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The Lord had said to Abram
Gen12:1

Ever notice the PAST TENSE of Abraham’s call in 12:1? Apparently, in the drive of the narrative, the death of Terah (11:32) brings Abraham to a fresh consideration of the original call. The impact is to drive the reader backwards into chapter 11 and the account of Terah.

When we make that move we are immediately catapulted into the complexity of family life (11:27-30) which is so often in tension with our desire to follow God. In just a few verses, there is family tragedy (the death of Haran, and possibly, by implication since she is not mentioned, the death of Terah’s wife and Abram’s mother). There are new relationships, kids and grand kids and the heartache of childlessness. In all of this, the complications of a normal life, Abram must make sense of the call of God.

And he makes his decision. He doesn’t obey, at least until Terah makes the decision for him. If we didn’t have 12:1 we could be forgiven for believing the original call to leave comes to Terah, not Abram. Did Abram need his father to push him? Did Abram baulk at leaving his elderly, widowed father? A perfectly understandable and forgivable decision if you ask me. How much easier it would it be if the call of God came to us when we were free of all commitments and ties?

In the real world there can often be a conflict between the commandment to honor father and mother, and the comment of Jesus that his followers must be willing to leave parents and family in order to follow. There is no rule to be applied, grace must be wrestled out of the mess of life.

Whatever the family politics behind this event, it reminds me that there is a wisdom that comes with age that we should not despise. Abram gets the call, but it is his aging dad who has the courage to leave.

Notice they settle in Haran, which is where Terah dies. I wonder did they stop in Haran because Terah simply wasn’t strong enough for the rigors of the journey. How many of us have been in that position, passionate to follow the way of God, to take risks for the kingdom, but family ties for young children or aging parents mean things are more complicated than that. Abram settles in Haran, to take care of his frail father.

On the other hand, I can’t help but imagine that there is a deliberate connection here between settling and death.

Having finally been uprooted, albeit by his father, and hearing the call again, Abraham is on the move again following the death of his father. But even with this second chance at obedience he cannot drop the responsibilities of family. Lot comes with him – well he could hardly leave him, his orphaned nephew, in a strange place!

Though the instruction given by God is to leave country, people and father’s family, Abram just can’t seem to ever get into a position where this is possible. And who among us would cast the first stone of judgment?

What gives me courage I think is the fact that God calls again. God hasn’t given up on the faltering Patriarch. Despite repeated failure and loss of courage, God still calls and repeats the promise, and affirms the man (12:7).

I prefer this picture of Abraham than the hero narrative we’re often presented with. You know the one. Abraham, the great hero of faith who heard the call and strides out heroically to alien territory. The one we are urged to be like, and the standard we feel judged by because the conditions of real life rarely permit such unadulterated obedience – or maybe it’s just me!

This is Abram burdened by all sorts of weakness and competing responsibilities – business life, family, children and aging parents and just oscillating levels of passion and weariness. More like me in other words. Perhaps it is the case for the mass of us, excepting those extraordinary individuals, that it is impossible to do the will of God perfectly in a fallen world because we will never feel free of the burdens of life. And maybe it is also the case that a caring, gracious God understands this.

So I prefer this picture of God, who understands the competing calls in my life and chooses to work with me where I am and not where the preacher thinks I should be.

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with thanks to my friends round the breakfast table who all carry their own burdens of life along with a passion for God.

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He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty.
Luke 1:52-53

Calling all you preachers out there who will Occupy pulpits this Christmas Day, have you settled on your text yet? Many of you have I’m sure but can I make a late play for a change?

Given all that is happening in our Western world in this season of Advent is it unreasonable to expect that someone will break a little with tradition and preach on the above extract from Mary’s prayer of thanksgiving. OK, so it’s perhaps more properly an Advent text, but could there ever be a more appropriate time to hear this profoundly radical dimension of the coming of Jesus?

I mean, if a simple peasant girl like Mary discerned this implication of the birth of the baby, is it really beyond our professionally educated, theologically trained preachers to mention it?

It’s another one of those occasions when I wish I had a pulpit.

