Week ending 27th April 2010 www.tourmakeady.com
I feel as if I am rounding the last bend in the race of life. There are a couple of more jumps left, but at this stage I am not worried about falling. I am not in this to win, just to finish the course. Even if I have to be carried across the line I intend to get there, to at least get as far as I can. I have had a good innings. Three score and four. When the Beatles first sang “When I’m sixty-four” I was only a young fellow, a couple of years younger than themselves. Sixty-four seemed a terribly long way away, so far away it was almost unreal. John and George didn’t make it, unfortunately, but for those who did it’s an achievement in itself.
Saint Paul used the example of life as a race on a number of occasions. In his letter to Timothy (4:6) he seems to feel as if he is coming to the end: “As for me, my life is already being poured away as a libation, and the time has come for me to be gone. I have fought the good fight to the end – I have run the race to the finish. I have kept the faith…” Similarly when writing to the Philippians he used the racing analogy: “Not that I have become perfect yet. I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me.” (13:11)
I am not suggesting that I would stand a chance in a foot-race or in a faith-race with Saint Paul, but I often find that he puts into words what I feel spiritually. That is probably because he wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else, and much of what he didn’t write, he did, as reported by Saint Luke in the “Acts Of The Apostles”. Paul was and is a Christian colossus, but he seldom takes any credit, attributing all that is good to God, especially through the person of Jesus. Back to the race of life again: “I can assure you I am far from thinking I have already won. All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead to what is to come. I am racing for the finish, for the prize which God calls us upward to receive in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:14)
For me Saint Paul is virtually jet-propelled spiritually. He takes off. Nought to sixty or to sixty thousand in a matter of seconds. Off he goes on a flight of spiritual fancy, with me and many others holding on by our fingernails. Take this as an example from the letter I have just mentioned, Phillipians, chapter three: “I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I can look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him.”
Scripture passages like those I have mentioned are a great consolation to me when the trials of life lead me to question why I ever embarked on my journey of faith. They lift me up and drag me from my spiritual depression and carry me off on that jumbo powered faith of Paul. Another Biblical inspired phrase might sum up the feeling: “You raise me up on eagles wings.” And right beside Paul, the masterful preacher is Paul, the humble apostle: “I am the least of the apostles: in fact since I persecuted the Church of God I hardly deserve the name apostle, but by God’s grace I am what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless…” (Cor 15:9) I hope I can say the same for my own grace.
Saint Paul used the example of life as a race on a number of occasions. In his letter to Timothy (4:6) he seems to feel as if he is coming to the end: “As for me, my life is already being poured away as a libation, and the time has come for me to be gone. I have fought the good fight to the end – I have run the race to the finish. I have kept the faith…” Similarly when writing to the Philippians he used the racing analogy: “Not that I have become perfect yet. I have not yet won, but I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ Jesus captured me.” (13:11)
I am not suggesting that I would stand a chance in a foot-race or in a faith-race with Saint Paul, but I often find that he puts into words what I feel spiritually. That is probably because he wrote more of the New Testament than anyone else, and much of what he didn’t write, he did, as reported by Saint Luke in the “Acts Of The Apostles”. Paul was and is a Christian colossus, but he seldom takes any credit, attributing all that is good to God, especially through the person of Jesus. Back to the race of life again: “I can assure you I am far from thinking I have already won. All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead to what is to come. I am racing for the finish, for the prize which God calls us upward to receive in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:14)
For me Saint Paul is virtually jet-propelled spiritually. He takes off. Nought to sixty or to sixty thousand in a matter of seconds. Off he goes on a flight of spiritual fancy, with me and many others holding on by our fingernails. Take this as an example from the letter I have just mentioned, Phillipians, chapter three: “I believe nothing can happen that will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything, and I can look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him.”
Scripture passages like those I have mentioned are a great consolation to me when the trials of life lead me to question why I ever embarked on my journey of faith. They lift me up and drag me from my spiritual depression and carry me off on that jumbo powered faith of Paul. Another Biblical inspired phrase might sum up the feeling: “You raise me up on eagles wings.” And right beside Paul, the masterful preacher is Paul, the humble apostle: “I am the least of the apostles: in fact since I persecuted the Church of God I hardly deserve the name apostle, but by God’s grace I am what I am, and the grace that he gave me has not been fruitless…” (Cor 15:9) I hope I can say the same for my own grace.
