective they give us.

The voice of Jesus, of course, is paramount: “You will hear of wars and rumours of wars”; but he then goes on to tell his followers not to be “alarmed” (Matthew 24:6).

These words reassure us that he is Lord of all, that nothing happens outside God’s ultimate control. There is indeed real comfort there – but let’s be honest and recognise that it can seem pretty cold comfort. Who would want to preach a sermon on that verse to a congregation today in Jerusalem or Gaza city? How would it be possible to avoid a hollow ring?

One thing we mustn’t do is to read Matthew 24 and respond inwardly with, “Oh, so that’s all right then. Jesus saw it coming and tells us not to give in to anxiety”. Yes, Jesus did see it coming, and his words do offer reassurance; but to individual men and women and to boys and girls caught up in the horrors of bombs and shells, collapsed and burning buildings, and dead and mangled bodies in the streets, to those poor people something more than words is needed, even the words of Jesus.

Perhaps this is a prompt to focus prayer on those who are genuinely working to provide that “something more” - that they will see what that means in practice, and be given the means to provide it. On the radio this morning I heard two people speaking, one Palestinian and one Israeli, both of them parents of children killed in previous atrocities. They work together for an organisation determined to find a measure of reconciliation between the warring factions. Let’s pray for them and others like them.

In general, of course, the Bible sees war as an evil. The psalmist plaintively laments its prevalence in his day and place: “Too long have I lived among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war” (120:5-7). Isn’t that the authentic voice of the ordinary people who, suffering terribly, just long to “get on with their lives”?

There has never been a time in human history when war has not been part and parcel of life. I still find it slightly startling every time I read 2 Samuel 11:1, which speaks of “the spring, the time when kings go off to war”. It almost seems that just as we speak of “the holiday season”, so in the ancient world they had a corresponding “war season”! It’s just what they did.

The very existence of Israel as a nation depended on being victorious in war. How else would they survive? That didn’t make it right, but simply a fact of life. And that is what explains to at least some extent those uncomfortable passages where God - the God of peace - actually commands war, and why Psalm 144, for example (traditionally ascribed to David), celebrates God as “the Lord my rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle”.

Not to mention those episodes where God commands what today we would see as genocide or massacre, such as Joshua 11:16-21 (which includes that terrible word “exterminate”). I doubt if those words get read very often in church! It’s as if God adapts himself to the ways of sinful humankind in order to bring about his purpose of fashioning a viable nation, while at the same time using war as a form of judgment.

Other passages tell us that, terrible though war is, it is only for a time. Micah 4, paralleled in Isaiah 2, holds out a vision when “all nations” will stream to a new Jerusalem. We are given the wonderful prospect (take time, please, to soak this up!) of armies “beating their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks”, when “nation will not take up sword against nation, nor… train for war any more”, when “everyone will sit under their own vine and their own fig-tree, and no-one will make them afraid”.

That’s desperately hard to imagine in times like the present. But come it will, come it will! If not, the Bible is unreliable and Christianity itself a cruel lie.

Those prophecies will be finally fulfilled in Christ, the Prince of Peace. It is of him, ultimately, that it is said: “He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth. He breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the shields with fire. He says, ‘Be still and know that I am God’…”

It takes faith to believe in that. But if we know the love and grace of God in other areas of our lives, why should we doubt him in this one?

Lord, have mercy!

Lord God, help me to believe these promises – and, until they come true, to work day by day to be a peace-maker in my own little world, following the example of Jesus himself. Please look with compassion on all people who are currently caught up in the horrors of war. And please bless and give success to all those movements and agencies that are committed to working for peace in our troubled, groaning world. Lord, have mercy! Amen.

"I have set you an example..."

When he had finished washing their feet, Jesus put on his clothes and returned to his place. “Do you understand what I have done for you?” he asked them. “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. John 13:12-17

We had a little joke in my last pastorate (people often seemed to like taking the mick out of their minister, I can’t think why).

