Perseverance without understanding

I am currently re-reading one of my all time favourite books - The Lord of the Rings. It's interesting returning to the book after many years, with my childhood memories now coloured by Peter Jackson's blockbuster interpretation. On the whole, I thought Jackson did a good job with the first and last films. The original cut of The Two Towers was somewhat ruined for me by the undermining of Faramir as an honourable character. The extended release (a much more satisfying experience) reveals a superb sub-plot explaining this. Slightly sad that in making an admittedly much-needed cut for length they rendered the subplot incomprehensible.

What impressed me, however, was the way that Jackson picked up on many of the core themes in the trilogy and plays them out, either with direct quotations (albeit some of them moved across entire books) or in his characterisation. The entire last film is a tale of the friendship between Sam and Frodo. The sacrificial love which allows a gardener to accompany his master on a quest which is beyond his comprehension. I had entirely forgotten that Tolkien presents this theme right at the beginning. As early as chapter four of the first book Sam says to Frodo:

"I know we are going to take a very long road into darkness; but I know I can't turn back. It isn't to see Elves now, nor dragons, nor mountains that I want - I don't rightly know what I want: but I have something to do before the end and it lies ahead, not in the Shire. I must see it through, sir, if you understand me."

I love the quiet, humble determination represented in Sam. He seems to have grasped the message of Gandalf's statement to Frodo in the second chapter (or to Pippin during the battle for Minas Tirith if you prefer the films) "All we have to do is decide what to do with the time that is given to us..."

Thinking is the best way to travel...

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think." James McCosh.

I have always been a reasonably quick reader. It's a habit born out of an impatient nature and a diet of fiction. The need to race for the end just to find out what happens. But reading a book slowly has its advantages. Not least it delays that slight feeling of bereavement one feels when finishing a really good book.

When I started Finding Sanctuary I read nearly half of it the space of a few short hours. The problem was, although I knew it was deep, I took almost none of it in. So I returned to the beginning and started again more slowly. Taking time to reflect on what I was reading.

Today I concluded the chapter on obedience. Here I find that Jamieson presents an answer to the conundrum I posed at the weekend. A resolution to the issue arising from the section on Thomas Merton. It is an answer not dissimilar to the one that I had independently arrived at.

Let's now look at the powerful question about who sets the agenda in your life. As you 'pray for your own discovery', the agenda of your life is set neither by other people nor by yourself; it is set by God. Life becomes the search for God's agenda in your life. When you find it, then you have found your true self. You have found the ultimate obedient freedom.

It's good to read Jamieson's take on the paradox - but I'm glad I took the time to wrestle with it. It's far easier to remember a lesson learned through struggle than one passed on as a complete package.

As an interesting aside, the McCosh quotation above was on the bag provided when I bought Out of Solitude. A quick Google brings up many references to it. Most of which omit (as did my bag) a second sentence from the quotation:

"The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that."

Out of the depths

"Out of the depths I cry to you! Oh Lord hear my prayer. Listen to my cry for mercy. If you kept a record of sins who could stand before you? But with you there is forgiveness, so you are worshipped. I wait for the Lord and put my hope in his word. My soul waits for you, oh Lord, more than a nightwatchman waits for the dawn." Psalm 130: 1-6

The beatitudes intrigue me. They are beautiful and strange. They seem to sit at the core of Jesus' teaching, and yet they are very enigmatic statements. The first tells us more about the kingdom: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

I'm not sure exactly what it means to be poor in spirit. I wish I could remember what Yancey said in The Jesus I Never Knew but I have lent my copy to a friend! Maybe an understanding of what it it is to be poor could help. The current trendy definition of material poverty is "lack of choice", but I'm not sure how useful that is here. A more conventional definition of material poverty would be a substantial lack of the basic resources needed to daily living. So how does this translate into the spiritual realm?

The Message expresses this beatitude as "You're blessed when you're at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule." I love that. I remember reading it on a hill above Buttermere last summer and thinking that the end of my rope seemed a long way behind me.

