Keswick 22.1: Baton passing for beginners……..

It’s July, it’s hot (record-breaking hot), and it’s time for the Keswick Convention once again. Today (Monday) was the first day of this year’s Week 1 “Bible Readings”. The theme of the week is “Grateful” and this week’s messages will be from 2 Timothy, delivered by Alistair Begg. And I’ve already been amply reminded of lots of reasons to be grateful.

Some of these are to do with my own past. In listening to the Begster (as a friend of mine called him recently - I would never be that cheeky), I was reminded of seed-sowing, mind-shaping experiences of student days in the Christian Union in the University of Glasgow. In fact I last heard Alistair Begg in the Queen Margaret Union common room (actually just a big beer-stained party space) in the early 1980’s. The older I get the more I appreciate those far off days when with a group of like-minded and like-aged individuals started to grow up – a process that continues. Home and family provided a good foundation, but it had to be built upon. A whole range of speakers at CU “teaching meetings” and a network of Christian friendships provided both means and materials. That is now 40 years in the past. I have no doubt that there are those who do not look back so fondly. For me it may only have been a stage but it was no passing phase. It was critical.

This morning, Alistair Begg mentioned in passing his friend Eric Alexander. The Rev Alexander, who retired from ministry in the Church of Scotland some years ago, in my day was something of a hero to many of us. A faithful and gifted preacher of the Word of God, and a man of faultless courtesy, he and his congregation in St Georges Tron in the centre of Glasgow provided a spiritual home to many of my contemporaries. He also figured in an early Keswick I attended, again in the ‘80s. There have been so many of these figures. I attended a memorial service for Peter Maiden yesterday in the Keswick tent. I suppose those whose formative days are today will have their own heroes, models and influences. But today the subject of baton passing was definitely front and centre.

This is one of the big themes of 2 Timothy, a parting letter from Paul to his young (or at least younger) associate Timothy. There is truth, ‘sound words’ to be guarded. Believing this truth, teaching it, obeying it, living it, would be costly. It would entail suffering because to live in this way would inevitably evoke opposition, and that opposition would bring pressure. To resist that pressure would involve cost and suffering. Paul endured suffering, and invited Timothy to share in it. This all sounds a bit grim. And it would be if we were talking about suffering for a philosophy or creed. But the Gospel is much more than that. Much more than a set of human propositions. It is both a person to whom we are drawn and united, and the truth that reveals that person. Paul calls it the “testimony about our Lord”. It was transformative in Paul’s life, and in Timothy’s. But would it, could it, survive the passing into history of the likes of Paul and the other Apostles?

This was Paul’s concern. He would tell Timothy (I’m assuming we’ll come to this later in the week) to pass it on to faithful men and women. Others who, having been called and transformed, would themselves pass it on, unaltered and untainted (otherwise it would not be the Gospel). Paul need not have worried, indeed he probably didn’t. He had both conviction and confidence. Not in himself, and not even in Timothy. He reminds Timothy (I’m fairly sure this was ground they covered many times) that the resources available to accomplish this task were primarily not human but divine. The same God who authored the Gospel (Paul calls it the “Gospel of God” in Romans), provided the resources for its preservation; the “spirit of love, power and self-control”, the Holy Spirit who through His indwelling would empower Timothy to guard the good deposit. This is hardly surprising given that the Gospel is God’s rescue plan for sinful, fallen creatures, initiated in eternity past, with an objective in eternity future. Its execution is not likely to want for resources.

But Paul’s letter to Timothy was written a long time ago and long way away. How is it all going? Well, Timothy found those trustworthy men and women, and then they, in their turn, found others, and so on down the years. All the way along there were probably those who fretted that things were so bad that the whole thing was running into the sand. But eventually the very same Gospel was entrusted to the likes of Alexander and Begg, who have spent their lives doing exactly as Paul instructed Timothy. It happened again, today, in a big tent in Keswick. I owe a great debt to the likes of them, and many others. In a sense that same message has been entrusted to me.

Many thanks. Now to pass it on. 

Bookending Boris

As one layer of political dust falls out of the air and begins to settle, another cloud is kicked up by the shuffle of political feet, stinging the eyes and clogging the back of the throat. Boris is no more. Not quite true of course. Like so much else about him, what is said, and what has actually transpired do not quite tally. They might, in time; hopefully they will. But with Boris, one just never knows. I am referring of course to our current and (probably) soon to be former Prime Minister, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson. He became PM on the 24^th July, 2019, and stepped through the Number 10 door to announce his intention to resign at 12.30pm, July 7^th, 2022. When the Conservative party has elected a new leader, Boris will tender his resignation to her Majesty, who will then invite his replacement as Conservative party leader to form a new administration.

