Bible Fresh

I was in London yesterday. The meeting I was attending was at the Salvation Army Internatinal HQ, from which you got this view of St Paul's from the south.

The meeting was part of the planning and preparation for 2011, a year of celebration at the 400th anniversary of the publication of the King James Bible.

This initiative is to be called Bible Fresh and will encourage the church to re-engage with the bible and seek to help many people encounter the bible for the first time. No doubt I'll have more on this is blog posts to come.

Bruce Cockburn

Another great post over at God's Politics. Cathleen Falsani writes of the influence of Bruce Cockburn's music and introduces a DVD Bruce has made on his return visit to Nepal.

If you know Bruce Cockburn's music you'll want to make sure you follow the link to the DVD site. If you don't know Bruce Cockburn's music yet, this is a great way to find out about one of the most insightful and challenging musicians of our generation. You can visit the Bruce Cockburn site here.

Love your neighbour - all your neighbours

Over at God's Politics Brian McLaren has a good post with a link to a USA Today editorial by Jonathan Merritt.

I very much agree with the conclusion of Merritt's editorial that our Christian duty is to love our neighbour, all our neighbours, perhaps especially those with whom we disagree. Too often debates about human sexuality become offensive name-calling exercises which display nothing of the love of Christ or the grace that should characterise Christian living. This is espeically important for those claiming the title of Evangelical as we should be people who not only preach grace but live graciously.

I generally don't like theological slogans, which are often theological reductions. 'Hate the sin, love the sinner' is one of those slogans I find less than helpful.

'Love your neighbour as your love yourself' is not a slogan of this type, it is a command of the Lord Jesus. I think it would make a real difference to our debates if we committed to this love of neighbour. If we recognised and confessed that too often homosexual people have suffered abuse and found only alienation from the Church and Christians we might understand our duty to be loving towards such sisters and brothers - even if, as I understand the Scriptures, we must seek to show them that we believe God has a better way for them to exercise their sexuality.
It is not loving to allow someone to continue on what you believe is a wrong path. It is also not loving to so speak to someone, or speak about someone, in ways that are rude and offensive.

Love your neighbour as your love yourself.

Reading on Contemplative Prayer

I'm finding this an exciting and challenging book to read. Quite outside my tradition within the Church and so good to read a well respected and recommended author.

The following quote is from early in the book where Von Balthasar is discussion the role of the Father in contemplative prayer:

'"... this comprehensive work of salvation originates with the Father as Creator. He has established human nature, and it is he who defines and bestows its ultimate goal. It is out of love that he has done this, not out of necessity or mere justice, as if the greatness and dignity of created spiritual nature "demanded" it. He committed and "gave" (Jn 3:16) his only Son to this most sublime and free task of love; he took the raptus, mere nature's dizzy flight toward its heavenly goal, and focussed it in the Person of the incarnate Son who binds together God and man, heaven and earth, whom he sent "in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin" and in whose flesh he condemned sin( Rom 8:3)' (pages 42-43)

What a great deal we lose here if God is not Creator. Our salvation is not a small work undertaken by us, or by some 'contained within creation deity', our salvation is the ultimate goal of the purposes of God the Father who is the Creator of all things.

How hard it must be to understand and relate to a passage like this in Von Balthasar unless one submits to a form of atonement by the Son, which is both in the will of God and offered towards God as the object of that atonement.

And then to ponder that this God has opened a way for us that we might contemplate him, as he is in himself, and through which he draws us ever more closely to himself as the outcome of his purposes of salvation.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

I’ve been reading, re-reading, Pilgrim At Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. I can’t recommend this book highly enough, if you haven’t yet read it – read it. If you read it once – read it again. Dillard’s style of writing is so rich, so full, this is prose you could happily drown in and enjoy drowning.

This is a wonderful passage at the end of this book.

‘I think that the dying pray at the last not “please,” but “thank you,” as a guest thanks his host at the door. Falling from airplanes the people are crying thank you, thank you, all down the air; and the cold carriages draw up from them on the rocks. Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in just but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet. There is nothing to be done about it, but ignore it, or see. And then you walk fearlessly, eating what you must, growing wherever you can, like the monk on the road who knows precisely how vulnerable he is, who takes no comfort among death-forgetting men, and who carries his vision of vastness and might around in his tunic like a live coal which neither burns nor warms him, but with which he will not part.’ (pages 275-276 in the edition I have)

Anchored to her Creek, Dillard cannot but see. What she sees around her, and shares with us, is a world in which there is great extravagance and exceeding beauty. At times both overwhelm her. She recognises the temptation to ignore, to close her eyes, to loosen her anchor hold, yet her ‘vision of vastness and might’ is so dear to her that she will not be parted from it.