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By the way, the blog is back, at least for a short while

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Continuing our study this week in the early chapters of Exodus, we read with incredulity the story about the brave midwives who spoke out in front of the Pharoah. (Part 1 HERE)

It’s startling because nobody has spoken a word in the story to this point, except the Pharoah. And all we have heard from him are the harsh edicts of the ruler—what Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg describes as his ‘monologue against life.’ His word to the midwives is a sharp instruction. He tells them to keep a close watch on pregnant Hebrew women. The Hebrew word for observe is actually a play on the word ‘to cut’ and the notion of separation. “See if it’s a boy and cut him off.”

(I’m reminded of Solomon and his wisdom here, when the women, the first people to receive a name, Shiprah and Puah, and they are described in the same terms as Abraham (Gen 22:12).)

Both the Pharoah and the midwives see and observe, and things happen. For the Pharoah, his seeing comes from a position of ignorance and leads to death (Exo 1:8,9). But the careful observance and discernment of the women nurtures life (Exo 1:19-21).

After the story of the midwives, the narrative shifts into anonymity again—the marriage between a man and a woman of the house of Levi, her pregnancy carried to term and the attempt to hide the boy. This is the plight of countless, anonymous oppressed women throughout the world. The task for us in our reflections was to try and imagine what might be required for a woman to hide her pregnancy despite living as a slave, to give birth and then to hide a baby for three months.

Generally speaking, the stuff surrounding childbirth in our culture is carefully managed and celebrated. It makes it hard to imagine the whole process in the context of oppression and great lack. In places where death is everywhere present, and life is contingent and fragile, what it is like to give birth and to raise a child? This was what it was like back then, and what it is like in places around the globe today.

When she could no longer hide him (what horror is contained in that little phrase) she placed him in an ark and set him adrift on the river. After bonding with her ‘fine child’ she now has to give him up. What caused this? Was it pressure from neighbours who feared that her act of civil disobedience would have awful implications for the whole compound of slaves? Was it her conclusion that his chances of survival were greater in the river than in the midst of the terrible struggle to put food in his mouth? How unbelievably painful was this for the anonymous Hebrew mother?

Then we are presented with another act of seeing. The baby’s sister waits at a distance to see (Exo 2:4). What motivated this young girl to follow the basket? Was she moved with compassion having seen her mother surrender her child? Was it that she couldn’t bear to be parted from her baby brother? She sees Pharoah’s daughter seeing (Exo 2:5) and this act of seeing opens the door to hope even as she opens the ark and sees the baby. And what Pharoah’s daughter sees is a Hebrew child. And he was crying. And she felt sorry for him (Exo 2:6).

What a completely different reaction to seeing than her father had! Pharoah’s seeing causes oppression and death. The midwives seeing brings new life. And Pharoah’s daughter sees with a new moral empathy and preserves the boy’s life. And gives him a name, Moses. The name, meaning ‘I drew him from the water’ both remembers his origins and looks ahead to what this newly named boy will do.

Pharoah sees the swarm of Israel and is threatened. His seeing leads him to deal ruthlessly and brutally with the people before embarking on a process of genocide and ethnic cleansing. His daughter sees a Hebrew child and names him and by so doing she dignifies a people that the Empire sought to oppressed and enslave. Yet another act of civil disobedience. When she sees and has compassion and recognises the baby as an illegal alien over whom the sentence of death hangs she knows in the moment that the command of the Empire is wrong. That her father is wrong. And she decides to disobey.

How easy to sit in ignorance in the face of the need in our world. Or in our street. Or in our home. How easy to pass over the nameless millions suffering oppression, traded across borders, dying in wars, denied basic dignities like the joy of giving birth and raising a child. How many women today will give birth, see their fine child and know that their child is under a sentence of death?

This story calls us to see. To really look. To learn empathy. And to put a name to what we would rather stayed anonymous.

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In this week of the killing of Osama I am preparing a study in the first chapter of Exodus and struck by some contemporary resonances.

In Exo 1:7, the death of the hero generation is contrasted with the extreme fecundity of the Israelites. In words meant to recall the original creation blessing in Gen 1:26-28 the people ‘were fruitful’, ‘multiplied greatly’, ‘became exceedingly numerous’ and ‘filled’ the land. Fear was the inevitable result.

