How this sermon came my way

Fifty years ago, as a student in Cambridge, I met David Wilcox in the Robert Hall Society, where Baptist students gathered. After Cambridge, David was a Baptist minister for many years, before becoming an Anglican. Last September we met again in Cambridge at a reunion for people who had been in Robert Hall Society around 1960. I found out he was now Priest Vicar at Wells Cathedral, a long way from Leeds. So I did not expect to have more contact with him.

A bit later, I got a phone call from my brother-in-law, Spencer. He goes to Wells Cathedral quite often as he used to go with his wife, Joy, until she died last year. He met David and they got talking and found they both know me. Spencer then sent me a copy of this sermon preached by David earlier this year.

Three ways in which this sermon is good

It is good in at least three ways.

First,  it is beautifully crafted, so that it is clear, short, full of stuff, and to the point. The craft makes it memorable, which is important if a sermon is to go deep and stay with us and be fruitful. The craft which makes it memorable is in the simplicity of its structure, the motifs of light and salt running all the way through.

Secondly, we hear Jesus in this sermon, calling us to be salt and light.

Thirdly, what it is to be salt and light in the world is illustrated from the life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s friend, wrote a huge richly informative biography, nearly a thousand pages long. But here we have the life in two pages, not long enough for anyone to get weary, even if they are sitting uncomfortably on cathedral seats. As a brief account of Bonhoeffer’s life and witness I think this is quite outstanding – it does not merely outline the history but makes it a challenge and encouragement for us today.

Why hear this now?

On 9 April 1945, at Flossenburg concentration camp, Bonhoeffer was hanged for his share in the resistance to Hitler. So this week it is fitting to publish it, to remember him, and to hear again for ourselves on our 9 April 2011 the call to be salt and light in the world.

Sermon preached by David Wilcox at the 9.45 Eucharist in Wells Cathedral on Sunday 6^th February, 2011

Today is an ordinary Sunday. Last Wednesday was Candlemas, and at Evensong we said “Goodbye” to the festival season of Christmas and Epiphany. For the next five or so weeks we journey through Ordinary Time until we reach Ash Wednesday.

But, on this ordinary Sunday, we hear extraordinary words addressed to extraordinary people. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world”. The “you” is emphatic. A finger is being pointed. “You, who are listening to me, you are salt, you are light.”

So who are these people? The introduction to today’s Gospel reading tells us that they are disciples of Jesus of Nazareth who have joined him on a mountain. We are hearing part of the Sermon on the Mount. What we aren’t told is that Jesus has just declared these followers of his blessed by God.,- blessed , not because they are rich, happy or or successful, but blessed because they are poor in spirit and meek; blessed because they mourn over the injustice and wrong in the world and hunger and thirst to see righteousness prevail; blessed because they are merciful, peacemakers; blessed because they are totally committed and ready to stand up for what is right, even if it means suffering and persecution. In one sense they are the ordinary people of Galilee. But in another sense they are extra-ordinary, because they have been seized by Jesus’ vision of God’s realm of justice and peace, healing and reconciliation, and with him they want to make it real. They are beatitude people.

Behind this group of Jesus’ followers on the mountain stands another, the church community for whom the person we call Matthew wrote this gospel. Jesus’ words address them. To them he says, “You”. And behind them are more and yet more, generation upon generation of people, young and old, right down to today. All over the world you will find them, in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, in the ruins of Port-au- Prince, in the crowded streets of Seoul.

And amongst that vast crowd we too are numbered, here in this cathedral church. We ordinary people, yet extra-ordinary in our passion for justice in our country and around the world, for peace and reconciliation between fractured communities and nations, for the welfare of the whole web of life on this fragile planet, we are the people whom Jesus addresses this morning. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.”

Notice, “You are”, not “You ought to be”. This is the essence of your being as beatitude people. And notice, “Salt of the earth, light of the world.” This is not about religious escapism, but about getting stuck into the nitty-gritty of the world in which we live.

So what does it mean to be salt, to be light?