We who are fearfully and wonderfully made live in a world that is just as magnificently and majestically arrayed and too often we don’t see it. We have never learned to look. We fear being anchored, held in one place until we see the display of God’s glory bursting all around us and are left awed and humbled. In the light of God’s glory our hymn of praise should be ‘thank you’, eucharistein.

Open our eyes, Lord, we long to see more of you and your glory as you display it, reveal it in all you have created. Be pleased to receive our humble thanks and be glorified in our praise. Amen.

An Easter Message - from Bono

Jumping from Stewart Cutler's blog, I found a link to an Easter message published in the New York Times by Bono, it is well worth reading.

I find it challenging to see how seamlessly Bono has moved from thoughts on Christian festivals, Carnivals, and the celebration of Easter to care for the poor and most needy in our world.

How many, or how few, of our Easter services got anywhere near such a plea for justice, compassion, mercy - and if these are not at the heart of the resurrection and the new life of the God's Kingdom, I'm not sure what is.

Cezanne

I've changed my desktop image for after Easter. I don't have a good resurrection image that fits onto my desktop (still looking). Until I find one there is always Cezanne.

The way Cezanne uses colour, the two-dimensional impression of a three-dimensional landscape is truly wonderful.

There is a lovely Cezanne in the Gallery in Edinburgh, ideal for restoring the soul after a long day at the Assembly.

Everything Must Change

Holidays are a great time to finish reading books.

I got stuck in the middle of Brian McLaren's Everything Must Change. Not that it's a difficult book to read, just that there is only so much of Brian's writing I can take at the one time.

Everyone should read this book and think deeply about the issues Brian raises. The picture of the suicide machine is very powerful and well used to describe the system and processes that are ruining our environment, communities and relationships.

I'm just not convinced that Brian's analysis of how Jesus is the answer to the suicide machine is radical enough. The Jesus presented in this books reads a bit like a very clever social analyst who has offered a very profound answer to a complex problem. Brian, correctly, identifies God's Kingdom as the solution to the suicide machine, but I'm not clear about what he thinks Jesus role in God's Kingdom is? Is Jesus a teacher of the way to God's Kingdom or is Jesus the way? Is Jesus the divine King in God's Kingdom or a human subject of God's Kingdom?

These criticisms should not deflect from the powerful call to change, the challenge to step outside of the destructive systems that are entrapping us and enslaving our discipleship to serve a suicidal system.

Everything must change, but change begins when we submit to Jesus as Christ, the King in God's Kingdom who alone is the Way we can enter this new, subversive Kingdom of God.

N T Wright - An Easter Message

Mike Bird at Euaggelion, has a link to an article by N T Wright at The Times.

The Bishop makes a good case that the Church has colluded with the world in trivialising Easter and so missing the wonderful good news of the Resurrection. It is well worth reading.

The Jewel: The way of the cross (Matthew 16:21-28)

An example
Children are copycats. Unfortunately when we grow up we stop copying those wiser than ourselves and start make our own mistakes. And then we copy ourselves, repeating our mistakes. Almost always these are mistakes others have made before us and we could have avoided, but we’re such copycats.
The Lord Jesus is our example as he tells us in John chapter 13:15 in relation to feet washing, but surely he is an example to us in many other ways also. He is an example for us in his work on the cross.

The way Christ walked
The Lord Jesus kept his eyes fixed upon the cross. He taught his disciples that his way was the way of the cross.
Knowing what lies before him the Lord Jesus lives in obedience to his Father’s will. This is what he must do; this is what he does.
In all that he suffered he was personally innocent and suffered unjustly. And yet he endured patiently this unjust suffering. He could have escaped and avoided this suffering, but he did not.
He really was crucified, dead and buried. There is no greater self-denial than dying for another. He gave up everything for us.
This is the way of Christ that he calls us to follow.

The way we follow
In Matthew 16:24 the Lord Jesus takes each of these three examples and directs them to his disciples.
Disciples don’t lead, they follow. This is self-denial. Serving others first is the way we must follow our Servant King.
Disciples patiently endure unjust suffering, there is no plotting revenge, no exploding with rage. ‘Father forgive them’ is the prayer of the disciple following the Servant King.
Disciples obey their Lord and master. Learning what the Lord Jesus says disciples commit themselves to obedience, to learning the way of the Servant King.