The new Pharoah uses classic Us/Them language to scapegoat a people and isolate them as threats to national security. The Israelites are ‘much to numerous for US’ so therefore let us ‘deal shrewdly with THEM’, otherwise THEY will join OUR enemies and fight against US (Exo 1:9-10). The text appears to make a connection between this stereotyping and the experience of knowing.

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Then a new king, who did not know Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
Exo 1:8

Not knowing the people, not being able to distinguish them as people from the swarming mass, and, perhaps most crucially, failing to appreciate the role of the ancestors of these people in his nation’s history, means they become an object of fear to the new Pharoah, who was only too aware of external threats to national security.

This us/them language is death-dealing and destructive, so much the opposite of the fruitfulness of the Israelites themselves. Again the text layers words upon words not this time to describe fertility, but to depict oppression: ‘slave masters’, ‘oppress’, ‘forced labour’, worked them ‘ruthlessly’, ‘bitter’, ‘hard labour’, used them ‘ruthlessly’ (Exo 1:11-14). Yet the creation blessing of God does not give way and they continue to thrive (Exo 1:12).

How much easier it is to oppress a people when I do not know them. How easier it is to do violence when my enemy is anonymous, part of a swarming, teeming mass. How important it is therefore, that I learn to know my enemy, to be informed about the world and my place in it. It’s been true here in Northern Ireland where we have traditionally kept Protestants and Catholics well apart. Killing them is less about the individual and more about a blow against THEM, those who are different and to be feared and a threat to my security. How much harder is it when my enemy has a human face and a name.

The killing of Osama Bin Laden, and the celebrations that have followed, make me uncomfortable. That is not to offer any justification whatsoever for what he may have done. I’m uncomfortable because I think that he may stand as a convenient cipher for our culture’s lack of understanding of Islam, and our fear of THEM and their numbers and the perceived threat to National Security, which in turn justifies his killing.

I slip easily into thinking of him as a terrifying global terrorist, but not as the husband of a wife who was prepared to throw herself in front of a special forces operative to save his life.

I wonder how the flag waving and chanting at Ground Zero and outside the White House looked to TV watchers in the Middle East. Would they have experienced it any different from the way we watched celebrations of the 9/11 atrocity?

This is from Paolo Freire in Pedagogy of the Oppressed,

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… almost always, during the initial stage of the struggle, the oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors, or “sub-oppressors.” The very structure of their thought has been conditioned by the contradictions of the concrete, existential situation by which they were shaped….

As the oppressors dehumanize others and violate their rights, they themselves also become dehumanized. As the oppressed, fighting to be human, take away the oppressors’ power to dominate and suppress, they restore to the oppressors the humanity they had lost in the exercise of oppression.

It is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors. The latter, as an oppressive class, can free neither others nor themselves. It is therefore essential that the oppressed wage the struggle to resolve the contradiction in which they are caught; and the contradiction will be resolved by the appearance of the new man: neither oppressor nor oppressed, but man in the process of liberation.

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This is an early contender for my book of the year – a terrific read. Maybe it’s because I’m a Leeds fan, and have been since Gilesy was in his pomp. Maybe it’s because the first Rep of Ireland games I ever went to were when he was player-manager. Maybe it’s just because it all recalled my youth. Whatever the reason this is just a great read. Full of interesting wee insights into the life of footballers. Like the stories of growing up in poverty in Dublin, his early days in the Ireland squad when they all met in a Dublin hotel and then caught a bus to the ground. Or the practical joke on Jack Charlton when he went to the outside loo at Elland Road. Interesting anecdotes too. Like how all the great managers of the 60s and 70s like Revie, Shankley, Nicholson and even Busby were shafted by the clubs at the end of their time. Or the sad story of how Shankley used to visit Anfield after he was retired and had to be asked to stay away.