Salt,- tiny crystals. Dissolve them in water and the flavour is transformed. Soak fish or meat in brine and it keeps for months. Salt makes a difference, hidden but real. And that is what you are; people who transform the world from within, by your presence where help is needed, by the way you handle relationships, by your readiness to take constructive action without anyone else knowing about it. Of course sodium chloride can’t lose its taste. But two thousand years ago it was easily confused with gypsum and came mixed with impurities,. That points to the danger, that we melt so imperceptibly into the world around us that we stop making a difference. We are called to add the savour of the beatitudes to human relationships, and to help preserve what is good and right and fair. Salt.

And light,– a flickering candle flame. But place it prominently in a darkened room and it will shed its light to the furthest corners. If the picture of salt is about working imperceptibly from within, then the picture of light is about being visible, not hiding our light under a bushel basket but speaking and acting clearly for truth and righteousness and peace. A letter to government official about a prisoner of conscience, an event to promote the welfare of impoverished people, a peaceful demonstration against injustice or oppression, for reconciliation or the well-being of the earth; these are ways in which you add your candle flame to those of others and make a difference. Light.

Eighty years ago, in 1931, a 25 year old student discovered the Sermon on the Mount. His name was Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and when I read today’s Gospel I immediately thought of him. He had just qualified as a university lecturer, and now he was on a year’s scholarship at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He became friends with a fellow student, Jean Lassere. Remember, this was just a dozen years after the end of the first world war. Lassere was a convinced .pacifist, and he encouraged Bonhoeffer to explore the Sermon on the Mount and reflect on what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus. Another friend he made in New York was Frank Fisher, who introduced him to a black Baptist church. It became his spiritual home, and he took a Sunday School class. Salt. The urban black scene of deprivation and struggle stirred him deeply. He would walk out of a cafe if it refused to serve his black friend. Light.

Bonhoeffer returned home with a stack of records of spirituals in his trunk, and a determination to continue living out the Sermon on the Mount. As well as lecturing at the university he became chaplain of a technical college. He also took over a confirmation class in a slum area of the city, moving into a flat there for a while and taking the youngsters to a hut he owned in the country. Salt. Soon after Hitler came to power in 1933 he gave a radio talk warning of the dangers of a Fuhrer who becomes an idol of the people. Light. The next month, when an official boycott of Jewish shops began, he presented a paper to the church authorities on possible responses to the Jewish question including, if necessary, “putting a spoke in the wheel” of state activity. Light. In the summer he campaigned vigorously against the demand of those called German Christians that people of Jewish origin be excluded from the church. Light.

Exhausted, he came to London in the autumn to look after two German congregations, but continued to advocate the cause of what became known as the Confessing Church, and he worked tirelessly for refugees from Germany. Salt. He returned to Germany in the spring of 1935 to take charge of an illegal seminary for ordinands. When the Gestapo closed it in 1937 it continued in a clandestine way. The lectures he gave there were published as “Discipleship” and “Life Together”. One section of “Discipleship” unpacks the Sermon on the Mount. “The disciples must not only think of heaven,” Bonhoeffer says of today’s gospel. “They have an earthly task as well …..A community of Jesus which seeks to hide itself has ceased to follow him.” Salt and Light.

In 1939 Bonhoeffer travelled to New York to become a lecturer there, in order to avoid conscription and to be an overseas link for the Confessing Church. But almost as soon as he arrived he decided he had made a mistake. In his letter of resignation he wrote, “Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilisation may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilisation. I know which of those alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make it in safety.” Light.

So he returned home. Members of his family and friends had formed a resistance cell. He supported and encouraged them, and through them he was recruited as an agent of the Abwehr, the counter-intelligence agency. He used his visits abroad ostensibly to gather intelligence, but in reality to keep lines of communication open with church and political leaders in allied countries. Salt. He also helped with Operation 7 which enabled a number of Jews, recruited as agents, to travel to Switzerland and escape. Salt.

In April 1943 he was arrested because of suspicion that he was using his Abwehr service to avoid conscription, and because of Operation 7. He was held in Tegel military prison in Berlin, and his calmness and practical care during the air raids at the end of that year made him something of a hero amongst both warders and fellow prisoners. Salt. After the failure of a plot to assassinate Hitler on 20^th July 1944 and the discovery of papers implicating him and his circle, he was transferred to the Gestapo cells in the centre of Berlin, then to Buchenwald, and finally to Flossenburg. On the night of April 8^th, 1945 he and six fellow conspirators faced a court martial. The next morning, April 9th, he along with rest was hanged with prolonged barbarity. Light.