To digress and to be clear, the people of the UK to not elect Prime Ministers. We each of us have a vote for a constituency MP. In theory, the PM is anyone who can command a majority in the House of Commons (usually, but not always, determined by a general election), and he or she then chairs a cabinet of equals to implement a manifesto and govern the country. In practice, for much of the last 200 years this has been done on a party basis, and the leader of the largest party (which usually holds an absolute majority in the Commons) is the PM. Parties and manifestos have become less important as first mass and then social media have turned politics into a personality-driven affair focusing on one person. But our system does not work well this way. The kind of checks and balances in the US presidential system (of the kind Trump tried to subvert with partial success) do not actually exist here. In a way, because our PM holds lots of executive and legislative power, the position of PM is the more powerful (and therefore dangerous) position. This is something Boris has amply demonstrated.

He has been displaced without an election, even although it took an election to (only just) dispense with Trump – at least for now. There is no great policy divide in his party. Everyone is now a brexiteer, and believes in a small state and reduced taxation. It was Boris personally, rather than politically, who had become unacceptable and had to be replaced. It was his colleagues in government who provided the mechanism, not the people at large. This is not in the least anti-democratic, provided that Boris’ Conservative successor is committed to implementing the manifest on which all Conservatives were elected back in December 2019. There’s no point huffing and puffing that the next PM is being imposed on the rest of us by a selectorate of mainly southern bluerinsers. We don’t elect the PM, and we never have. Anyway, back to Boris.

Although he has not yet departed, it is worth identifying what has done for him, because it is both troubling and heartening. His lack of attention to the requirements of governing (as opposed to campaigning), observing important rules and conventions, paying attention to detail, caused problems which afflicted his administration right from the start. But it was his complete inability to act honestly and transparently that really hurt him. Latterly, there was even an attempt to institutionalise what looked like his contempt for honesty by making none-too-subtle tweaks to the “ministerial code” – a venerable but toothless set of guidance authored by each PM, and provided to serving ministers. Boris’ problems with honestly and consistency, as evidenced by his inability to apply the code to himself and one of his friends, cost him two ethics advisors who were both serious and non-political public servants with copious experience in public life. This all began catching up with Boris when his Health Secretary and then his Chancellor resigned, to be followed by a gathering avalanche of other resignations. So the central issue was not policy; it was entirely to do with Boris’ unsuitability for the role because of his lack of personal integrity. What’s troubling is not only that all of this was predictable, but that it was predicted.

This is usefully illustrated by two columns written by Max Hastings, the first in June 2019 and the second last Thursday, (7^th July). Two bookends for Boris’ time as PM. Hastings is a distinguished (indeed Knighted) journalist and historian, and one of Boris’ previous bosses. He has observed him from afar and up close, and while never a chum, was not a natural enemy. While I suspect Hastings is a natural, small “c” conservative, he has actually voted both Conservative and Labour in the past. In 2019 he was excoriating; he is now relieved, while sounding somewhat apprehensive about the future. He is clearly a remainer, although in his more recent article he makes it clear that for the time being re-joining the EU is off the agenda (the current political consensus), even while arguing that he expects the issue to be revisited in the future. But while thinking that Brexit is folly, this is not at the centre of his critique.

Writing in 2019, Hastings quickly honed in on the character flaw that would eventually lead to Boris’ downfall: “He would not recognize the truth…if confronted by it in an identity parade”. He was unfit for national office because “…he cares for no interest save his own frame and gratification”. He then predicted that Boris’ premiership “..will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability”. Prescient indeed. Writing after Boris’ demise, with the evidence clear to see, Hastings wrote “[Boris] is a stranger to truth who has sooner or later betrayed every man, woman and cause with which he associates”. Nothing has changed though, Boris was “the same moral bankrupt as when the Conservative party chose him”. Of course both the Conservative party and the country connived in the Boris phenomenon. Pushing issues of personal morality aside, he was voted for to achieve what was deemed of more importance than things like truth and integrity. I understand this; I struggled with it myself at onepoint.

The heartening bit is that, having flirted with disaster, we have avoided it. The unwritten British constitution has been flexible enough to both survive and remove Boris, without mass violence. This is not something to be dismissed lightly, as events in the US demonstrated. It looks like the system there has also survived but only after mass violence that cost lives. We have apparently decided that integrity matters, even if accompanied by a dash of hypocrisy and political calculation. It may not be everything, but I’ll take it as a promising sign that all is not lost.