Week ending 20th April 2010
Easter gave a little morale boost to stressed and hard-pressed clergy and people shattered by recent revelations of clerical child abuse in Ireland and other parts of the world. It didn’t take away the shame or the blame, but it showed that many people still wanted to be part of the life of Christ. The queue to kiss the cross on Good Friday was especially poignant in what has been described as a ‘crucified church,’ a church that has earned every harsh word spoken about it in recent times.
Faith has been shaken, and that shaking has led many to re-assess where they stand in regard to their faith. It has led some to walk away because they can not take any more. It has led others to take their stand quietly for the beliefs that have been damaged and abused by scandal and cover-up, but which are still authentic because they are part of the faith of Jesus Christ, and people have the ability to distinguish their Lord from his far from perfect followers.
Practising faith today is neither popular or profitable. It takes guts, courage, the courage of conviction and many seem to have chosen Easter to make that statement without fuss, but with the message that they are in this for the long haul. That haul involves the church leadership and clergy clearing up its act with their people’s help, and making sure that what was done to innocent children will not be done again. There will be no other last chances.
The story of doubting Thomas on the first Sunday after Easter took on a special significance this year as many struggled to make up their minds about where they stood with regard to faith. Thomas had that ability to put into words what others are feeling, and he was certainly in a ‘seeing is believing’ mood when he first encountered the risen Jesus. He had had enough and who could blame him. The bright promise shown by the man from Gallilee had petered out in the shame and humiliation of Calvary’s cross. This was ‘holes in the hands, seeing is believing’ time.
Doubt is a normal and a natural part of the human condition. It prevents us from being too gullible and accepting anything and everything that is put before us. There is a sense in which we can not have faith without having doubt as well, or that faith would not be free. So well done Thomas. He did a favour to his fellow apostles and to the many generations that came after them. It is alright to doubt, to question, to look for proof, to question the basis of our beliefs.
It often takes a shock to the system to help us decide where we stand, what exactly we believe, what we are prepared to stand over or stand up for. That time has come.
Thomas got the type of chance none of us is likely to get. He got to touch the wounds in the hands, feet and side of Jesus. This was the real deal. The man who had been crucified had come back to life. Can a self-crucified church be resurrected, renewed, restored without the power and the pomp? It can if we want to. The wounds are all around us. Have we the courage to try and heal them?
Faith has been shaken, and that shaking has led many to re-assess where they stand in regard to their faith. It has led some to walk away because they can not take any more. It has led others to take their stand quietly for the beliefs that have been damaged and abused by scandal and cover-up, but which are still authentic because they are part of the faith of Jesus Christ, and people have the ability to distinguish their Lord from his far from perfect followers.
Practising faith today is neither popular or profitable. It takes guts, courage, the courage of conviction and many seem to have chosen Easter to make that statement without fuss, but with the message that they are in this for the long haul. That haul involves the church leadership and clergy clearing up its act with their people’s help, and making sure that what was done to innocent children will not be done again. There will be no other last chances.
The story of doubting Thomas on the first Sunday after Easter took on a special significance this year as many struggled to make up their minds about where they stood with regard to faith. Thomas had that ability to put into words what others are feeling, and he was certainly in a ‘seeing is believing’ mood when he first encountered the risen Jesus. He had had enough and who could blame him. The bright promise shown by the man from Gallilee had petered out in the shame and humiliation of Calvary’s cross. This was ‘holes in the hands, seeing is believing’ time.
Doubt is a normal and a natural part of the human condition. It prevents us from being too gullible and accepting anything and everything that is put before us. There is a sense in which we can not have faith without having doubt as well, or that faith would not be free. So well done Thomas. He did a favour to his fellow apostles and to the many generations that came after them. It is alright to doubt, to question, to look for proof, to question the basis of our beliefs.
It often takes a shock to the system to help us decide where we stand, what exactly we believe, what we are prepared to stand over or stand up for. That time has come.
Thomas got the type of chance none of us is likely to get. He got to touch the wounds in the hands, feet and side of Jesus. This was the real deal. The man who had been crucified had come back to life. Can a self-crucified church be resurrected, renewed, restored without the power and the pomp? It can if we want to. The wounds are all around us. Have we the courage to try and heal them?