Bonhoeffer has been a source of inspiration to me for nearly fifty years. If you want to find out more, I commend the 100 page “SPCK Introduction to Bonhoeffer” by Keith Clements. As you follow Bonhoeffer’s story you realise that his way of living the Sermon on the Mount changed through the years. What it meant to be salt and light in 1941 was rather different to what it had been in 1931, and doubtless what it would have been in 1951 if he had survived the war. That is true for everyone. Being beatitude people in Wells today has a different complexion to what it was in pre-war or wartime Germany, or what it is in Cairo or Port-au-Prince or Seoul. What matters is that you and I work out what it means for us, here and now. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” Today on this ordinary Sunday, through the days of this coming ordinary week, through the weeks and years that are left to you, be the extraordinary people that you are.

What are we to make of David Cameron’s recent announcement to introduce a “National Well-Being Measure” in the UK?  Perhaps we welcome an index which may not be  based on material wealth, something more spiritual…  Or could it be just another way to waste 2 million pounds of taxpayers money at a time when the country has so little to spare?

Is it the government’s business anyway?

I think it is right that the focus should not be only on GDP, exchange rates, profit margins, FTSE, consumer spending, imports and exports, etc.., so there is a point to be made even though so much of society seems to derive so much of its happiness from consumerism.  However, we already have many other measures which could be expected to influence subjective perceptions  of well-being:  crime rates, insolvencies, divorce rates, abortion statistics, NHS waiting lists, unemployment, number of days lost through industrial action and ill-health, hours spent watching TV, number of people taking anti-depressant drugs,…  Of course, most of these measures would be negatively  related to well-being, and perhaps it would be wrong to assume that anyone not affected adversely is otherwise “happy”.

What makes a person happy?  Perhaps a survey would reveal this, but it seems a very difficult thing to measure in any objective way. When I am asked “How are you?”, my response will  often depend on who is asking (as well as how tired I am; how well I slept last night).  It will rarely be a considered view taking into account all that has happened in the last year (or the last ten years, if the question is asked only in the national census).  I have recently completed a “well-being” survey at work, and several colleagues have commented that the questionnaire does not ask them the questions that they want to answer. In such a subjective arena, there is always the danger that the choice and wording of questions will not reveal that which was intended.

Apart from highly subjective measures such as “how happy are you?” or “do you feel valued as a person?”, one could ask a whole list of other questions.  This could reveal to the government WHAT MATTERS? (!) to society, but any attempt to summarize all responses into a single measure would be very difficult.  Moreover, how would we interpret a score except in relative terms?

I note that 2 years ago the UN (unicef) issued a report on the well-being of children, collating previous measures of material wealth, family and peer relationships, health and safety, behaviour and risks, an objective educational sense of well-being, and a subjective measure of well-being.  In this report the UK came last (of 21 developed nations), and this should give us – as well as the government –  some cause for concern.

Well-being is not a phrase I have come across in my Bible, so how might we interpret this from a Christian perspective? In the NIV, the word “happiness” occurs 6 times. Interesting examples include “To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness” (Eccles 2:26), and his master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness” (Matt 25:23).  So it would seem that happiness (the pursuit of which is one of the unalienable rights of people enumerated in the US Declaration of Independence) is something that we should value. Another way to view well-being is “Contentment” which appears 3 times, most notably “godliness with contentment is great gain” (I Tim 6:6). Of course,  “joy” is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and so by implication, measuring joy – or any other fruit for that matter – in my life (assuming I could do that) would indeed be a useful spiritual health-check.

Charles Taylor

Our good friend, David Newton of Gildersome Baptist Church, emailed my wife, Hilary, wishing her ‘your best Christmas ever’. You too can read his message on their web site She forwarded it to me, simply saying, Brilliant!