One other heartening aspect is that according to Sajid Javid, whose resignation got the ball rolling, it was the sermon of the Rev Les Isaac, “Serving the Common Good”, at the National Prayer Breakfast early on the 5^th July that pushed him across the line. He went straight back to his office to write his letter of resignation. The cynics will claim that this is just convenient cover for ambition and disloyalty. But it sounds to me more like Providence being kind to us (again), and doing what we could not do ourselves – focus on, and value, truth over expediency.

 

My piano was tuned the other day. It’s been a while. We’ve been in our current house for almost twenty three years, and it hasn’t been tuned all the time that we’ve been here. Before that it was in our house in Glasgow, and before that a flat in Edinburgh. It had been moved there down several spiral flights of stairs from a third floor tenement flat in Edinburgh. So it has travelled around throughout my adult life, since the days when I would daydream rather than practice in the front room of my Granny’s tenement flat in Glasgow’s east end. And that, it turns out, is only a small part of the story of this particular piano.

As far as I had known, it was bought from a shop in Duke Street, Glasgow, some time in the 1950’s by my “auntie” Mary (actually a great aunt). It was later, in the 1960’s, that it was moved to my Granny’s front room, where I encountered it most weeknights. I’m sure I started piano lessons with the best of intentions; they lasted barely a fortnight, the lessons lasted much longer. I went to lessons for about eight years – poor Mrs Stephenson (my long-suffering piano teacher). I didn’t know if Auntie Mary had bought the piano new, but I do now. When the piano tuner removed the front of the piano, both top and bottom, to get at the mechanism, in addition to some mould and a broken dampener, the most significant thing to be seen was a label that I assume was affixed when the piano was new. It listed the dates of the first few tunings along with the initials of the tuners. The date of the earliest tuning was in 1903 - my piano is about 120 years old. It is in fairly good nick for its age, especially now that it is approaching being in tune for the first time in a while. Gets you thinking though.

I met all four of my grandparents, although my paternal grandparent both died when I was a small boy. It is worth noting that it is only relatively recently that knowing your grandparents became common. When my piano was first tuned, average male life expectancy in the UK was only about 45 years. According to the latest ONS figures, average life expectancy is now around 80 (and greatly improved from the 68.1 for my birth cohort). These numbers are population averages and hide vast variation. The 20^th century was a tough one for many. After all, there were two world wars and the privations that came with them. Disease for many was an ever present, potentially fatal threat. The pandemic has reminded us of how modern medicine has improved our lot. In the mid 20^th century, infectious diseases like TB were still killing large numbers of those infected (the pre-WW2 case fatality rate was about 50%), and childhood diseases like measles still killed hundreds every year. Polio, in the news recently, was a major scourge. I remember, as a child, visiting a family friend who was in an “iron lung”, the result of a polio infection. The antibiotics that became widely available after the war, and the childhood vaccines that were gradually introduced, fundamentally transformed this health landscape. The net result of this, plus other innovations like the NHS, improved diet, improvement in air quality because of the clean air acts, is that my children have known all four of their grandparents, and I (maybe/probably) might get to know mine.

Back on the subject of old age and music, we had the sight and sound last week at Glastonbury of the 80-year-old Paul McCartney introducing those two young whippersnappers Dave Grohl (a mere 53) and Bruce Springsteen (72) to the crowd during an acclaimed set lasting almost three hours. It was a reminder that by and large we are not only living longer lives, but we’re remaining healthy into old age. All things being equal, I might have quite a long time to enjoy my newly in-tune(ish) piano. And I get to enjoy other things too. I celebrated my own 60^th birthday this week (hence all this meditating on age). So the other day (as a special treat) we made our way into town and I obtained my Merseytravel over-60s travel-pass. The (Merseyside) world is now my free oyster, although only after 9.30am and at weekends. I have no idea if I will actually avail myself much of this new-found freedom of buses, trains and yes, the famous Mersey ferry. But it’s the principle that counts. I don’t have quite the same life to reflect on as Macca; he has been a cultural icon for at least sixty of his eighty years. But my life, the only one I have to ruminate on, has been truly blessed, and by much more that even living in Liverpool.

