Inside out: the challenge....

Well, we're now in Mark's gospel in our Bible reading programme. And there's nothing like a good healthy dose of Jesus' teaching to set us right in our views of human beings and how they work....and of ourselves and how we work. In fact in yesterday's readings in Mark 6:34, Jesus teaches us this stuff as an outworking of his compassion for us. However uncomfortable some of it is, we need to hear it.

And some of it is uncomfortable. Today's passage in Mark 7:1-23, while at first sight seeming to be simply about ancient Jewish regulations, in fact strikes at the heart of our favourite contemporary excuses for ourselves. How we act, Jesus says, is very simply a product of who we are inside...there's no use blaming external circustances, what has happened to us, social influences etc. No doubt these all shape us in a variety of ways. But when all is said and done, it's not what goes into us that makes us 'unclean' but what comes out from us. Ouch!

Objecting....

Its one of the quirks of my family history that both my natural grandfathers were conscientious objectors during World War II. That raises all kinds of questions in itself, which are only compounded by the fact that my paternal grandfather's family were actually of German Jewish background. But for all that I'm strangely proud of this fact - I can remember my Gran talking about being "sent to Coventry" for 6 months by the people she worked with because her husband had refused conscription, and how she kept going into work and doing her job in that period.


The thing that strikes me about conscientious objectors is that, by that stage, they recognised that the public mood had moved on, that war was happening, and was even quite popular; but they refused, on grounds of conscience, to be part of it. It seems to me that, just maybe, there's a model here for our engagement as Christians with certain elements of contemporary society. Take sexual ethics as an example. The simple fact is that as far as the vast majority of people in the UK today, especially those under 40, Christian sexual ethics simply don't make sense. As far as those currently in their teens and early twenties are concerned, the Christian attitude to sex - whether in terms of the value of virginity and marriage, or attitudes to homsexual activity - is a foreign language.

There are all sorts of responses we can adopt to that. Some are valid and helpful, others probably less so. But maybe part, at least, of what we need to be doing is seeing ourselves as concientious objectors. Society as a whole seems to have accepted certain courses of action as valid, and shouting more loudly, or trying to influence the corridoors of power is unlikely to change that much. So maybe we should graciously but determinedly acknowledge that we will follow our consciences after all...and maybe we should be looking to train young people who are serious about following Jesus in a way that they realise that this is the deal.

Profiting from the prophets

Well this week in our Bible reading programme, we've been with Isaiah. And it's been interesting getting feedback, and realising that some people struggle sometimes with reading the prophets, while others seem to love it. There are all sorts of reasons for that, and all sorts of pitfalls when reading the Old Testament prophetic literature. (Eg, what should apply to us now, what applied to God's people in specific historic circumstances, does some of it apply to modern day Israel?). And there's no doubt that lengthy denunciations of sin can seem hard to digest after a while - though perhaps for precisely that reason we should let them do us good.

For me, the key to profiting from the prophets is to recognise that so much of their writing takes the form of poetry; and poetry is heart language. What we see above all in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Habbakuk, Hosea and their fellow prophets is God's heart. Often it is God's breaking heart because of the sin of His people. but even when there is apparent punishment being declared, the purpose so often is to cause the people of God to rediscover Him again, to turn from idolatry, immorality and injustice and rely on God again, to love Him in response to His love. The prophetic books are in many ways love letters - often sadly the letters of a lover who has been jilted - from God to His people, expressions of His heart. And as such they address us in a deep way, even when our external circumstances are vastly different to those of the original hearers and readers.

The week that was....

Well, it's been a bit quiet on here over the last week, mainly because it's otherwise been anything but quiet. Our daughter, Isobel, managed to dislocate her elbow and fracture her humerus playing netball (yes, a non-contact sport) in a school tournament. This has involved a rapidly growing acquaintance with Lewisham Hospital - the nearest to where it happened - culminating in surgery last Thursday to wire the bone. The only other thing to say about it is that we've seen the National Health Service at its best through all this. There are no doubt weaknesses and problems with the system, but the care that Isobel has received has been excellent. So three cheers for the NHS!

In the middle of all that, I was invited to attend the Newfrontiers leaders UK prayer and fasting days last week. There were 800 or so there in Peterborough, and it was an excellent time. And for me as an outsider to Newfrontiers, it was a fascinating opportunity to get an "inside" view of what has undoubtedly become one of the most significant movements in UK church life. There's lots more that could be said about that - but for all that I wouldn't go along with Newfrontiers in everything (and there's probably lots that could be said about that too), the overwhelming impression was of a movement in a time of transition, passionate about remaining open to the Holy Spirit and new possibilities in what God was calling them to. The challenge for me was to emulate that attitude myself.