I could not disagree. I sent it to my friend, Bill, and he replied:
“Absolutely wonderful, when the Gospel comes to the Mall. I am sending it to many friends and posting it on our site. (Posting it there will take a few days.)”

I sent it to Keith and got this:
“Thanks very much. I was moved to tears.”
He is not, in my experience, a regular lachrymose. So what is going on here?

I wonder why this little email is having such an effect. I have some answers and my first thought was to explain them on this blog. Then I thought again: it would be better to let all my readers find out for themselves what this is about. Leave them free to enjoy it for themselves. And then let them share their reactions on this site.

So give a couple of minutes to it and then login and comment – positive or negative, celebratory or analytical. You can comment at the foot of this post, there is a link to the MBC forum below or if you can’t remember your login simply send a message via our contact form.

God the Trinity
Who is the God who comes to us and with us, who brings heaven with God?
The full Bible answer is that God is not just a Being who sits above the heavens – or the sole creator of all things. God is the Father of the Son with the Holy Spirit. God lives, in and as community, and makes a story through God’s kind of time. God is not remote, not the mere origin, as the creator Father, but the one who as Father shares in the history on earth lived by the Son in fellowship with the Father. God, the whole one God, comes here and now, in the Son, who is God’s eternal Word become a real particular human being. In Jesus we see God, because God here translates God into the basic human language, (which, surprise! surprise! is not English) but is flesh and blood, one person with others, talking and doing, loving and suffering, living, dying and rising again, living in the world of human beings, with God the Father, without God. Jesus is God coming to us still, bringing God’s heaven to us, in God’s way. That may not fit our conventional pictures of heaven, but in the storms of life, Jesus comes, as Thompson saw: And lo! Christ walking on the waters, not of Gennesareth but Thames. Or the Aire.

With and from Father and Son comes Holy Spirit, the living outgoingness of God himself, who gets through to us, even in our blindness and deafness, who sets up the ladder from where we are to heaven, and sets the angels, the messengers going up and down. The question about God is not just who is God, but how God is with people and how can people be with God. That is why it is good that in the unity of God is the Holy Spirit, the unending, unwearying outgoing of God into all the world. This is God who does not leave us to figure out, as best we can, something in this murky world about heaven and how we get there. This is God goes on working with us on how we can live with God.

This God is not a God we can get to possess: we cannot go into any shop and buy it and say it is ours. Any religion which offers you God like this, is selling idols. This God takes time, time to live and work in our time, so we have to give God the time of our lives. God walks with us, so we walk with him. We have a lot to learn, to experiment and discover about how to walk with God, if we are to do something more significant than produce a bit more religion in the world. We are seeking above all the kingdom of heaven, in our way on earth now.

On the way, in one way and another, God gives signs of his heaven, the light and the fire break out. God is here so heaven breaks out. Sometimes this is alarming, sometimes transforming, sometimes cheering, but never boring. And it is mostly practical.

God is love
It is practical when we remember and keep in mind a key clue about what ‘God’ means. God is love, said John (I John 4.8). This is not to say, God is an emotion, or God is a timeless quality, or God is a simple rule of conduct. In this is love, says John, that God loved us and gave his Son for us (I John 4.9-10). Love is action, useful action relevant to those who need to be loved not just to those who are loving.

God’s love is not like a little good deed, now and again, though every good deed is a little note in God’s great music. God’s love is the massive eternal action, the foundation of all creation, its culmination and the repairing and joyful presence at the heart of it. God’s love is foundational and commanding action for us all and through all time. So John says, simply, If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

So heaven comes down to earth, and from the future into the present. Heaven is what God brings wherever God comes, and heaven is what we share wherever we love as God loves.

Heaven in the present is not all there is to heaven. We have not tasted half of it yet. And we are clearly far from perfect in appreciating and valuing, treasuring and sharing heaven when God brings it close to us in this world, blesses us with its light and joy and thus gives us a chance to share it with others. We are chary in sharing, and even when we pass on God’s love to others, we often mess it up with so much of ourselves it does not come across as the genuine article. This is true of all Christian mission, whether on big or small scale: the good news of the love of God, Father, Son and Spirit, does get shared and passed on in this world, but often other things get passed on as well.