The way of the cross
This is the example Christ has set us, this is the only way anyone can follow as his disciple. Will you follow him today?

The Jewel: Christ our Substitute (Galatians 3:1-13)

Substitutes
We all know what a substitute is. With the amount of sport on TV it would be difficult not to be aware of substitutes. In one of our Easter hymns we sing together, ‘Bearing shame and scoffing rude, In my place condemned he stood.’ The Lord Jesus is our substitute.

A legal picture
The only way to understand Jesus being our substitute is to realise this is a legal picture. The law which God has given us is conditional: if you keep the law you live, if you disobey you will not live. Our human condition is that no one can keep God’s law. We need a substitute; someone who will take our place and do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.

Christ our substitute
Christ, who does not deserve to be cursed, becomes a curse for us (Gal 3:13). We deserve the punishment which falls upon him. This is why the word penal can be used when referring to Christ's work as our substitute.
But we must remember Christ is innocent; he is perfectly obedient doing all his Father’s will. He is obedient for those who cannot obey: you and me.

The benefits of Christ’s substitution
All that we need to do to be right with God Christ has done for us. By faith we swop places with Jesus. Now that Christ has paid our penalty God will not demand a second payment from us. All that we need to be right with God is found in Christ, and is ours by faith in Christ, as we are united with him.

A great jewel
What will you do with such a precious jewel?
When you look at it remember that you have God’s promise. God promises to make you right with him in Christ, because of all that Christ has done for you.
Do you remember, gazing upon this jewel, that God loves you, loves you so much that Jesus came and died for you. God loves you this much, Jesus took your place.Will you keep this jewel to yourself? Will you not rather show it off to all whom you meet, telling them how much God loves you, and if you, how much he loves them? What a gracious and loving God we have. ‘Hallelujah, what a Saviour!’

All Things Made New

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”

These famous words of Neil Armstrong when stepping onto the surface of the moon work just as well if we imagine them being spoken by the Lord Jesus as he steps across the threshold of the now empty tomb.

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ makes all things new.

Death is made new in life
They went to the tomb on that Sunday morning looking for a dead man, a body now three days in the tomb. But they didn’t find him. Not because they went to the wrong tomb, no, they knew very well where to go. They didn’t find him because death has been overcome by life. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here but has risen.” (Luke 24:5, 6)
Now that one man has risen again from the dead the resurrection has started, the new life of God’s Kingdom is breaking out among us.

Weeping is made new in witness
After a while we find Mary weeping outside the empty tomb (John 20:11). Her tears are wiped away when she meets the now risen Lord who absence has caused her tears. Then Mary “went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’”. Her tears bear witness to her love for her Lord, her devotion to him. The absence of her tears bear witness to her joy at his resurrection, no more tears, Jesus lives!
The good news of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus is just too good to keep to yourself, it is just made for sharing, for telling everyone.

Doubt is made new in faith
It took a whole week, but Thomas found his doubts replaced with faith. When offered the chance to touch his Lord and feel his glorified wounds Thomas simply falls before him, “My Lord and my God.” (John 20:28)
With his eyes cleared of doubt Thomas can see that this risen Jesus is both Lord and God. His nature, shared with God, is now revealed. That he is King in God’s Kingdom is now declared. Jesus is Lord, Caesar is not (nor is any other human ruler).

One small step – just over this threshold.
A giant leap – God’s King is revealed as God’s Kingdom comes, all things are made new.

Remember - you can visit other resurrection posts:

http://mikeaddis.blogspot.com/

http://blogdyfedwynroberts.blogspot.com/

http://theurbanpastor.wordpress.com/

http://lifefaithetc.blogspot.com/

http://www.meetalancraig.com/

www.knightswoodcongregational.org.uk/blog/

http://www.markmeynell.wordpress.com/

http://www.deeperwaters.wordpress.com/

http://www.bibleandmission.wordpress.com/

http://www.bigcircumstance.com/

http://www.adrianwarnock.com/

http://andybeingachristian.wordpress.com/

http://thesimplepastor.blogspot.com/

EA Slipstream - the Resurrection

Tomorrow there is to be a synchronsied blog on the theme of the Resurrection. This has been organised by the Slipstream team at the Evangelical Alliance UK, visit their homepage here for more information.