I'm not sure about the accuracy of this translation, but the feel of it rings true to me. I think that spiritual poverty is more about acknowledgement than absolute status. Some people do not recognise the need for spirituality. Some think that they have it all figured out. Some shun help and struggle on with a brave face. It takes courage to admit spiritual poverty. Yet this scripture seems to say to me that it is only when we admit to it and looking for resources beyond our own that we start to see the kingdom.

The search for self

I've been in a bit of a head-spin this weekend. My thoughts circling like fighting cats. I'm still not quite sure which tail to pull to unravel the mess. I'm not even sure I can adequately frame the issue.

It started with the section on Thomas Merton in Finding Sanctuary by Christoper Jamieson. He writes this:

The real task of being true to oneself is as slow and profound work; it is not a fixed way but involves search and change. And in the end being true to oneself can only be achieved by listening to God. Keeping busy is a way of avoiding being true to oneself. 'In order to become myself I must cease to be what I always thought I wanted to be.'"

The question which this raised in my head runs something like this: is the search for one's true self diametrically opposed to the concept of self-sacrifice and self-denial? Is it not self-indulgent to commit vast amounts of time to that search? In a sense this is purely an intellectual challenge. My instinct says otherwise. In giving my life wholeheartedly to God it seems fitting that I will be released to be all that God intended. God did not create me a certain way just so he could ask me to painfully become something else entirely. So maybe it is just the emphasis of the statement that I find hard to accept.

When I was at university I knew a guy who was very hot on self-sacrifice. He had given up a whole raft of things which he knew to be wrong, in order to be a better Christian. The thing was, he wasn't very happy. To an outsider it was pretty clear that he regretted the sacrifice. He'd placed a whole load of things on the altar, not because he wanted to, but because he thought he had to. As a consequence they weren't really dead, but they followed him around, snapping at his heels.

The Christians who I have most admired have always struck me as very humble, centred people. Their focus is on God. He is the core of iron that runs though their gentle lives. It's never really occurred to me to ask them about self-sacrifice and it is not something that they have talked about. Yet I bet if I did ask I would find that there had been sacrifice there. Silent, under the surface sacrifice; undertaken willingly, not regretted and not returned to.

I know it's jumping forward, but the picture I have in my mind comes from the two-sentence parable in Matthew 9: 44. "The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field." It brings me back to what I wrote a few days ago. Love does not spring from obedience, but rather the other way around. If there is no joy in the sacrifice, then maybe the real treasure is still to be found.

Good news

"Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people." Matthew 4: 23

After his baptism and time in the wilderness Jesus begins to travel. What is interesting to me is that people seem eager to hear what he has to say. He calls a number of people to follow him and they do. People flock to hear what he has to say. Okay, so many of them are just there to be healed or perhaps have come along for the spectacle, but the central message is magnetic. Good News.

In the twenty-first century, the church has a patchy reputation. People often see us as kill-joys. They certainly do not associate us with good news. Sometimes I think that secretly I don't either. If I did, why do I so often choose to be of the world as well as in it? And yet I wonder if integrity was the key to Jesus' magnetism. The fact that he lived what he believed wholeheartedly. He was honest enough not to reduce the gospel down to a religious system, but rather to live each moment as an expression of his relationship with God.

The message of the gospel is counter-cultural and it's difference is part of what makes it attractive. By blending in, am I watering it down? Am I turning it from good news to bland news. Living differently is hard. All too often I give in, but I guess I'll never really know if it works - unless I try…

Spiritual pathways...

Having looked in my last entry at the value of silence in drawing nearer to God, I feel that it is worth pulling back slightly. There are many traditions and authors who would advocate silence. I can endorse from my own experience that it is beneficial. However, as Christopher Jamieson has said, silence is not the aim but rather a means. It is a means of allowing us to get closer to God, and it is far from being the only one.

One of the things that I have learned increasingly in recent years is that people are different. Intellectually, I think that most of us know this even if we resort to stereotyping as a way of simplification. I do wonder, however, how many people realise the extent of the differences and how they affect people's world-view. The phrase I catch myself using is "but most people would think that". It is, I suspect, more often wrong than right.