Many things have changed over my sixty years, and many things will change should I have twenty or so more. But for fifty of my sixty years there has been one constant. One of the things I was blessed with was parents who know and love Jesus, and so introduced me to Him. This was about example, not coercion. For reasons we needn’t go into, at the age of ten I asked Him (as it seemed to me) to keep me safe (I had something pretty specific in mind that I wanted to be kept safe from). I had no deep understanding of what I was doing, or its implications, but something fundamentally changed at that point which has shaped my life since, and indeed my eternal destiny. My understanding has grown. I am surer now of the basis on which I made my commitment to Him, and I am clearer about His commitment to me. This is not a symmetrical relationship; how could it be? But it is a relationship that goes both ways. The basis of that transaction (for that’s how I saw it) was all to do with who He is, and what He accomplished in His death two millennia ago. That basis is unchanged and unchanging – it is His grace through which His benefits have continued to flow to me.

There have of course been bumps along the way. There always are in real life. And there will be more. But when knocked of out of tune, He always has the skill to set me right; He has perfect pitch.

Below the surface.....

There have been some scary headlines recently. Yesterday’s Daily Mail Scottish addition (we’re back in the homeland on a visit) all but declared a polio epidemic. In fact, some evidence has of the virus has been discovered in sewage samples; there have been no cases. Today, Boris’ government is apparently imploding (two bye election loses overnight, and the resignation of the party chairman) while Boris goes for a swim in Rwanda. And of course on the other side of the Atlantic, in one of the world’s younger democracies, words such as coup and insurrection are used daily in the January 6^th Congressional committee hearings (with some justification), and New Yorkers will be able to openly carry their guns thanks to a Supreme Court ruling. Headlines are of course designed to be eye-catching. But if you are a news junkie, their constant catastrophism has an effect. To conclude all is always and only disaster is probably to take the headlines too seriously. It usually entails not reading the actual story (which is often more moderate and nuanced). But to conclude that it is all just about overwrought teenage scribblers (to use Nigel Lawson’s famous put-down of financial journalists) over-egging the pudding is also probably unwise.

Let’s begin over the pond. The Congressional hearings on the January 6^th attack on the US Capitol (which it clearly was), have been revealing and are chilling. Former President Trump is both more calculating and more determined that he is often given credit for. And it appears that he set out, probably knowingly and certainly illegally (as he was often told) to subvert a basically sound election result. He is no democrat (with a small d obviously). I have expressed previously my bemusement that so many “evangelicals” voted for him. Any one of his utter detachment from the truth and anything approaching integrity, his attitude to people in general and women in particular, and his basic lack of competence, should have disqualified him. I know the arguments (the other “guy”, the Supreme Court etc) that were deployed. But for anyone with a commitment to Scripture, these arguments could not, and should not have stumbled as far as the end of the runway, never mind flown. In the US the presidential election is, in most states, a binary choice – or you can sit on your hands. Trump has not gone away and a comeback presidential run cannot be ruled out. But underlying his arrival and staying power, with all that they might imply, is something more basic and powerful. Whether he is a deliverance or a judgment on the US, Providence, that great outworking of the sovereign purposes of God, is quietly at work.

We also have our own travails here in the UK. Boris’ basic lack of interest in truth and integrity, so noted from his earlier career that some warned of why he was unsuitable for high office, has once again been demonstrated in his approach to that same high office. You can often tell when he is dissembling because he mutters; and he mutters a lot. He has now learned that his party colleagues will not only tolerate him, but will continue to support him for fear of the alternatives. Ethics, or the lack thereof (along with the absence of an appointed ethics advisor) mark his premiership, and don't seem to bother his supporters. And he is not even careful or measured about his approach. Tony Blair suffered the accusation of lying over the Iraq war. But this was an accusation; it is debatable whether he did or did not. But there is really no argument about Boris who has already been sacked twice for telling porkies, and has deserved to be sacked again (and for some time). He appears to revel in his reputation. It would apparently not matter to him if he was known as a liar as long as he was also known as a doer. This no longer shocks; but it should. Just as Billy Bush should have ended Donald, so all this muttered dissembling should have disqualified Boris. But it didn’t and we are where we are. 

These local difficulties have their global accompaniment. Just as it looked as though the global pandemic was slackening, and we thought that with the help of vaccines we had escaped the worst, Covid is making a comeback in China, potentially with global consequences (and then there’s “monkey pox” and polio of course). The war in Ukraine, as well as a tragedy for Ukraine, and in its own way for Russia, is pushing a large slices of the developing world into hunger, if not outright famine. And it is causing severe economic dislocation adding to that caused by the pandemic. Because of the media’s linear and limited thought processes, which in the West largely dictates political agendas, the pressure to respond to climate change has been largely removed from the political class. Indeed, because of economic pressure and the effects of sanctions on Russia, coal is making a comeback, and oil is again highly profitable. And populations suffering from the kind of inflation not experienced for fifty years don’t want to hear about green taxes and switching to environmentally friendly and marginally more expensive farming techniques. Relief is wanted now. And a generation of democratic politicians who live by expedient rather than principle (as did older political generations to be fair), but now without even ideology to guide them, are probably not up to the task of leading rather than following.