Johnny doesn’t shy away from the hard stuff either. He admits he could look after himself on a pitch, but was sly about it. There’s an interesting run through the hard me of English football at the time. He’s up front about the move from Uniturd, the heartbreak of missing out on the double when Leeds had to play an FA Cup final on a Saturday and the critical last game of the season the following Monday. And of course the infamous Clough era and his anger at the book/movie ‘The Damned United’

If you have even a little interest in football you’ll love this book. Through it all Giles confirms his generally held reputation as one of the nice guys. In fact, unlike other memoirs, Giles hardly has a bad word to say about anyone – maybe Busby excepted – even though he speaks honestly and straightforwardly about relationships with managers and money and incompetent football adminsitrators.

My tenuous connection is that I played against his son Michael after he moved to play for UCD following spells at West Brom and Bradford City. I marked him in midfield in a UCD game and could hardly get near him.

Quite justifiably Ireland’s sports biography of the year last year.

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Now this is a wee gem. If you have ever experienced the kind of illness that required a hospital stay, or you know somebody who has, or you pastor or support those who have this is a must read. It’s a really short piece, only available on kindle, so far as I’m aware, and describes Mantel’s experience of a stay in hospital that extended way beyond the original plan and debilitated her for a considerable period. It’s raw, honest, frightening and ultimately really hopeful.

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Illness strips you back to an authentic self, but not one you need to meet. Too much is claimed for authenticity. Painfully we learn to live in the world, and to be false. Then all our defences are knocked down in one sweep. In sickness we can’t avoid knowing about our body and what it does, its animal aspect, its demands. We see things that never should be seen; our inside is outside, the body’s sewer pipes and vaults exposed to view, as if in a woodcut of our own martyrdom. The whole of life – the business of moving an inch – requires calculation. The suffering body must shape itself around the iron dawn routine, which exists for the very sick as well as the convalescent: the injection in the abdomen, pain relief, blood tests as needed, then the long haul out of bed, the shaking progress to the bathroom, the awesome challenge of washcloth and soap.

I have no idea of Hilary Mantel’s spiritual interests but I wish I had this prior to my stay in hospital a few years ago instead of some of the material that was sent to me or that I was pointed to. Often it was sentimental religious guff written only by those who had come through health crisis with little acknowledgment for those whose illness was not resolved so easily. Thank God for Mantel and for this wee book which I found deeply spiritual, gory, fleshly and often made me laugh as I remembered the small indignities of every day in a hospital. Thank God too for people like Marva Dawn who try to reflect on it from a self-consciously Christian place.

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The visitor’s idea of hospital is different form the patient’s idea. Visitors imagine themselves trapped in tat ward, in that bed, in their present state of assertive well-being. They imagine being bored, but boredom occurs when your consciousness ranges about looking for somewhere to settle. It’s a superfluity of unused attention. But the patient’s concentration is distilled, moment by moment; breathing, not being sick, not coughing or else coughing in the right way, producing bodily secretions in the vessels provided and not on the floor.

I’ve haven’t read any of Mantel’s more celebrated prose but will do so.

If this issue is of interest to you, you might be interested in some of the things I tried to write about my own experience – not half as brilliantly as Hilary Mantel though. That’s your warning! Check out HERE and HERE.

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I picked up this book because I liked the premise. In it Nouwen takes three symbolic actions associated with the Cup in the Lord’s Supper or Eucharist, namely holding, lifting and drinking and asks the question Jesus asked ‘Can you drink the cup?’ (Matt 20:20-23)

Holding it Nouwen argues is a way of looking critically at who we are, accepting our skills and inadequacies and our essential uniqueness. Lifting it, is an invitation to affirm and celebrate life together by joining in community and sharing our vulnerabilities, giving others the permission to do likewise and giving thanks. Drinking it is the forsake the entrapments of our addictions, compulsions and sin and to trust fully in God who loves us completely and unconditionally.