For some people silence and solitude come naturally. Their soul sings whenever they have the opportunity to spend time with nothing but their own thoughts. For others solitude is a long, slow death. The important thing here is not to get hung up on the techniques, but rather to look firmly towards the goal. Spending time getting to know the heart of God.

In his book, Courageous Leadership, Bill Hybels writes

Years ago I notice that various leaders whom I respected went about their walks with God in vastly different ways. The variety was stunning to me. I started to keep a mental list of all their different approaches. Then I came across a book called Sacred Pathways, written by Gary Thomas which further pushed my thinking on this subject.

Sacred pathways are like doors which open into a room where we can feel particularly close to God. Just as different leaders have different personalities and combinations of gifts so they have many different spiritual pathways.

The challenge to me from Bill Hybels book was not directly to spend more time in silence, but rather to explore the way that I relate to God. To find the things that make my spiritual life blossom, and then to order my life so that I can spend as much time pursuing them. On one thing Jamieson and Hybels agree. Spending time in this place is not self-indulgence, it is essential.

All of the concepts I am exploring seem to revolve around this core point. Finding the kingdom, being transformed, repenting, serving, dying to self: all start with a journey into the heart of God. I'm still struggling with my spiritual pathways, but it is a rewarding struggle. One that I thoroughly recommend...

The powerhouse of silence...

After his baptism the second act that Jesus undertakes before commencing his ministry is to withdraw into the desert and fast. We are not told what he did for most of this time, but I think we can make a good guess. Throughout the gospels we find Jesus periodically withdrawing to quiet, lonely places to spend time alone with God.

Mark 1 verse 35 is a good example: "Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed." In the short yet powerful book, Out of Solitude, Henri Nouwen makes the following observation on this verse:

The more I read this silent sentence locked in between the loud words of action, the more I sense that the secret of Jesus' ministry is hidden in the lonely place where he went to pray, early in the morning, long before dawn. In the lonely place, Jesus finds the courage to follow God's will and not his own; to speak God's word and not his own; to do God's work and not his own.

The time Jesus spends in his father's presence is the powerhouse for his ministry. It is how he centres himself on his purpose.

I am currently working my way through the book Finding Sanctuary by Christopher Jamieson (the Abbot of Worth Abbey). The book, subtitled Monastic steps for Every Day Life, is a remarkably accessible look at applying the Rule of St Benedict to ordinary living. In it Jamieson describes quietness as the carpet of our personal sanctuary.

Silence is not an end in itself; it is there to let inner silence grow so that the inner life might flourish. A gardening analogy may help here: if you have not been used to silence, the first thing you will notice when you enter into it are the distractions inside yourself - the weeds. Even when you pull them up and throw them away, they grow back again quickly and you wonder why you bothered. But you need to keep weeding in order to let the flowers grow. The flowers in this case are the words from God that can grow if you have cleared a space for them.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been experimenting with this. Trying to weave silence into my life. It has not been easy; there are distractions from without and within. Jamieson suggests starting with five minutes a day and working up from this. Most days I fail even my five minutes. The clamour of my head is just too loud. Yet in persevering I am beginning to see some of the benefit. Moving towards God does not offer any easy answers, but it does provide a new perspective. The kingdom does not reveal itself easily, but perhaps the process of searching for it is required to change us so we can dwell in it?

Holiness

It is interesting to note how Jesus begins his transformation. Matthew's gospel shows Jesus undertaking two concrete actions before commencing his public ministry. The first is a symbolic act, baptism.

New Testament Christians associate baptism with Jesus' death and resurrection - symbolising death to sin and new life. John, however, did not have the benefit of Paul's letter to the Romans. For the Jew it is likely that baptism would have been seen as a purification ritual. Such rituals were performed to cleanse people or objects. To make them fit for worship. The old testament outlines many such rituals for making things pure. For setting things apart, or making them holy.