In all of this, it is easy to miss the deeper point. What did the individual Israelite in Judah feel as he or she saw their relatives among the northern tribes being swept away by Assyria? When the Assyrians approached Jerusalem in Hezekiah’s day, to insult and threaten, Hezekiah had the benefit (as we do) of Isaiah to explain the deeper meaning of what was going on. We know that God was working His purposes out. The individual Israelite, if they had a knowledge of their own Scriptures and a sensitivity to their surroundings, might have had an awareness of larger forces at work. Tragically few had either, and their leaders largely and consistently discounted what the likes of Isaiah had to say (and then write). Faced with a bemusing cocktail of war, disease, famine and political turmoil, and the daily struggle to survive, one suspects that the immediate probably obscured the fundamental. And so to our day.

I do seek to understand the proximate causes of the current situation, local, national and global. I am a self-confessed news junkie, and so may well be afflicted with a sombre mood because of headline-itis. I know that there is a need for care when tempted to point to particular events and crying judgement or some such. And I’m aware that in almost every generation, Christians have found reasons to decry their current circumstances and cry both “How long O Lord” and “Amen. Come Lord Jesus”. But beneath the froth and the fury, Providence does proceed unimpeded. Both the trajectory and the endpoint of history have already been revealed (and it’s not the triumph of Western liberal democracy whatever that is).

So, maybe soon…..

Part of something bigger…..

This weekend, we here in this United Kingdom are celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee. She is our longest reigning monarch, celebrating 70 years of faithful service. While the anniversary actually fell on 6^th February, this is the weekend of the holidays, pageants, parties, a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, and so on. She is a remarkable woman, has been a remarkable head of state, and that is why many are reflecting (and remarking) on both her role and her rule. Among them was Matthew Parris in today’s Times. I’ve mentioned before my liking for Parris’ columns. But now he’s beginning to worry me.

He begins his column discussing termites of all things, because they illustrate the power of the collective. This leads him on to the human and national collectivism that was demonstrated in the pandemic. But that was a moment of coming together quite out of character with times in which division and dissension have been, and are, to the fore. What therefore can unite us Brits? It is this that brings him to her Majesty, and her role as not just a figurehead, but as a powerful uniting figure. And her appeal is, well, remarkable. Even republicans find her, if not the institution of monarchy, admirable. Interestingly Michelle O’Neil, the First Minister Elect of the Northern Ireland Assembly, wrote  to the Queen recently, expressing her admiration and gratitude. I have no doubt that she was being sincere. But remember, she is a republican who wants to see NI out of the UK and joined to the Irish Republic. The paramilitary group that gave birth to her political party murdered the Queen’s second cousin (and mentor to Prince Charles) Lord Mountbatten during the “Troubles”. O’Neill’s letter tells us something about both women, but certainly is an indication of the wide admiration that Her Majesty generates. But Parris’ main point is that this admiration also tells us something ourselves.

He asserts in his piece the following: “Like it or not, implanted within each of us is an inchoate craving for something…”. I find myself in agreement with him here. He is not claiming any original insight. His point is that we are looking for a unifying figure, we are looking for something (or someone) to “draw us together”, to bring us together into a “something bigger” beyond our individual selves. We identify the Queen as the figure who can do this, egged on by admiring commentary from abroad (even from the French President). Of course, we may be imputing to her qualities she does not in fact have. And Parris fairly points out that those often mentioned attributes of hard work and sense of duty are manifest by many other public servants who are unsung and unnoticed. We just don’t know, most of us, what she’s really like. And yet, because of the way we are apparently made, we latch on to her, and invest in her our respect, admiration and hope. Of course there is a problem. Inevitably, she is only a temporary occupant of the throne. Just this weekend, we have all been reminded of her frailty (she is after all 96 years old) as well as her remarkable reign. And this raises the question for Parris as to who comes next and whether they (or rather he) will be able to fulfil the same role. As it happens, he’s fairly optimistic.

