"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love" 1 Corinthians 13
I'm imagining Hope as an actor, standing onstage giving a soliloquy. It's a soliloquy about Love. Love is the thing which Hope lives for, its very greatest desire. Hope's words pour from its lips: sweet, fragrant, millifluous.
Also on the stage is Faith, but Faith is invisible - a tangible presence, but one that cannot be discerned with the naked eye. Some other faculty (perhaps Faith itself) is needed to perceive it. So Faith is with Hope, but it is Hope who speaks, standing in the spotlight, speaking about the endless possibilities, the undying dance of Love.
As Hope speaks on, longing and wishing and praying for the delights of Love, two figures enter the stage. They glide to the front of the stage, and gradually pass by the figure of Hope to stand naked in full view of those assembled in the semi-darkness.
The figures embrace.
And Hope smiles, bows ever so slightly, not to the audience, but to the unseen spectator.
It quietly leaves the stage to the lovers, departing unnoticed and unmissed.
Which is just as it should be.
Thursday 29 March 2012
Sunday 25 March 2012
Recovering a Perspective of Nations
A long time away from the blog... but tonight I felt compelled to get down some thoughts on a certain topic while it is fresh in my mind.
So much of my life journey concerns ME as an INDIVIDUAL. It's as if ME and my individual, subjective experiences, beliefs and reactions to the world around me, are all I can see. The problem is that they're like a fog that clouds my view of God and of his plans and purposes in the world. But over the last few days, I've found myself influenced by a number of perspectives which express their ideas much more in terms of NATIONS, GENERATIONS, and MOVEMENTS - seismic shifts in the fabric of the human story, rather than tiny individualistic ripples in my own heart and mind. Is this God speaking - the God whose perspective on the world, history and the future far overreaches even the greatest human minds, and the most perceptive cultural commentators?
Please allow me to list some of the ways I feel God might have been speaking, and share a few thoughts.
1) A Pastor's Prophecy for Scotland
The other night I was at a CLAN Gathering evening of celebration in the Wester Hailes area of Edinburgh. CLAN is a nationwide movement of renewal and mission, centered on a summer conference which I've been a small part of for a few years. In addition to a time of worship which was *off-the-chart* wonderful, Kenny Borthwick spoke eloquently and humbly about his dreams for CLAN and for Scotland. My dear friend Malcolm believes he is a prophet for our nation. As he spoke, and especially as I prepare to move away to England, I felt a real heart pang for the place of my birth - the country I've lived in all my life. Kenny shared how God is maturing the charismatic movement in Scotland, and how CLAN needs to continue to seek to unite Christians around the Father's love, the salvation of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit - in order to reach the last, the least and the lost for the Kingdom. It is a compelling vision - a vision of a nation transformed.
2) Worship and its nation-changing status
Thanks to a wonderful encouraging woman at church, I'm reading the worship leader Robin Mark's book Warrior Poets of the 21st Century. And a jolly enlightening read it is. In once fascinating chapter, he totally reframes the worship debate from being about musical style or even missional strategy, and reminds us that, for Israel, worship was everything. It was of crucial spiritual, political, economic and national importance. Israel's whole national identity was built on the object of its worship - the One True God. In the Old Testament, it is clear that worship could make or break a nation. Put in extremely simple terms, when Israel worshipped Yahweh, they prospered in peace.. When they worshipped other things, they were hung out to dry. While there is something a little simplistic about this analysis, there is something which resonates in me, and it is this: As people have a heart, so a nation has a heart, and so the world has a heart. This is why the great universal stories of Creation and Fall and Salvation still have something to offer us today as a nation, and as a worldview. The basic human choice, whether as individuals or as society, is between God and idols. We are all of us worshipping something. What, ultimately, will we choose? Robin's challenge, to me, is to stop underestimating the central importance of worship, and realise that it is at the heart of life, because it is all about the heart. Captivate the hearts of our nation with Jesus, and we will win this nation for God. Get the people's worship, you could say, and you'll get the the people.