It seems to me that the concept of holiness has become devalued. We think now of holiness as being an aloof perfection. Holy people are not comfortable to be with because they will judge us and look down on our failings. Yet Jesus is the ultimate in holiness, and for the most part he seems to have been a very approachable person. People were fascinated by him. 2,000 years have gone by and people are still captivated by him.

This throws down a challenge to me. In repenting; in realigning my life towards the kingdom of God; in being transformed I should be becoming more approachable. More open to those around me. More visibly Christ-like. It is a high standard to attain.

Fortunately we are not expected to attain it unaided. The baptism of John was symbolic. John says of it "I baptise you with water for repentance, but he will baptise you with the holy spirit." The baptism of today should be more than symbolic. Baptism in water is external. It cannot actually change our hearts and attitudes. The baptism of the spirit is internal. The spirit wells up inside and powers the transformation. But this will happen only if I let it, and all too often I don't.

Transformation by service

Last November my mother was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. Over a period of a few short months she deteriorated from very tired and mildly forgetful to being almost incapable of looking after herself. In the early days before a care plan was established things became a little fraught at home. To help my father I spent some time looking after mum. Part way through this I found myself washing her (very dirty) feet. It was not a task that I would have naturally chosen.

It was not an easy few days. I had very little sleep and was emotionally and physically exhausted. Yet those moments stick out in my memory as immensely special times. In caring for someone I loved, I found myself able to do jobs which under any other circumstance I would have found distasteful and looked back on in horror. On reflection it was not really my mother who benefited. Certainly her feet were cleaner and her toenails cut. She would have been more comfortable for a few days at least. I doubt that she has any recollection of it now. The impact on me runs far deeper. I learned things about myself I never knew. It made me think in new ways about what it really means to love my neighbour.

Each evening after I had settled my mother to sleep I read a bit from The Jesus I Never Knew by Philip Yancey. One chapter talks of an encounter with Henri Nouwen. Yancey was staggered to find that Nouwen had given up a high-profile job to look after mentally handicapped patients.

Nouwen told me it took him nearly two hours to prepare Adam each day. Bathing and shaving him, brushing his teeth, combing his hair, guiding his hand as he tried to eat breakfast - these simple, repetitive acts had become for him almost like an hour of meditation.

I must admit I had a fleeting doubt as to whether this was the best use of the busy priest's time. Could not someone else take over the manual chores? When I cautiously broached the subject with Nouwen himself, he informed me that I had completely misinterpreted him. "I am not giving up anything," he insisted. "It is I, not Adam, who gets the main benefit from our friendship."

Now, nearly six months later I am still absorbing this. Nouwen was a well-known author and theologian. He had earned world-wide respect for the insight of his books, and yet he dedicated the last ten years of his life to the direct care of others. This takes me back to the idea of living sacrifice I started with. And yet losing his life to serve others Nouwen gained so much. Yancy goes on to write "He had learned to love Adam, truly to love him. In the process he had learned what it must be like for God to love us."

Transformers...

"Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Romans 12: 2

This week I saw the movie Transformers. Lots of slick CGI and overly fast action sequences interleaved with some clumsy, moralising dialogue, good old fashioned heroics and a fairly standard good versus evil plot. The best bit for me were the sequences where the robots transformed. In the space of a few skidding yards Optimus Prime changes from a truck into a towering biped robot, and turns to face the enemy. Despite the transformation, however, you can still see the elements of the truck from which he has come.

Transformation is one of my favourite biblical concepts. Although the actual word occurs only three times in the new testament, the idea is deeply embedded. In Matthew 3 and 4, we see Jesus change from a carpenter from Nazareth into a rabbi, from a private to a public figure. The gospels tell us almost nothing of his early life, and then after his baptism and retreat into the wilderness he explodes into action.

In Matthew 4: 17 he takes up John the Baptist's cry: "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near." That word again. Repent. Turn about. Change. Transform. Reconfigure yourself for life in the kingdom.