Numbers at our Sunday evening service were far smaller than in the morning, so before we left in the morning anybody who was willing would help with shifting or removing many of the chairs and rearranging them into a more suitable format.

My regular job was to roll one of those old-fashioned mechanical sweepers over the carpet, and this machine was humorously referred to as “Colin’s sweeper”. All good, cheery camaraderie.

But then some people joined us who came from a different country with a different church culture. They were quite shocked to see this. On one occasion one of them actually tried to take “Colin’s sweeper” from me. I was the pastor! – this really wasn’t fitting! (I did, of course, heroically stand my ground.)

You’ll see the connexion with the wonderful scene from John 13, when Jesus, the eternal Son of God, adopted the role of the most menial servant and stripped off, got down on his knees, and washed his disciples’ no doubt quite stinky feet. Simon Peter protested – and was put firmly in his place.

I’m not, of course, presuming to put myself on a par with Jesus – no, no, absolutely NO! But the parallel is there all the same, though in his case  Jesus is teaching a very serious and important lesson.

The most obvious point is about humility.

In the Roman world humility was likely to be despised rather than admired. But among the Jews it was the opposite: “humility”, declares Proverbs, “comes before honour” (15:33, 18:12) – not before disgrace or shame. Moses is described (Numbers 12:3) as “a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth” (which suggests, by the way, that while the first five books of the Bible are traditionally referred to as “the books of Moses”, that title is not to be taken too literally, as suggesting that he wrote every single word of them!).

And of course Jesus declares the “meek” to be “blessed”, to be those who will “inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). So that memorable action just before his crucifixion (surely the ultimate demonstration of humility) rings wonderfully true.

The more focussed lesson of the foot-washing is about leadership. Jesus is teaching his disciples what kind of leader he is – though by this time in his ministry, some three years on, you would think they should have had a pretty good idea already. Putting it very simply, in Christian circles, leaders lead by serving, not by ruling. Yes, they have an authority which should be respected and even obeyed (Hebrews 13:17), but they have – or should have – no sense of status, no ambition to move up the pecking order.

The climax of the story comes with the words of Jesus: “Now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you should also wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example…” We tend to play down Jesus’ role as example, preferring to emphasise him as the sacrifice for our sins. But it’s possible to overdo this…

(Perhaps this is a suitable moment to pause and ask ourselves the question: Being ruthlessly honest with myself, am I ambitious in a self-glorifying kind of way?)

Of course, there can be a painted-on kind of humility - an oily, unctuous, servile obsequiousness, the sort that might as well be wearing a label round its neck: “Do you see what a wonderfully humble person I am?” It’s even possible to slip into the odd paradox of being proud of being humble(!). Ugh! My knowledge of Dickens’s novels is, I’m afraid, a bit faded; but it’s hard to completely forget the monstrous Uriah Heep in David Copperfield. Or, if Anthony Trollope is your thing, the gloriously grotesque Obadiah Slope in the Barchester novels.

I picked up a story some years ago about one of the early “saints” of the church who was renowned for his wisdom, humility and practical involvement in founding schools and hospitals. An earnest young man visited him one day, obviously keen to impress him. He declared his intention to adopt a monastic life and devote himself full-time to solitude, fasting, meditation and prayer. The old man listened, nodded his head, then quietly responded, “Very good… but then whose feet will you wash?”

Private prayer and devotions are vitally important. Attention to matters of doctrine and interpretation likewise. But whose feet do we wash day by day? Whose feet should I be washing today?

Thank you, Father, for Jesus’ wonderful example described in John 13. Thank you too for the faithful people who have had the love and humility to wash my feet down through the years. Please help me to see Jesus’ example in my mind’s eye, and to consciously follow it. Amen.

A question of balance

See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? Isaiah 43:19

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 1 John 4:1

Fads and fashions come and go. Clothes we wore fifteen years ago now look “old-fashioned” (not, of course, that you care if you’re a sensible person). Music likewise: yesterday’s star is today’s forgotten man or woman. On a more serious level, political trends can be much the same; even the kind of language we use to address one another – I was greeted in the street just today by a total stranger who called me “Sir” (yes, really!), though more often it’s strangers on the phone who call me “Colin” as if I was a lifelong friend. That never used to happen!

