Thine be the glory

A friend of mine has a 50^th birthday on Sunday, Easter Sunday. I remember the Easter she was born in 1965. I was 13, and at a Scripture Union camp at Meigle in Perthshire. One of my most powerful memories of that week is of singing daily the hymn ‘Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son.’ I was stirred both by the words and George Frederick Handel’s confident melody.

I got to thinking of the significance of each 50 year period to the Jewish people in the Bible. Every 7 years their fields were to lie fallow to let the earth recuperate. Each 50th year was to be a ‘Year of Jubilee’. Not only would there be no cultivation, but outstanding debts would be cancelled, people who’d being working as servants to pay off debts would be liberated and could return to their folks, and all land ownership would revert to the families to whom it originally belonged. You can imagine how many would long for the liberation which Jubilee promised.

This radical way of doing economics was based on principles of equality, fair provision for everyone’s needs, keeping family groups together, and above all on reliance upon God.

Regrettably, there is no evidence that the God-given wisdom of Jubilee was ever put into practice in full. Instead it came to be seen as a vision of a future golden age of transformation, true freedom, and new beginnings.

Enter Jesus, who implied that he had come to begin making this vision of Jubilee a reality, not one year in 50, but forever, and to ensure that Jubilee would fully come.

As Christians, we realise on our clearer-seeing days that Jesus Christ brings us a personal Jubilee – forgiveness, inner freedom, spiritual homecoming, and a consciousness that we can rely on God. And so wee seek on our better days to live out the joy of Jubilee in our churches, and we work and pray to see the spirit of Jubilee seasoning a world where slavery, economic inequalities and debt are crippling realities.

But Jubilee still awaits a future fulfilment, when in God’s time Jubilee will come for the whole world. And there’s the thing. Jubilee is a powerful symbol. Christians are familiar with symbols – the cross, the fish, the bread, the wine. And both our theological ideas, and the words we use to talk about God are symbols, pointing beyond themselves to the great Mystery who is God. Symbols have power, and contemplating them moves us in the same way as some of us are moved by listening to music or drinking in art.

But sometimes we wonder whether in fact there is anything behind the symbols, or whether they simply inspire and console us by drawing out our inner strength and resilience. It’s possible, as the old communion hymn puts it ‘to see the signs but see not him’. Can it be, we ask in our lower moments, that the reason he is invisible to us is that the symbols are all there is?

Which is why the life of Jesus, and especially Easter is so important. Something happened that first Easter Sunday, something decisive and world-changing. Jesus, who claimed he’d come to show us the face of the Mystery, died. And yet, within weeks, his fearful, heartbroken followers had become bold proclaimers of a new Gospel, a Gospel of personal and cosmic Jubilee, convinced that Jesus had risen from the grave.

The implications of this, we believe, are profound. Jesus is not simply an inspiring symbol of fully-evolved humanity. Easter is not a simply symbol of our longing for new awakening. Jesus and the events of Easter are the evidence we long for that all the other symbols are not empty, that there is a loving being behind the universe drawing us, and it from darkness into light.

Because of Jesus, and the events to Easter we enjoy now those glimpses of personal Jubilee, and are confident (on the clearer-seeing days) that Jubilee will surely come.

To me, it’s deeply significant that someone should have their 50th birthday on Easter Sunday, the day God’s Jubilee began. To enter Jubilee, Jesus taught, is to be re-born.

‘Thine be the glory, risen conquering Son’ I sang at Meigle in 1965, the boy who cheated at the camp quiz, and lay in bed scared to death by the leaders’ ghost stories, and looked with awe at the future Scottish evangelist Bill Gilvear (who joined the camp after returning from harrowing experiences as a missionary in Africa,) and was stirred by words about the Jesus who was risen then, and is risen still.

At Easter we see more clearly not just the signs, but the one behind them. ‘No more we doubt thee, glorious Prince of life.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 2nd April 2015)

A week to change the world

It’s Christian Aid Week from 11th-17th May when 20,000 churches across the UK and Ireland will be raising funds for rom 11th-17th May the charity. Christian Aid works with partners around the world, taking action against poverty and the causes of poverty, empowering people to develop sustainable lifestyles.

This year’s Christian Aid Week focusses on work with some of the 42 million people globally who have been driven from their homes by war, supporting them through the immediate trauma, and helping them get their lives together again. Last year, the Week raised £12 million. It’s a week to make a difference, a week to bring light into dark places, a week to change the world.

Last week Steve Jones, a Professor of Genetics at University College, London aired his view that poverty and religion go hand in hand. Looking across the world, and back through history, he argues that ‘there is a precise fit between social unfairness and the power of the priesthood.’ He continues ‘In countries whose governments are fair and effective the influence of the clergy fades.’

As examples of religion flourishing in unequal societies he points to the continent of Africa, and to the rise of mega-churches in the USA, concluding that ‘the most devout nations’ are those with the most social problems, and that ‘Chaos and credulity go together.’

One wonders why a genetics expert feels able to pronounce with such confidence on a subject not his own. Does Professor Jones seriously think all religious belief is the result of unquestioning credulity? Has he never met any deep-thinking religious people who have struggled with faith and the many questions it gives rise to, and have concluded that there is good cause to believe in a God beyond all our imagining?

Steve Jones seems unable to distinguish between true devotion to God, and toxic religion. It’s the latter he’s criticising. And people of good-will, whatever their religion, join him in condemning religious leaders who seek to control and manipulate others, to enrich themselves, to build power-bases while turning their backs on what Jesus called ‘the kingdom of heaven.’

Toxic religion is one of the many darknesses currently overshadowing the world. And the same controlling toxicity found in extremist Islamist groups is not unknown, although to a lesser degree, in some Christian churches.

True Christianity, on the other hand, empowers and liberates. True Christian leaders are servants, love-driven, expressing the peace and justice of God, bearing light into dark places.

This is what Christian Aid stands for, and we are reminded this week that we are called to join in God’s world-transforming project. We play our part, not just by praying and making donations to charities, but by being light-bearers, breathing peace and love into every situation we find ourselves in, every conversation, every relationship.

We may think that a small loving act is of little global significance, but just as small donations to Christian Aid this week are both valuable in themselves and contribute to a large total, so our small acts of love are precious in their own right, and contribute to the bright shining of God’s kingdom of love.

The Professor’s views remind me that although chaos in our lives and communities can lead us into the grip of toxic religion, it can also, if we seek discerningly, lead us into the arms of God.

When our lives are in chaos we look for answers, and question everything we’ve built our lives on hitherto. Our desperation may open our eyes to the reality behind what we once dismissed as foolish credulity. And thus in recent months both people whose lives have been thrown into financial turmoil by the recession and affluent professionals facing personal crisis have found that it is when we come to an end of ourselves that we discover the one who is our beginning.

The possibility of toxic religion means that as well as expressing love, and modelling the faith which heals we will as appropriate point to the source of our love, to Jesus Christ, the source of all love, who models genuine faith.

This Jesus, far from building personal power structures, became the servant of humanity, allowed poverty and injustice to embrace him, and came to an end of himself to give us a new beginning.

And so the first Easter week was the week that changed the world. Christ’s death for us and return to life was an explosion of love which sends powerful ripples through the whole of history, bringing peace, reconciliation and freedom from fear. None of us are untouched by these ripples: Christian Aid Week reminds us of our moment-by-moment challenge to carry them forward, as empowered by Christ’s presence they grow not weaker, but stronger until the day God’s kingdom comes.

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 15th May 2014)