Unlike Optimus Prime, I fear I cannot transform in a few seconds. For me it is a gradual sometimes painful process. Bits of me turning more towards God, bits turning away. Paul's take on the subject in Romans is at least encouraging. Be transformed. Not transform yourself. Transformation is something which happens to us rather than something we do. At least - I hope so…

What do we repent from?

Having said it is more important to focus on what we repent to, I still feel I need to take a quick look at what we repent from. I hope that the whole focus of this blog will be what we repent to, so one brief post on sin from is not out of order.

What exactly is sin? Over the years the church has created long lists, in much the same way that the Pharisees did in Jesus' day (which he criticised them harshly for). Over time I have come to wonder how much of what we label sin is actually an offence against some absolute definition. Don't get me wrong. I believe that there are things which are morally wrong. It's just that I wonder if many of the other things that are encapsulated in the law are more for our benefit than because God suffers a sense of outrage when we disregard them.

In Perelandra C S Lewis expounds the idea of laws which serve no purpose other than for man to demonstrate his love for God by obedience. It's an interesting concept from a thoroughly fascinating book. It reminds me of the verses which are scattered through both John's gospel and letters which follow the form: "if you love me you will keep my commands."

It seems to me then that there are potentially three categories of sin. Offences against God, offences against others and offences against own best interests. In its simplest expression sin is not obeying God's commands which, according to Jesus, can be expressed in two statements: love God and love others.

In my experience love does not start with obedience. It is the other way around. Obedience springs out of love. It may be something of a chicken and egg problem, but it seems to me that the path to the kingdom starts by actively seeking to move towards God, rather than trying to clean our lives up. Ultimately of course both are necessary, but the former makes the latter easier. I could spend a lifetime throwing rocks out of my back yard but unless I start planting flowers I'll never have a garden.

So what is repentance?

In starting this blog, I feel I may have made a mistake. I really don't want it to appear that I know where I am going with this. These are issues that I am wrestling with. The problem is that as a writer I want to write something neat. Something that reads well. I am finding it hard to present my inner struggle without sounding like I've already reached my conclusions! Maybe as I push deeper the uncertainties will become more apparent. Anyway...

It would be easy to race on into Matthew, but I can't get past this just yet. What exactly does it mean to repent? The definition of the word is relatively clear. To turn away from wrong-doing. The application is less so.

I have heard it said "you get what you focus on" and, whilst I don't entirely buy this, there is a grain of truth within it. There is a story told about a group of novice parachutists jumping from a plane to land in a huge empty field with a single bush in the middle. As each one jumped the instructor said to them, "Whatever you do, don't land in the bush." Most of them focused on the bush for their entire descent, and as a consequence that is where they landed.

Over the years the church has had a lot to say about sin, and about all the things God expects us not to do. As a consequence many of us become either resigned to or paralysed by our failures. We forget the grace of God. Yet the message of the cross is surely that sin is dealt with. If we ask forgiveness God does not dwell on our sin, and I don't think he expects us to either.

If we concentrate on sin we become insecure, judgemental and critical, and the church becomes an unwelcoming place for the outsider. I know I am often guilty of this. In consequence Jesus, whilst totally honest, was very welcoming to the outsider. The people he was hardest on were the religious leaders who made it hard for people to approach God.

I used to equate repentance with saying sorry. A long list of wrongs to apologise for. Now I am not so sure. Asking for forgiveness is clearly important, as is genuine penitence, however, I am increasingly unconvinced that the focus of repentance should be on wrong-doing. Paul tells us in Corinthians 5 "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" In turning away from wrong-doing we have to turn towards something else. I am starting to wonder if what we repent to is far more important than what we repent from.

Reject the false kingdom

In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C S Lewis, a young boy named Edmund finds himself in the magical land of Narnia. There he meets a queen who promises to make him a prince and one day king of Narnia. Edmund, understandably is highly tempted by this offer and initially has no qualms in aligning himself with the queen. As the story progresses he finds the queen, who is really a witch, has neither the desire nor the right to make him king. What he does not realise is that, along with his brother and sisters, his claim to the throne is more real than her own.