But there is something very odd going on here. Why are we “made” with a desire to be united around someone (anyone) who can only ever succeed on a temporary and imperfect basis? He seems to be almost channelling Augustine at this point, an avowedly Christian writer whom he has certainly read. After all, Augustine opens his famous “Confessions” by writing: “..you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (Confessions 1.1). Parris has observed our “instinctive need to be part of something bigger than ourselves” as manifest in our coalescing around our “dutiful monarch”. He can’t explain it; but Augustine could. Augustine’s point was that we were made to know the God who created us, but by nature and practice we have become estranged from Him. And yet there are these strange echoes hinting at how we really are beneath how we appear in day-to-day life. One of these is the desire to believe in and belong to something bigger than ourselves. This sort of instinct that has been derided by materialists since the dawning of the enlightenment as a myth and a frailty just will not curl up and die. It keeps popping up in strange places and phenomena. But none of the God-replacements we turn to are able to ultimately fill the hole left by our denial of Him. Some are just wholly unsuitable and harmful. Some, while good in themselves (like our Queen), and performing a legitimate function (as she has done superbly), don’t really answer our deepest longings and needs. These can only be met with and in the God who made us and sustains us.

Of course dear Matthew will have none of this. He seems to feel a need to remind us in his column that he is a “Christian atheist” as well as “an agnostic about royalty”. Both are easy to forget; he sounds fairly keen on royalty and appears to be rigging on a Christian theme. But you really can’t be any kind of Christian and an atheist without so draining and redefining the word “Christian” (which he really does spell with a capital “C”) of its meaning that it becomes useless. As an adjective I suppose the word might bear some weight, but then it only rates lower-case c. The form he uses reveals a lot. Because it is clear that its meaning rests in the one whose title it contains, and that title is highly significant. “Christ” is the Greek form of the Hebrew “Messiah” – God’s chosen servant. As it turned out, God Himself in the form of Jesus. So “Christian atheist” suggests a degree of confusion that is never nice to observe in someone of clear intelligence and insight who’s getting on. Hence my worry.

Whether recognized or not, we are part of something bigger. At its heart is not (respectfully) the Queen of the UK and Commonwealth, as amazing as she is, but the King of Kings (and Queens). She apparently recognises this, and knows that she serves in a greater kingdom for a greater King. We could all usefully learn from her example.

Joy in a cursed world

It turns out that joy is a serious business. In 2015 the John Templeton Foundation awarded over $4M to Yale Divinity School for a project entitled “Theology of Joy and the Good Life”, the first aim of which was to develop “a new theological movement that places reflection on joy and the good life at the centre of Christian theology”. You can watch a series of YouTube videos in which serious theologians, philosophers and others seriously discuss joy. But never mind reflecting on it, where is it to be found? In a world in which several of the horses of apocalypse appear to be at least trotting towards the stable door, if not yet galloping into action, joy is at a premium.

You won’t be surprised to learn that my goto source for important subjects is not YouTube but the Bible. Even the words used in the Bible for joy have an interesting story to tell. Studying biblical words does not capture everything there is to say on a topic of course, just as studying the properties of the pigment used in Leonardo’s Mona Lisa cannot capture everything there is to say about his masterpiece. As an example, there’s an interesting story about when the translators of the Septuagint were translating Hebrew words for joy in the Old Testament into Greek. They hit a snag. Joy played a role in the religions of the ancient world; the Greeks knew how to have a good time, even in a religious setting. But this frequently involved copious amounts of alcohol and various sexual activities. The Jewish scholars translating the Old Testament wanted to emphasise that the joy experienced in the worship of Yahweh was of a different nature, and they didn’t want to import into their translation unwelcome cultural baggage. Their solution was to invent a new word in Greek which they used when referring to joy related to worship.

In the New Testament joy is mentioned 326 times including cognates and synonyms. On 141 of these occasions it is inward joy (chairein, chara) that is referenced. These words are noticeably similar to another Greek word - charis (grace). It has been suggested that there is a clear link between joy and grace; the idea is that true joy is experienced by those who are recipients of God’s grace. But the whole point about grace is that it is undeserved. Unpalatable as we tend to find the notion, underserving of God’s grace, and the joy that flows from it, is exactly where we all start off. We live under a curse in a cursed world. Hence the problem with joy.