I'll be posting on this theme tomorrow, as will the following other blogs, why not have a visit and read what is being posted on the theme of the Resurrection.

http://mikeaddis.blogspot.com

http://blogdyfedwynroberts.blogspot.com/

http://theurbanpastor.wordpress.com/

http://lifefaithetc.blogspot.com

www.meetalancraig.com

www.knightswoodcongregational.org.uk/blog/

www.markmeynell.wordpress.com

www.deeperwaters.wordpress.com

www.bibleandmission.wordpress.com

www.bigcircumstance.com

www.adrianwarnock.com

http://andybeingachristian.wordpress.com

http://thesimplepastor.blogspot.com/

Codex Sinaiticus

With thanks to Jane, I've found this site for the Codex Sinaiticus. What a lot of wonderful information there is on this site and great images of the Codex. Well worth a visit.

The Jewel: Christ the obedient second Adam (Romans 5:12-21)

Adam and Christ
Decisions once made can be unmade. Mistakes can be corrected. As the light catches another face of that jewel, which is the cross work of the Lord Jesus Christ, we see reflected Christ the obedient second Adam.
Adam is a pattern, a foreshadow, of the Lord Jesus Christ. As the climax of God’s creation Adam was to have dominion over creation. God gives great promises to Adam. When he falls Adam falls from a great height; when he falls, we all fall with him.

Repeats in reverse
Where Adam disobeyed in every way Christ obeys. But in reverse. Christ works over the story of Adam, repeating Adam’s fall in reverse. All that Adam should have been, but wasn’t, Christ is.

Restoration
As he works over Adam’s story the Lord Jesus restores all that Adam has lost. And this not only for himself, but for us all. In place of death Christ works for us life. In place of condemnation, justification. In place of alienation from God, now there is a renewed fellowship with God.

Realisation
The Adam story is told using the language of covenant; God has made promises to Adam. What would have become true for Adam had he not fallen this is made true for us in Christ. The promises, the blessing are for now through Christ Jesus for those found in him.

Cash it in
No, it isn’t ungrateful to speak of a cash value for these things. What we believe, what God has done for us in Christ Jesus is for our lives today. The free gift of God is beyond price, our greatest treasure and our joy. Where Adam fell before enemies he could not defeat: sin, the devil, death, Christ triumphed and united with Christ we share his victory over every enemy.

Red Letter Bibles/Christians

I suppose following my blog conversation with Peter, see my earlier post, the whole idea of red letter bibles/Christians has been in my mind.

At our Holy Week service last night, led by Eric Boyle from Kirkcowan and Wigtown, we were reading in John 12. The bible I was following the reading in is a red letter edition and I noticed the following passage:


John 12:27-28 27 "Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. 28 Father, glorify your name." Then a voice came from heaven: "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." (ESV)

Now I understand the thinking behind highlighting the words of the Lord Jesus in red. But what about the words I've underlined? Whose words are these? Are they not the words of God? In what sense is it appropriate to highlight the words of the Lord Jesus but not to highlight the words of God?

By extension, since I believe the words of the bible to be breathed out by God, 2 Tim 3:16, I generally have a problem with red letter bibles. A passage like this one merely brings the point into sharp focus.

By using the term red letter Christians I wonder what someone using this designation would make of such a passage? Are they saying they are more committed to the words printed in red, giving them priority over the words printed in black? But what happens when the words printed in black are the words of God?

The Jewel: God’s Free Love (1 John 4:7-12)

I wanted to post this week on the theme of the Cross of our Lord Jesus, which I often speak and think of as a great Jewel of unsurpassed beauty and worth which we can find in the pages of Scripture.

The Jewel
Diamonds are a girls best friend. There is a great jewel of unsurpassed worth lying before us in our New Testaments. Each year, every Easter we remember the cross of our Lord Jesus and yet few appreciate how precious and wonderful this work of Christ is.

Where do we begin?
To survey the wondrous cross, where do we begin? At the first Easter week? In Bethlehem’s stable? In the garden where Adam sinned? No, before this. “God so loved the world that he gave ...” (John 3:16)
The beginning of the formation of this great jewel is the free love of God for all peoples.

God’s free love
This free love of God is one of the themes of the passage, 1 John 4:7-21. God is love, but we ask, “Show me your love.”
Verses 9 and 10 – 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. (ESV)
God displays his love in the cross of the Lord Jesus.
God’s love is free because there is no necessity compelling God to love us, to give his Son for us. He is free to love and to give.