So the wait for heaven, there is still more to come, to be given. But this is not waiting in a vacuum, a great absence; it is like waiting for the main course, by enjoying the starter which makes us think, This is a good restaurant and a good chef, so the evening is going to get even better.

Love divine, all loves excelling,
joy of heaven, to earth come down;
fix in us thy humble dwelling;
all thy faithful mercies crown!
Jesus thou art all compassion,
pure, unbounded love thou art;
visit us with thy salvation;
enter every trembling heart.

Breathe, O breathe thy loving Spirit
into every troubled breast!
Let us all in thee inherit;
let us find that second rest.
Take away our bent to sinning;
Alpha and Omega be;
end of faith, as its beginning,
set our hearts at liberty.

Come, Almighty to deliver,
let us all thy life receive;
suddenly return and never,
nevermore thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
serve thee as thy hosts above,
pray and praise thee without ceasing,
glory in thy perfect love.

Finish, then, thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be.
Let us see thy great salvation
perfectly restored in thee;
changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.

God is the key to a workable idea of heaven.
We are not looking for a place in the universe, for some special planet somewhere. We cannot place God in that way. And heaven is the place where God is, because heaven is the place God makes around God wherever God is. It is not that heaven is a place, and then God comes and lives in it. Heaven is not like a hutch, which you build, and then put the rabbit in it. Nor is it like a great house, which God comes along and buys, or takes over as a squatter. No: heaven as place is nowhere and anywhere. It is wherever God is or comes, because God makes heaven around him as he goes and comes.

Heaven is not located somewhere out of this world, out of our reach. It is also not simply future, out of reach while we live in this present. There is much about heaven we do not know – so we can think of coming to know it in the future. There is much about heaven we do not enjoy and are not fit for – so we can hope that we will come to the full joy one day and be fit to enjoy and not spoil the beauty of heaven by our being in it. Heaven is future in significant ways, and so it is hidden from us, as the future always is.

But it is not just future, because it is wherever and whenever God is. God makes and brings and shares heaven wherever God is. And God is not locked in the future alone.

God comes. Into the present. Into our present. And brings heaven. But does pointing us to God like that help us? Is it not answering a question about one mystery – heaven – by pointing us to another mystery – God? There is no doubt a great deal of mystery here, but it is not all obscurity. God comes and shows God. Not that God lets us know everything about God – could we take it in if God did? But God gives us plenty to go on and to hold on to about God.

Talking of God in the Bible way
We talk of God as though it is obvious what ‘God’ means, as though we know just by growing up in our mixed up society or in the repetitions of our religion. But do we? The Bible, this collection of texts we listen to to hear God, is the abiding outcome of God’s speaking to people in various ways over a long time, in Israel and in early Christianity. The Bible’s way of letting us hear and get to know God rests on some strange assumptions.

First, the Bible assumes that we human beings do not know God well enough to be able to talk confidently of God. We do well to keep silence a lot of the time, keep our eyes open, and to practise speaking tentatively as children do.
So, secondly, it assumes that it is essential to our knowing God truly that we always respect the secrets God keeps to God-self – we are on the path of knowing God truly when we are humble about how little we know.
Thirdly, it sees that human beings, in their energetic ignorance and desperate desire for God, tend to make gods for themselves, idols and religions in some form. So the Bible aims to expose our mistakes about God, get us to confess and turn from this tendency to false gods, and be open to God’s showing us true God in God’s own chosen way.
Fourthly, God’s own way of showing God to us is not short and simple and clear cut, but long and bewildering and not yet finished. God chose Abraham and his descendants and set about living and working with them through many generations, wandering towards a promise which is open-ended (it may be that heaven symbolises God’s open-ended promise of life and love). God does not show God in a moment, a twinkling of an eye. We see God by living in and learning from the long history of God with God’s people. Lessons with God take longer than 35 minutes. God works with people by choosing and affirming them, by calling and disciplining them, by renewing and challenging them. All this happens to people as they live with God, and slowly, with many mistakes down dead ends, and detours, come to see
• who the God is who is with them,
• how God is with them,
• how therefore they can be with God.
And coming to see something of all this is to be with God in the heaven God brings wherever he is.