It happens too in the realm of “religion”. A few years ago in Christian circles everybody seemed to be quoting Jeremiah 29:11: “I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plan to prosper you and not to harm you…” Wonderful words, of course, but spoken originally to a particular people in a particular place and in particular circumstances… Who could be so sure that they applied in your circumstances or mine today, except in the most general sense?

I can remember when what we now call “the charismatic renewal” was brand new. I was a very young Christian, so I was happy to let wiser, more mature heads grapple with that puzzling phenomenon. But there’s no doubt that it created pretty serious waves, waves which are still having their effect, sometimes good, sometimes perhaps not so good, half a century later.

I’ve seen trends for “inner healing”, or perhaps just healing in general (if you have faith you should expect to be healed!). I’ve visited a “Zionist” church, which seemed to see Christianity through the lens of today’s middle-eastern politics. I’ve seen people in worship barking like dogs or howling with laughter or falling over under some kind of emotional – or should I say spiritual? – force. Plus, of course, churches where the virgin Mary almost seems to have supplanted Jesus.

Yes, fads and fashions come and go, even in the life of God’s church. This is why Jesus warned his people against false teachers and prophets; there are sombre words in, for example, Matthew 7:15-23 and 1 John 4:1-3, and Paul speaks about childlike believers who are “tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching” (Ephesians 4:14). We mustn’t say we haven’t been warned!

But wait a minute…

What if God is “doing a new thing” (Isaiah 43:19)? We mustn’t completely discount that possibility, must we? What if the “new thing” is in fact the rediscovery of an important but neglected old thing? Going back again to my own early experience as a Christian I feel now that the Holy Spirit barely figured in my understanding; I don’t remember sermons relating to him or much mention of him at all. So when the charismatic movement hit us all it caused us to do some very serious thinking, and now, some fifty years later, I view it as a genuine movement of God, in spite of errors and excesses.

I’ve put two Bible verses at the top of this blog. The one from Isaiah 43 seems to scold the people for their spiritual blindness – God says “Don’t you see this new thing I am doing?”, implying that they should. But the one from 1 John 4 sounds a warning: “Don’t be taken in by false or misleading teaching!”

And the question arises, “How should we reconcile these two voices?” Don’t they seem to contradict one another?

We sometimes talk about the need to be “balanced” in our views. It may sound rather a dull word, as if all that matters is to be comfortably middle-of-the-road, but it’s a good word all the same. We need to be balanced – biblically balanced – when thinking about fads and fashions.

Some Christians are just plain gullible; they will swallow the latest thing hook, line and sinker. Others are overly sceptical; they have closed minds and are so sure that their views are right that they refuse to consider the possibility that they might have something new to learn. They can come across, frankly, as rather arrogant: “We’re the ones who’ve got it right” (with a patronising shake of the head), “and anyone who takes a different view is sadly lacking”.

The balanced mind is what the Bible calls “discerning”.

King Solomon, newly enthroned following the death of his father David, was invited by God to ask for whatever he would like. And what did he ask for? “Give to your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong…” (1 Kings 3:7-9). Beautiful! – though that was in the days before he descended into folly.

Through meditation, by comparing scripture with scripture, through developing a hunger and thirst for the fulness of God’s truth, by talking with others who are wiser in Christ than we… this is the route to a balanced and discerning discipleship.

This is how to avoid a shallow gullibility on the one hand and an arrogant know-it-all mentality on the other. Lord, help us to get it right!

Dear Father, we live daily amid a swirl of bewildering opinions, enthusiasms and trends, even within your church, and there are times when we find the Bible hard to understand. We want to think and act in accordance with your truth, so please grant us the teaching ministry of your Holy Spirit - and the humility to recognise when perhaps we are wrong. Amen.