Love one another
Knowing of the cross of the Lord Jesus we are to know that God loves us.
Knowing of God’s love for us, we are to tell others, for God also loves them.
Knowing God’s love we do not live in fear of the future, or the final judgment of God, because the Lord Jesus has died for us nothing can separate us from his love.Knowing God’s love for us we should love one another, sharing and displaying in our lives his great love for all peoples.

Justification: Piper on Wright

I've been reading John Piper's book on 'The Future of Justification: A response to N T Wright'.

It is good to have such books as this which engage with other major scholars.

My concern about Piper's book is that all the way through he seems concerned only to show where N T Wright diverges from Reformed Orthodoxy. I'm not sure that Piper has taken seriously the possibility that Reformed Orthodoxy may itself need reformed. As Wright claims, it is not impossible that Christian thinking about theology and biblical interpretation went wrong with Augustine and has been on the wrong foot ever since. This is a bold claim, which I am not yet endorsing, however, we know that every great theologian of these past 1600 years has been human and therefore fallible, there is no a priori reason why the work of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards and other might not need reformed. A critque of N T Wright needs to do more than demonstrate that the Bishop is out of step with received Reformed Orthodoxy.

I rejoice to read the following:

"... Wright loves the apostle Paul and reverences the Christian Scriptures. That gives me hope that engaging with him will be fruitful. I know I have learned from him, and I hope that our common ground in Scripture will enable some progress in understanding and agreement." Piper, page 27.

We have had more than enough of name calling and anathematising between Christians, between those who love the Scriptures, between those who are sisters and brothers in the Lord Jesus Christ. This example of recognising a brother in Christ, of desiring to learn and to share from what one has learned is an example we should all aspire to follow.

G20 Summit

Tearfund released the following press release after the conclusion of the G20 summit on Thursday. Please continue to pray for the poorest peoples of the world who are suffering most the effects of climate and economic crises.

G20: Progress on the economy, some hope for the poor but failure on climate
2 April 2009

The G20 today made some significant progress on funding for stimulus packages, tackling tax havens and shadow banking. However the reported 1.1 trillion dollar programme of investment pledged to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) needs to be looked at closely, according to the development NGO Tearfund.

It says that much of it is not new money and that far more will be targeted at the world’s richest countries and not the poorest.
Tearfund acknowledges that on the surface there will be several billions of new money for developing countries.

'We welcome the new money in this huge fiscal package but the G20 today missed a major opportunity to ensure that all new investments constitute a genuinely Green New Deal,' says Paul Cook, Tearfund’s Advocacy Director. 'With no clear commitments to ensure that stimulus money is invested in low carbon technology the world risks a recovery which is based on business as usual. It locks us into a path which will result in runaway climate change and devastating impacts for the world’s poorest community.'
The G20 communiqué ended with a weak reference to the need for a deal at the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December. Whilst Tearfund welcome any reference to Copenhagen, the agency says G20 leaders failed to show real leadership and inject new life into UN talks by a more ambitious statement setting out the kind of deal they want to see in Copenhagen – one that 'truly drives down global carbon emissions and releases billions to help poor communities adapt to the impacts of climate change' adds Paul.

Tearfund works with communities that are frequently in the frontline of the devastating affects of climate change caused by global temperature rises. It says that there must be a definitive consensus to keep global warming below 2 degrees and that billions of dollars must be released to help the poorest countries adapt to extreme environmental conditions.

Resurrection Blogging

The EA Slipstream team are inviting bloggers to take part in what is called synchronised blogging on Thursday next week, the 9th of April, Maundy Thursday.
I've copied their email below, the idea is to blog on the theme of the resurrection.


I'll be joining in, why don't you take part also? If you are joining in leave a comment and email the Slipstream team.



Synchronised Blogging Day
Attention all bloggers: in light of our special Easter Slipstream edition, we're asking you to blog about Jesus' resurrection as part of a synchronised blogging day on April the 9th, which is Maundy Thursday. There are no perameters, but if you decide to participate please email us with your blog address at slipstream@eauk.org.

Rutherford House

Rutherford House have a newly designed web site which is well worth a visit.
There is news of books and other publications and information about the Dogmatics Conference in August. Don't let the name put you off, this is a well run conference with top quality speakers addressing important themes in current theological debates.

Why bother about a dead man?

All day today at Stranraer Academy with the Chaplaincy team. A series of Easter services for the whole school on the theme, Why bother about a dead man?

It was good to be in the school and sharing the Easter story of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with the staff and pupils.