We use the name God very glibly but the story the Bible gives it more substance and mystery.

These are important questions. Not easy. There is not an obvious or simple answer – heaven is not a visible place. It is not a tourist destination, so that you could get a last minute offer and go and see. And it will get you no nearer to book a seat for millions of dollars on a tourist flight in space. If people ever get to living on the moon – or Mars? – they will not think they have got to heaven. Indeed they may come back to the old truth, that heaven has always been nearer to home but sometimes we have to take long journeys to get there.

But like many questions of life, the questions about heaven are important and worth living with, even when we cannot answer them fully. If they gnaw away at you, you will turn them over and over in your mind and you will look out for heaven or clues to heaven every day in the world.*

I am reminded of Francis Thompson’s poem, “In No Strange Land”. Thompson was a gifted poet who had big problems with opium addiction and poverty as well as a profound faith. His problems drove him to live on the streets and to attempt suicide. Some friends helped him and that is how his first poems got published. When he died in 1907 the manuscript of this poem was in his pocket.

In No Strange Land

Yea, in the night, my Soul, my daughter,
Cry–clinging to Heaven by the hems;
And lo, Christ walking on the water,
Not of Genesareth, but Thames!

Thompson is saying to himself and to us that heaven is close to us even in this world, even this world that is made of hard material surfaces, where it seems there is no free way for angels, the representatives of heaven. In truth, he says, heaven is not merely close to us, it is in some way, all around us, like the water is around the fish, but we do not see it or know it. It is all around us but we do not see it. But if we looked, if we were open to it, we would see: move but a stone and start a wing. That means…

And so: heaven comes to us when we are at our saddest, sad because we are shut out from heaven and do not see it and maybe cannot care. Then, into our saddest, there appears a ladder, pitched between heaven and Charing Cross, with the angels going up and coming down. The point is not just that heaven is open when we are sad, weak, broken, going wrong, but that it comes and is there, not because of anything we do or can do but because it is given by God, opened by God.

Before we get on to thinking more about God and heaven, let us remind ourselves where Thompson got his picture of the ladder pitched between heaven and Charing Cross. It is the story of Jacob in Genesis 28. He tricked his brother Esau and his father Isaac, and they were angry when they found out, so he fled for his life. His first night away from home, by himself in the desert, tired out, he lay down with his head on a stone for a pillow. Was he frightened? Ashamed? Uncertain about what would happen to him? However sad, he had a dream of a ladder between God’s high presence and where he was on earth, and angels going up and down, two-way communication. When he woke up, he said, Surely God is in this place and I did not know it. He made a memorial there, called the place Bethel and went on his journey in life.

Parts two and three of this series has now been published

Praying Psalm 67 on 8 May 2010

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us

Lift up the light of his countenance and give us peace. (Numbers 6.24-26)

A volcano erupts and a cloud spreads upon the earth;
planes are grounded and people are stuck

Debts threaten national bankruptcy, and
another financial meltdown;
people suffer drastic cuts
react in fear and anger
a bank burns: people die

A free sovereign people goes to the polls
and gets a harvest of confusion
the hung parliament
business does not like:
will we come through this unscathed?

Thick darkness covers the peoples (Isaiah 60.2)

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us
that your way may be known upon earth,
your saving health among all nations.

Show us your way
Go your way in the world
Open your way for the peoples
Lead us in your way
When we turn to the right or the left,
Let our ears hear the word behind us:
This is the way: walk in it (Isaiah 30 18-22)

May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us
even in the darkness, shine
even through the confusion, lead
even in the pain, help
even in the anger and fear, courageous peace

May God bless us,
let all the ends of the earth revere him.
Let all the peoples praise you
        by living with wisdom and courage,
                with love and hope

God, do not hide from us now
The light of Father, Son, Holy Spirit is shining: it is not hidden
God, walking in your light is difficult
Repent, turn, believe the good news, the kingdom of God comes near
God, walking in your light is still difficult, the way is narrow and hard
The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are already on that way:
you will find God with you if you step on to the path

My advice is that there should be prayers offered for everyone – petitions, intercessiona and thanksgiving – especially for kings and other in authority, so that we may be able to live quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour, who desires everyone to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all. (I Timothy 2.1-6)

When Nathaniel was very young, I often went to Oxford by train. So I had weary hours at Birmingham New Street. I browsed in the shops to ease the pain. One day I bought a book written and illustrated by James Stevenson called Don’t Make Me Laugh (Andersen Press, 1999; ISBN 0-374-41843-8 pbk – you can find a lot of his work on Amazon).