Week ending 13th April 2010
Early in Holy Week I had spotted a programme highlighted in the television previews which claimed my interest. It had the title: “The Day That Jesus Died.” It was to be shown on BBC1 at 9am on Good Friday. Although I had a fairly busy day ahead I cleared that space for my TV breakfast, and sat down with my milk and honeyed porridge just as the programme started. A young woman called Bethany Hughes was embarking on a journey to uncover the meaning of Jesus’s death on the cross and why it retains such relevance. This was done mainly through looking at artistic representations of the crucifixion in painting and sculpture.
Many of those pictures and statues were gruesome in their realism, with brutality, blood and suffering highlighted to an almost shocking extent. They were meant to shock, to show the extent to which Jesus suffered and to carry the message that God literally loves us to death. Different emphases were put on the suffering and death of Jesus in the twenty centuries since it happened, from victory over sin and Satan to the idea of the ‘crucified God’ highlighted by German theologian Jorgen Moltman in the middle of the last century.
Moltman had served as a German soldier in World War 11 and he had vivid memories of the British fire-bombing of Hamburg. A friend and colleague died by his side on a gun platform on a night forty thousand people were killed. Eventually captured, he ended up in a British camp which was a much more pleasant place than the German version of concentration camps. A deep thinker he wondered where God was while the world was being devastated by a second world war in less than half a century. While others rejected God, Jorgen Moltman saw him as being with people in their suffering and distress. God himself suffered while Jesus died on the cross, and still suffers with all who are in mental or physical pain.
This was very different to the previously held view that Jesus had two natures, human and divine. While the human suffered and died on the cross, God watched from a distance, waiting to raise Jesus from the dead and glorify him. In the very title of his book: “The Crucified God” Moltman saw God and man in the one person suffering and dying, empathising with and joining with all who suffer, in other words being one with us in every aspect of life and death. The idea of God actually suffering in himself as distinct from in the person of Jesus is something many people find hard to take in that it seems to take from the perfection of God, but it makes more sense than a remote and distant God.
The very idea of God as love, enunciated by Saint John the Evangelist implies suffering. Song and story speak of the pain as well as the joys of love. Sacrifice, compromise and giving are aspects of love which are self evident. The idea of God giving his all in an outpouring of love is still an important aspect of “the day that Jesus died.”
Many of those pictures and statues were gruesome in their realism, with brutality, blood and suffering highlighted to an almost shocking extent. They were meant to shock, to show the extent to which Jesus suffered and to carry the message that God literally loves us to death. Different emphases were put on the suffering and death of Jesus in the twenty centuries since it happened, from victory over sin and Satan to the idea of the ‘crucified God’ highlighted by German theologian Jorgen Moltman in the middle of the last century.
Moltman had served as a German soldier in World War 11 and he had vivid memories of the British fire-bombing of Hamburg. A friend and colleague died by his side on a gun platform on a night forty thousand people were killed. Eventually captured, he ended up in a British camp which was a much more pleasant place than the German version of concentration camps. A deep thinker he wondered where God was while the world was being devastated by a second world war in less than half a century. While others rejected God, Jorgen Moltman saw him as being with people in their suffering and distress. God himself suffered while Jesus died on the cross, and still suffers with all who are in mental or physical pain.
This was very different to the previously held view that Jesus had two natures, human and divine. While the human suffered and died on the cross, God watched from a distance, waiting to raise Jesus from the dead and glorify him. In the very title of his book: “The Crucified God” Moltman saw God and man in the one person suffering and dying, empathising with and joining with all who suffer, in other words being one with us in every aspect of life and death. The idea of God actually suffering in himself as distinct from in the person of Jesus is something many people find hard to take in that it seems to take from the perfection of God, but it makes more sense than a remote and distant God.
The very idea of God as love, enunciated by Saint John the Evangelist implies suffering. Song and story speak of the pain as well as the joys of love. Sacrifice, compromise and giving are aspects of love which are self evident. The idea of God giving his all in an outpouring of love is still an important aspect of “the day that Jesus died.”
Week ending 6th April 2009
I had little time for April fooling this year, as Holy Thursday fell on April Fool’s day, and I had three days of Easter ceremonies on my mind. Still the ‘fool’ theme is never far from my mind at Easter. Saint Paul described himself as a ‘fool for Christ’ and God himself has been described as a ‘fool for love’ for even bothering with us humans and our complicated lives. We tend to use the term ‘unbelievable’ a lot nowadays and there are aspects of the Easter story that verge on the incredible, as Saint Thomas pointed out when he went looking for proof.