The devil often offers us things which, if we but knew it, are already ours. Quick assurances or easy pleasures which turn out to not be quite what they seem. In Matthew 4 he tries this with Jesus, taking him to a high place and offering him all the kingdoms of the earth. The price? Bow down and worship me. Jesus rejects the temptation. This is not the kingdom he came to establish, and he will worship none but God.

It seems that there is no easy route to the kingdom. To take one is almost certainly to be deceived. Once gained, however, the benefits of the real kingdom are far better than the pale substitutes the devil can offer. The repentance John talks about means turning my back on the false kingdom. Rejecting the quick fix or the pat answer. It means getting down to business and searching for the kingdom. Investing the time in getting to know the mind of Christ. Sometimes I'm not certain I have that dedication in me - yet somehow I feel compelled to try.

The kingdom is at hand...

The very first reference to the kingdom comes in Matthew 3. Here we find John the Baptist crying out in the desert "Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near". His message carries immediacy. For John the kingdom is not some distant promise - a hope for the far future - but rather it is at hand and his reaction to Jesus shows that he recognises him instantly as the one of whom he has been talking

Later, in Matthew 11 we see John, in prison and plagued with doubt, send messengers to Jesus to ask if he had in fact been right. Jesus characteristically does not answer the question, but points to what is happening around him. If John's proclamation was true, that the kingdom was at hand, then perhaps what Jesus points to tells us a little of what the kingdom is. "The blind see, the lame walk, the sick are healed and the good news is preached to the poor."

If the kingdom was at hand nearly 2,000 years ago then it is here now. The kingdom is not something we are waiting for, but something we are called into. Right here, right now. Yet the kingdom Jesus points to seems very different to my daily experience.

Setting out

Most journeys are easier with a roadmap. Especially trips to unknown destinations. The roadmap to the kingdom is an old one. The pages are partially obscured by centuries of comments from other travellers. Some are helpful, many less so. And this is no conventional map. We see tantalizing glimpses of the destination and hints as to the route, but the junction by junction directions are strangely absent. Perhaps this is because it is a personal journey. Everyone's route is different. Like a mountain with no paths, we must all pick our own way to the summit. For all the uncertainty, however, we must be assured that there is a summit and it - like the starting point - is the same for all.

In John's gospel we see the question of an early traveller:

Thomas said to him, "Lord, we don't know where you are going, so how can we know the way?"

Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me..."

I have a lot of sympathy for Thomas. There is a tendency to look down on him - one of the lesser disciples. He is forever tarred as a doubter. But Thomas has two things going for him which place him ahead of many. He wants to go where Jesus is going, and he's not afraid to admit his ignorance. Over the years I have come to realise that so much of what I have been taught with so much confidence, comes from people who aren't certain, but are afraid to say so. In my journey I hope to find some answers. I hope also to admit when I don't find any. After all if it had not been for Thomas' question, we might have missed one of the deepest statements in the bible.

In an expedition to find the kingdom the only place to start is with the person of Jesus. He is more than a map, he is a guide. We find his thoughts on the kingdom scattered through the gospels. By my count there are 139 references to the kingdom of God in the New Testament of which 105 come in the gospels (and 49 of these are in Matthew). So it is with the Gospels that I will begin...

To die would be an awfully big adventure...

I love that quotation from Peter Pan. Like so much of the children's literature of its era it seems to communicate a great profundity. But I love it even more because it reminds me of Romans 12. The concept of offering our bodies as living sacrifices. The Message puts it so much better than I ever could.

So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.

This is scary stuff and I'm not entirely sure I know what it means, or that I've got what it takes. This is not dying on the altar, but living an entirely different way. Living for something bigger. Living for someone else.

Today I'm not so much starting on as committing to a journey. I've been meandering on this quest for many years. I suspect I will still be doing so for many years to come. But in searching for the kingdom I have concluded I need to track my progress. Hence the blog. It's really just for me - but part of the fun is seeing who else is travelling.

To die? Maybe. To live? That's harder. To live for God? That really would be an awfully big adventure...