It begins:

It is not hard to guess what kind of book it turns out to be. It is quite funny for a four-year old looking at it three times, so he has to go back to the beginning a few times, but soon learns self- control and keeps a straight face.

This well-worn book, still on the shelf, gives me an idea.
I have been given this blog-space on the church website.
I am aware of the privilege. Serious about the responsibility.
I ask myself: What shall I do with it?
I am tempted by the power. I could call it Mr Frimdimpny’s Blog and say,

But that would not do, for several reasons. I would guess Mr Frimdimpny has copyrighted his name; if he won’t let me smile, he won’t let me usurp his claim. Furthermore, this is a church website, and it is here to serve God in the way of Jesus Christ. So I cannot call it mine.

I don’t want to run it as mine because I fear the fate of the unforgettable Max, the night he wore his wolf-suit: I might make mischief of one kind or another and the church might call me Wild thing and I would have to sail away over a night and a day to where the Wild Things are, and while I might have wild fun gnashing my terrible teeth with them, I would get weary with them and their nonsense and long to be where someone loved me best of all. So I would have to get into my boat and sail home – where I would find my supper waiting for me (wouldn’t I?) still warm, and be left asking myself why I ever bothered to go away to a land I could think my own.
[From the well-loved children’s book “Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak 1963]

This blog is not mine: that reminds me of an old house in the Austrian mountains which Hilary and I came across years ago. Inscribed on its white wall, in what seems to me somewhat unusual German, it says:

In a civilization whose God is Property, including Intellectual Property and the Owning of one’s own Body, there is a word of wisdom tucked away on that wall.

So whose is this blog?

It is like the web, belonging to everybody because it belongs to nobody. It is like a true Baptist church, which belongs to everybody who cares to be a member, because they have to share in the making of it. That is very different from churches that belong to a bishop, or to a celebratory preacher, or to a rich sponsor. Belonging to everybody by belonging to nobody might be a clue to what the kingdom of God is like and why it is radically different from the way we manage to do things on earth.

I would like this blog to belong to anyone who wants to join in making it a worthwhile meeting place. It is not quite a free for all, say anything you like, gossip shop. Who wants to put a lot of work into producing triviality? There are many important things in the world and we cannot talk about them all at once. I want to dedicate this place to Thinking about God as God is in Jesus. It is not so easy to find places where you can do that with other people who also want it. So it’s worth working to make this one of the too rare places where there are Springs in the Desert (Isaiah 43.19)

The title, Thinking about God as God is in Jesus, is just a first ranging shot at what this blog will be. What it will be is something to work out together. Is there a better way to describe what it is about? Suggestions about names and guidelines are welcome. But we might make best progress if we try to do something worthy and then choose a name when we can see what is going on.

You are invited to contribute the sort of thinking that you judge fits the bill. I shall edit this blog with a light hand but enough to help us to keep going in the right direction. In this blog we are all coming into the light, to be open to one another, to learn from one another and to help one another. This means judging what we read – rather than whom we read. It means judging, caring about truth and wisdom and goodness and faithfulness, but judging only as we are willing to be judged: not to be condemned but to be called to be better. I think this kind of living together in the light is involved in being Christian together. What God wants to do in the world requires it. God made us thinking beings and his work cannot be done if we withhold our thinking power from his service. Jesus’ story about the unfaithful servant who hid his talent in the ground and got a negative bonus from his Master is relevant to our thinking and our blogging.

What happens in this blog is very serious, no doubt, but it does not have to be dull or boring. Good thinking means good talking, good writing, and good here means interesting, lively, clear, forceful, informed. Good thinking and good writing takes many forms. We shall even have poetry sometimes.

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