Few stories are more incredible than that God’s son should enter history, live and die as a human being and then rise from the dead. Follow that! Swallow that! No bother, I say, as I wallow this week in a sense of resurrection elation. This is almost impossible to describe to a non believer as it is a faith-feeling. It doesn’t make a lot of sense without faith, as the idea of resurrection from the dead is virtually beyond belief. But I believe it as do billions of others who rejoice this week with the words: ‘Christ is risen, Alleluia.’ Believers may be up to their necks with the weight of church scandals, but there is one hope we can hold on to, the hope of eternal life won for us at Easter.
I have no hang-ups about either the details of the resurrection of Christ or the resurrection to everlasting life that Christians aspire to. I think of it as being as far beyond our imagination right now, as this world and all it contains is to the child in the womb. Each is a world of wonder and of discovery, and the answers are thankfully not given to us in advance. Wonder and awe are among the most delightful feelings we can have, feelings we can lose if we do not, in the words of Jesus: ‘become like little children.’
Wonder and awe are close to holiness, as any meditation on God or anything to do with God assures us. We can not reach out beyond the here and now, we can not aspire to eternity without such feelings. Those are the wings that help us fly, that free us from our earth-bounded-ness, that give us the butterfly wings we associate with Jesus as he rose from the tomb, as he seemed to flit freely from flower to flower, translucent and transcendent, unfettered, unconfined, glorious.
Theological arguments about what did or didn’t happen that first Easter morning fly past me like the Jesus-butterfly. When all is said and done it comes back to faith. A person believes it or not. That’s not to say that a strong logical case could not be put in a court or tribunal to support the resurrection. The evidence is fairly straightforward; the depositions of those who visited the empty tomb, the finger-probing of doubting Thomas, the stories told by those who saw the risen Christ…
The biggest book of evidence is the one we call ‘The Acts Of The Apostles.’ We learn there of the change that came over the confused apostles and disciples between Good Friday and Pentecost Sunday. What changed that bunch of confused cowards from the deniers and cop-outers of Gethsemene and Calvary to the brave preachers of Pentecost, willing to live or die for their faith in the resurrection? I rest my case.
Few stories are more incredible than that God’s son should enter history, live and die as a human being and then rise from the dead. Follow that! Swallow that! No bother, I say, as I wallow this week in a sense of resurrection elation. This is almost impossible to describe to a non believer as it is a faith-feeling. It doesn’t make a lot of sense without faith, as the idea of resurrection from the dead is virtually beyond belief. But I believe it as do billions of others who rejoice this week with the words: ‘Christ is risen, Alleluia.’ Believers may be up to their necks with the weight of church scandals, but there is one hope we can hold on to, the hope of eternal life won for us at Easter.
I have no hang-ups about either the details of the resurrection of Christ or the resurrection to everlasting life that Christians aspire to. I think of it as being as far beyond our imagination right now, as this world and all it contains is to the child in the womb. Each is a world of wonder and of discovery, and the answers are thankfully not given to us in advance. Wonder and awe are among the most delightful feelings we can have, feelings we can lose if we do not, in the words of Jesus: ‘become like little children.’
Wonder and awe are close to holiness, as any meditation on God or anything to do with God assures us. We can not reach out beyond the here and now, we can not aspire to eternity without such feelings. Those are the wings that help us fly, that free us from our earth-bounded-ness, that give us the butterfly wings we associate with Jesus as he rose from the tomb, as he seemed to flit freely from flower to flower, translucent and transcendent, unfettered, unconfined, glorious.
Theological arguments about what did or didn’t happen that first Easter morning fly past me like the Jesus-butterfly. When all is said and done it comes back to faith. A person believes it or not. That’s not to say that a strong logical case could not be put in a court or tribunal to support the resurrection. The evidence is fairly straightforward; the depositions of those who visited the empty tomb, the finger-probing of doubting Thomas, the stories told by those who saw the risen Christ…
The biggest book of evidence is the one we call ‘The Acts Of The Apostles.’ We learn there of the change that came over the confused apostles and disciples between Good Friday and Pentecost Sunday. What changed that bunch of confused cowards from the deniers and cop-outers of Gethsemene and Calvary to the brave preachers of Pentecost, willing to live or die for their faith in the resurrection? I rest my case.