Consider this passage,

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One thing I learned from it all: drinking wine is more than just drinking. You have to know what you are drinking, and you have to be able to talk about it. Similarly, just living life is not enough. We must know what we are living. A life that is not reflected upon isn’t worth living. It belongs to the essence of being human that we contemplate our life, think about it, discuss it, evaluate it, and form opinions about it. Half of living is reflecting on what is being lived. Is it worth it? Is it good? Is it bad? Is it old? Is it new? What is it all about? The greatest joy as well as the greatest pain of living come not only from what we live but even more from how we think and feel about what we are living. Poverty and wealth, success and failure,beauty and ugliness aren’t just the facts of life. They are realities that are lived very differently by different people, depending on the way they are placed in the larger scheme of things. A poor person who has compared his poverty with the wealth of his neighbor and thought about the discrepancy lives his poverty very differently than the person who has no wealthy neighbor and has never been able to make a comparison. Reflection is essential for growth, development, and change. It is the unique power of the human person.Holding the cup of life means looking critically at what we are living. This requires great courage, because when we start looking, we might be terrified by what we see. Questions may arise that we don’t know how to answer. Doubts may come up about things we thought we were sure about. Fear may emerge from unexpected places. We are tempted to say: “Let’s just live life. All this thinking about it only makes things harder.” Still, we intuitively know that without looking at life critically we lose our vision and our direction. When we drink the cup without holding it first, we may simply get drunk and wander around aimlessly.Holding the cup of life is a hard discipline. We are thirsty people who like to start drinking at once.

It is written out of Nouwen’s experience of living in community at L’Arche, and weaves in some of the stories of the men and women he encountered there. At it’s best the book is simply profound, immensely readable and capable of being consumed in a single sitting. At it’s worst I’m afraid it becomes a little too pop-psychological and not as lyrical as I was expecting and doesn’t make full use of the brilliant metaphor at the heart of the book (apologies Nouwen fans). Nevertheless worth a look.

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Mostly we are willing to look back at our lives and say: “I am grateful for the good things that brought me to this place.” But when we lift our cup to life, we must dare to say: “I am grateful for all that has happened to me and led me to this moment.” This gratitude which embraces all of our past is what makes our life a true gift for others, because this gratitude erases bitterness, resentments, regret, and revenge as well as all jealousies and rivalries. It transforms our past into a fruitful gift for the future, and makes our life, all of it, into a life that gives life.”

I like the idea of transforming our lives into lives which give life.

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During his recent visit to the Mission, Dr David Smith used the following poem during one of his workshops, and I thought I’d share it here.

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Just a snippet from today’s reading list. I’m looking at Isaiah, and how the book might function in the life of a worshipping community. Consider this.

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¹⁰ Hear the word of the LORD,
you rulers of Sodom;
listen to the instruction of our God,
you people of Gomorrah!
¹¹ “The multitude of your sacrifices—
what are they to me?” says the LORD.
“I have more than enough of burnt offerings,
of rams and the fat of fattened animals;
I have no pleasure
in the blood of bulls and lambs and goats.
¹² When you come to appear before me,
who has asked this of you,
this trampling of my courts?
¹³ Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
¹⁴ Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them.
¹⁵ When you spread out your hands in prayer,
I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
I am not listening.

Isaiah 1:10-15

Is it just me or does God have a headache? Caused by worship? Surely not!

Here is J J M Roberts,

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Despite record breaking attendance and offerings, God, like many contemporary Christians, found the whole experience of public worship a tedious, unbearable burden. In Isaiah’s day the human crowds were still present for worship;it was God who had opted out. The problem for religious leaders then was not how to get people to come back to attending worship; it was how to get God to attend. It might be wise even in the present to look at worship from that perspective. Perhaps we are spending far too much energy trying to figure out how to adapt worship so as to interest and attract a disinterested public. Perhaps we might better spend our time trying to attract and please a potentially disinterested and increasingly irritated God.

From: J J M Roberts, “Contemporary Worship in the Light of Isaiah’s Ancient Critique” Worship and the Hebrew Bible, ed. M Patrick Graham, Rick R Marrs & Steven L McKenzie, JSOT Supp 284, 1999, 269

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You may have missed, as I did, the current furore over Rob Bell’s new book. I’ll not link to it here as he needs no leg up from me. i came across it HERE in this hilarious post from Soapbox. Brilliant. I pity techie Rob Bell. I’m bemused by the other Rob Bell’s twitter handle ‘RealRobBell”. Real? Seriously? And unsurprised by the antics of people like John Piper.

On the other hand, the grace and wit of Rob Bell (UK version) is just terrific, as in this response:
@theonetruemyles who is this @johnpiper and why is he denouncing me? Did he not like a website I designed?

Sometimes, Christians are their own worst enemies.

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