The reason the world is cursed is laid out in the early chapters of the Bible, in Genesis. And it is no accident that the first human emotion recorded in Scripture is not joy but is Adam’s fear (Gen 3:10), followed by Cain’s anger (Gen 4:5). This does not mean there was no joy in Eden, presumably there was. But it looks like a point is being made, something is being highlighted. In fact, joy is hardly mentioned at all in the first five books of the Bible; references to it are scattered and sporadic until we reach book #5: Deuteronomy. Again, it is presumably not the case that between the events of Genesis 3 and the end of Israel’s wandering in the wilderness no human being was ever joyful. Perhaps joy (of a sort) accompanied Lamech’s hymn to violence (Gen 4:23,24), and presumably Abraham and Sarah experienced joy at the arrival of their promised son Isaac. Many in Israel were no doubt joyful at their deliverance from Egypt at the Red Sea (although their moaning and grumbling is a much larger feature of the record). However, if we treat the five books of Moses (the Pentateuch) as a single literary entity, it has to be significant that after a period of “literary” scarcity, joy does then start to consistently crop up in Deuteronomy. After a long time, and a lot of words, it is mentioned twice in Deuteronomy 12 in the context of Israel coming together to celebrate and worship in the presence of God. He is very clear that He is not to be worshiped in the manner of the peoples of the land Israel will enter but in the manner and in the place of His choosing. They were to feast and worship and rejoice. In Deuteronomy 14, Israel is instructed to “eat before the Lord your God and rejoice” (v26). In the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Booths Israel was to “..rejoice before the Lord..”.

To help things along, Israel had a hymnbook, the Psalms, and lots of these open with joy in the very first verse (e.g. Ps 21, 47, 66, 95, 81, 97, 100), many with the idea of shouting, singing or praising God with joy. And it is in God that the “fullness of joy” is experienced (Ps16:11). What was promised and commanded in Deuteronomy was experienced by the Psalmist, and by those who took up his words in the worship of the living God. But the Old Testament is, in part, a record of Israel’s sin and rebellion and this led to judgement and exile. However, even in the midst of judgment and suffering, one of the Old Testament prophets Habakkuk wrote: “… yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation” (Hab 3:18). The lack of blossom on the fig trees and an absence of fruit on the vine (Hab 3:17), a big deal in Habakkuk’s day, meant his circumstances were hardly those conducive to joy. But the joy he is speaking about is not found in his circumstances; it’s found in God.

Israel eventually returned from exile of course, and in Ezra 6 joy resulted from the rededication of the temple, the proper place for the worship of God (Ezra 6:16). Once again Israel was able to celebrate their feasts, and once again this was marked by joy (Ezra 6v22). But throughout this part of the story one is left with a sense of unfinished business. And as the Old Testament closes we are left wondering where is the joy spoken of by prophets like Isaiah. In Isaiah 61, everlasting joy was promised (v7). In the day when God creates “new heavens and a new earth” (Isaiah 65:17), Jerusalem will be a joy (65:18) and be rejoiced over by the Lord Himself (65:19; 62:4b). There was even a day promised when God Himself would rejoice over His people with “loud singing” (Zeph 3:17)! I don’t think that day was reached during the period covered by the Old Testament, and I don’t think that day is now. It is still to come.

Joy is possible in this world of pandemics and wars, of inequality and injustice, of suffering and famine. It’s possible in the teeth of these realities. It’s to be found in the same place ancient Israel was to find it – in the presence of a promise keeping, gracious God, with the community of God’s people. It is not grounded in circumstance, for how could it be? But even this is still only a shadow of a promised joy, a down-payment, a deposit with the balance still to be paid out. Joy is to be found partly in response to God (who He is and what He has done) and partly a resource to keep going in what is, still, a cursed world. But this lost world is not the last word, and in a day yet to come, our singing, and our joy, will be blended with His.

What’s so good about this Good Friday?

Just as grave concerns about a global pandemic, caused by a new virus for which there wasn’t initially a test or cure, begin to recede (whether they should or not only time will tell), war breaks out on the continent of Europe, a continent that everyone thought had learned its lesson in the 20^th century. And not the kind of war Brits have been involved in recently, whether in the Falklands (40 years ago this year), the Gulf or Iraq – wars of choice, mainly about politics – but an honest-to-goodness, old-fashioned war of national survival. A big state has picked on a smaller state, and for spurious reasons has attempted to steam-roller it into oblivion. In the pandemic we elected to follow the science. And science largely stepped up to the plate. Recent discoveries and new molecular and genetic techniques provided tests and vaccines, and then treatments, in record time. So now, even although there’s still lots of infection about, particularly from dreaded “new variants”, the fear and certainly the panic has largely dissipated. Nothing of any spiritual interest to see here, or so it would seem. And no particular spiritual lessons to be gleaned from war in Ukraine.