3) Empire, Jamaica and Dreadlocked hopes
Recently Hannah and I both read James Robertson's outstanding book Joseph Knight, a novel about Scottish plantation owners' role in the slave trade between Africa and Jamaica. I was reminded about this book by watching Jeremy Paxman's Empire series on BBC1. Dislike for Paxman's style aside, it is a powerful programme, examining a nation's identity and heritage. But to me it is the African Jamaicans' story
which is more captivating than that of their British overlords. I also happen to listen to a lot of roots reggae and dub. It is a music which articulates the identity of the black Jamaicans with a unique rhythm and a lyrical philosophy drawn from the story of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. For Rastafarians, the Western culture which had enslaved them is 'Babylon',a clear identification with the conquering empire of the biblical narrative. And Africa, their almost mythical homeland, is the Promised Land - a place of freedom, authenticity and spiritual rootedness, much like the ideal Israel of the biblical narrative.
While I don't share the Rastas' love of soft drugs and overt reverence for certain political figures, I sure do admire their sense of identity. It seems to me to be an identity which is national without being nationalistic, spiritual without being esoteric, and wonderfully creative in its timeless expression through reggae music.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the spirituality of popular music, and listening to George Harrison on the back of Scorcese's majestic documentary Living in the Material World, leads me to compare George's spirituality with my own, and that of the Rastas. George's seems essentially personal, while the Rastas' seems essentially communal. Not to say there aren't elements of both in each, but there are noticeable differences too. What implications would a more communally 'rooted' approach to identity, theology and creativity mean for the Christian scene? We are called to be people of ALL tribes, and nations - not of NO tribe and nation. What does genuinely communal spiritual experience (way beyond bland conformism and anxious control strategies) even look like? And what of the heavenly perspective of our worship? Has the suffering of the Jamaican people led them to a deeper corporate identity, and thence to a greater hope in the deliverance of God? And do we Christians have a sense of hope in a Promised Land we can feel and touch and taste with our spiritual senses in the here and now?
If can try to draw together some of these thoughts, I guess what I think all these influences are communicating is the idea of a broadened perspective. The idea that God works in nations as well as individuals. Yes, it begins in the individual heart, but each of our hearts are not as separate as we perhaps like to think. Our Western illusion of autonomy and self-determination is always being overturned and undermined time after time, through relational and corporate factors as diverse as an economic downturn, a localised conflict or falling in love.
One of the great strengths of evangelicalism is its emphasis on individual conversion and subjective knowledge of God. But its flipside is a tendency to buy into the Enlightenment myth that life is essentially every man for himself. As we obsess over our indivudual righteousness and our consumer approach to Christian culture - have we lost something of the national, even international perspective which is such a driving force in the Bible?
We can talk about our individual lives. We can talk about great cosmic forces, but in reality we often keep them conveniently at arms length. What of the much harder 'middle path' - that of local church and town and nation? It is this path that Jesus trod, when he walked the earth. Jesus came to a particular nation, at a particular time in history and touched individual lives. But he also called a community of disciples into being. He called them, and by extension, us, to create a new society for the Earth he was redeeming. And He called it the Kingdom of God.
So much of my life journey concerns ME as an INDIVIDUAL. It's as if ME and my individual, subjective experiences, beliefs and reactions to the world around me, are all I can see. The problem is that they're like a fog that clouds my view of God and of his plans and purposes in the world. But over the last few days, I've found myself influenced by a number of perspectives which express their ideas much more in terms of NATIONS, GENERATIONS, and MOVEMENTS - seismic shifts in the fabric of the human story, rather than tiny individualistic ripples in my own heart and mind. Is this God speaking - the God whose perspective on the world, history and the future far overreaches even the greatest human minds, and the most perceptive cultural commentators?
Please allow me to list some of the ways I feel God might have been speaking, and share a few thoughts.
1) A Pastor's Prophecy for Scotland
The other night I was at a CLAN Gathering evening of celebration in the Wester Hailes area of Edinburgh. CLAN is a nationwide movement of renewal and mission, centered on a summer conference which I've been a small part of for a few years. In addition to a time of worship which was *off-the-chart* wonderful, Kenny Borthwick spoke eloquently and humbly about his dreams for CLAN and for Scotland. My dear friend Malcolm believes he is a prophet for our nation. As he spoke, and especially as I prepare to move away to England, I felt a real heart pang for the place of my birth - the country I've lived in all my life. Kenny shared how God is maturing the charismatic movement in Scotland, and how CLAN needs to continue to seek to unite Christians around the Father's love, the salvation of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit - in order to reach the last, the least and the lost for the Kingdom. It is a compelling vision - a vision of a nation transformed.