But there are two related things that strike me. The first is that surely now no one can cleave any longer to the naively optimistic modernist belief in the inevitable progress of humanity. For years (indeed hundreds of years) they’ve been telling us that the Christians and their Bible were just flat wrong. Humanity is not intrinsically and self-helplessly bad. Men and women are good, made bad by their environment and lack of education. Improve their environment, and educate everyone (neither of which is a bad idea), and all the bad stuff will stop happening. And, of course, it’s religion that starts wars. Do away with religion and that will also be to our benefit. No religion, no war. Anyway, religion in general, and Christianity in particular, belong to humanity’s adolescence; we can progress past that. We have progressed past that. Well, apparently not.

The war in Ukraine is every bit a cruel and violent as any fought in the 20^th century. And as for rules governing war, rules like not targeting civilians, or civilian infrastructure, apparently there’s a new rule book. The one that allowed for the systematic destruction of Grozny and Aleppo; that’s the one that is now being followed in Mariupol and Kharkiv. So far the numbers of dead and the geographical extent may not have reached the level of previous world-scale conflicts, but who knows where we are headed.

It turns out that radically improved living conditions, longer and better health and mass education, all good things in their own way, have in part only served to distract us from deeper realities. They have provided a veneer. They have improved the outside, but have apparently left the inside largely untouched, unreformed and unimproved. Yes, the war is about a bad man and his enablers and acolytes. But it’s a reminder of a central truth. There is something rotten in all of us (and not just “them”) that cannot be fixed from the outside in.

As troubling as this is, the second thing is a much trickier issue to raise, and I do so hesitantly. It is profoundly disturbing in its implications. And I claim no deeper insight than anyone else, and certainly do not claim any particular or personal revelation. One of the Old Testament prophets, Habakkuk, had a real problem with what God was doing in his day. Times were tough and things were bad. God was acting in judgement on Habakkuk’s people Judah. So far so good. Habakkuk knew that Judah had become corrupt, and they had all been well and often warned. But then God told Habakkuk how He was going to judge Judah. He was going to use the Babylonians! “But how can you?”, shouted Habakkuk, “They’re even worse than us!”. There was an answer to Habakkuk’s question of course, even if it was in part “You’ll see”. Those who lost loved ones as the Babylonians swept into Judah no doubt grieved. Those who were subsequently deported, becoming strangers in someone else’s country, were no doubt aggrieved. How could God do this to us using them?

Now, don’t get me wrong. There is a bad man at the heart of the Ukraine war, who is responsible for death and suffering we haven’t seen the likes of in generations, at least not in this part of the world. And as in time Babylon was dealt with, so will the President of Russia be. “Will not the judge of all the earth do right?”. And yet it’s precisely this part of the world, Europe, that has taken the lead in proclaiming that God is an irrelevance (if He exists at all). Either He’s made up or we’ve abolished Him. But don’t worry, because we can get along without Him very happily thank you. Now, if there is a God, not the unattached, uninvolved watch-maker of the deist, but the God who is intimately involved in this very world (because He made it and sustains it), how is He supposed to respond to all of this? 

Maybe, just maybe, as well as doing what we all can to alleviate real suffering, we also need to reflect on what He might be saying to us all, even in these current events. Maybe there’s a need to reflect on our whole spiritual and moral direction and recent tradition, and look for another way. Because the track we’re on just isn’t working. It hasn’t solved the basic problem - something deep in me, in us, that no amount of environmental or educational improvement can touch or fix.

But what makes me think that there is a God, and what makes me think that he’s bothered by any of this? That’s where we come to Good Friday. If there’s anything that shows that God is not an uninterested bystander in all the mess of this world, it is that He Himself, in the person of Jesus, stepped into precisely this broken, bloodstained world. And in order to provide a means whereby the real issue could be dealt with, how to bring about the internal revolution needed in each human heart and mind, He went to neither a lecture hall nor a pulpit but to a cross. There He gave up His life in appalling circumstances, not as an illustration or an example, but as a sacrifice. Making provision for all God-ward human failure, making it possible to break the power that holds us captive, and enable a fundamental break with our personal failure where God is concerned. Making possible personal, inward, revolution and renewal This is not a new way, or a newly concocted alternative to modernism’s (or post-modernism’s) manifest failure. It’s a rediscovery of an ancient truth.

Buried in another of those “obscure” and ancient Old Testament prophets, quoted by Peter after Jesus’s resurrection, and taken up by Paul in one of his New Testament letters is a startling statement about how entry into this different, new, old, radical way is possible. And it requires Good Friday. Precisely because Jesus died on the first Good Friday and was raised on the first Easter Sunday, it is the case that “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32; Acts 2:21; Rom 10:13).

Now that’s good, whether it's Friday or not.