2) Worship and its nation-changing status
Thanks to a wonderful encouraging woman at church, I'm reading the worship leader Robin Mark's book Warrior Poets of the 21st Century. And a jolly enlightening read it is. In once fascinating chapter, he totally reframes the worship debate from being about musical style or even missional strategy, and reminds us that, for Israel, worship was everything. It was of crucial spiritual, political, economic and national importance. Israel's whole national identity was built on the object of its worship - the One True God. In the Old Testament, it is clear that worship could make or break a nation. Put in extremely simple terms, when Israel worshipped Yahweh, they prospered in peace.. When they worshipped other things, they were hung out to dry. While there is something a little simplistic about this analysis, there is something which resonates in me, and it is this: As people have a heart, so a nation has a heart, and so the world has a heart. This is why the great universal stories of Creation and Fall and Salvation still have something to offer us today as a nation, and as a worldview. The basic human choice, whether as individuals or as society, is between God and idols. We are all of us worshipping something. What, ultimately, will we choose? Robin's challenge, to me, is to stop underestimating the central importance of worship, and realise that it is at the heart of life, because it is all about the heart. Captivate the hearts of our nation with Jesus, and we will win this nation for God. Get the people's worship, you could say, and you'll get the the people.
3) Empire, Jamaica and Dreadlocked hopes
Recently Hannah and I both read James Robertson's outstanding book Joseph Knight, a novel about Scottish plantation owners' role in the slave trade between Africa and Jamaica. I was reminded about this book by watching Jeremy Paxman's Empire series on BBC1. Dislike for Paxman's style aside, it is a powerful programme, examining a nation's identity and heritage. But to me it is the African Jamaicans' story
which is more captivating than that of their British overlords. I also happen to listen to a lot of roots reggae and dub. It is a music which articulates the identity of the black Jamaicans with a unique rhythm and a lyrical philosophy drawn from the story of the nation of Israel in the Old Testament. For Rastafarians, the Western culture which had enslaved them is 'Babylon',a clear identification with the conquering empire of the biblical narrative. And Africa, their almost mythical homeland, is the Promised Land - a place of freedom, authenticity and spiritual rootedness, much like the ideal Israel of the biblical narrative.
While I don't share the Rastas' love of soft drugs and overt reverence for certain political figures, I sure do admire their sense of identity. It seems to me to be an identity which is national without being nationalistic, spiritual without being esoteric, and wonderfully creative in its timeless expression through reggae music.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the spirituality of popular music, and listening to George Harrison on the back of Scorcese's majestic documentary Living in the Material World, leads me to compare George's spirituality with my own, and that of the Rastas. George's seems essentially personal, while the Rastas' seems essentially communal. Not to say there aren't elements of both in each, but there are noticeable differences too. What implications would a more communally 'rooted' approach to identity, theology and creativity mean for the Christian scene? We are called to be people of ALL tribes, and nations - not of NO tribe and nation. What does genuinely communal spiritual experience (way beyond bland conformism and anxious control strategies) even look like? And what of the heavenly perspective of our worship? Has the suffering of the Jamaican people led them to a deeper corporate identity, and thence to a greater hope in the deliverance of God? And do we Christians have a sense of hope in a Promised Land we can feel and touch and taste with our spiritual senses in the here and now?
If can try to draw together some of these thoughts, I guess what I think all these influences are communicating is the idea of a broadened perspective. The idea that God works in nations as well as individuals. Yes, it begins in the individual heart, but each of our hearts are not as separate as we perhaps like to think. Our Western illusion of autonomy and self-determination is always being overturned and undermined time after time, through relational and corporate factors as diverse as an economic downturn, a localised conflict or falling in love.
One of the great strengths of evangelicalism is its emphasis on individual conversion and subjective knowledge of God. But its flipside is a tendency to buy into the Enlightenment myth that life is essentially every man for himself. As we obsess over our indivudual righteousness and our consumer approach to Christian culture - have we lost something of the national, even international perspective which is such a driving force in the Bible?
We can talk about our individual lives. We can talk about great cosmic forces, but in reality we often keep them conveniently at arms length. What of the much harder 'middle path' - that of local church and town and nation? It is this path that Jesus trod, when he walked the earth. Jesus came to a particular nation, at a particular time in history and touched individual lives. But he also called a community of disciples into being. He called them, and by extension, us, to create a new society for the Earth he was redeeming. And He called it the Kingdom of God.
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