By the Rivers of Babylon

I woke this morning with a deep and profound feeling of, almost, depression. A formidable cloud hung over me; optimism was lost; a feeling of gloom pervaded my awakeness. I turned to self-examination and repentance, but, although I said Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner, this was not in itself the cause. I read my morning psalm, 98, but this was no help. There is little point in reading a 'kingship psalm which highlights the victory of God' (Jewish Study Bible) when there is no feeling of being in a victory.

I felt more like I was lost in Psalm 137,

By the streams of Babylon,

there we wept at the thought of Sion.

How can we sing the Eternal's songs,

here, in a foreign land?

[Psalm 137:1, 4 Moffatt]

Up until yesterday there were early roses in my spring garden, metaphorically, and bees, birds and flowers besides, literally. The jubilee of COVID-19 shut-down had produced a feeling of being gently and calmingly shalom-filled.  Until this morning when the storm broke over me.

But, what was the issue that was troubling me? I turned to prayer for the Church in our land, as I ever do after reading my morning Psalm - remember, the kingship psalm that had resounded like a broken bell?  I just could not pray; I had nothing to say or speak over God's Church in my land. So, I defaulted to my prayer for the terminally hopeless: Lord have mercy on ...

Around a quarter of my way through, which was taking a lot longer than usual, a rhythm emerged. As I prayed for each person and place, a picture of that person and a feeling for their circumstances emerged to drive the prayer. The prayers were identical in words, whether for a Christian or not, but the effects were individual. And the reasons behind my gloom - now turned to calmness - had merged from the dark early pre-dawn mist.

Only prayer can do this. Only time set aside regularly to step radically into God's presence. Only the emergent need to understand what God had been saying to us can draw us nearer the Father heart of God.

The Church in Scotland is dying.

I was praying recently with one of our local priests. We were reminiscing about the visit of Pope John Paul II to Glasgow in 1982. '350,000 people attended', I reminisced. 'We'd be lucky to get 100,000 today' my brother responded. A drop of 250,000 serious members in under 40 years. Many churches of all denominations boast a deeply skewed demographic, mainly composed of over 60's. Numerically, few churches have people aged under 40. Growth is through transfer, rarely by conversion. Baptisms and marriages are few. If there is an emphasis it is upon maintenance rather than new growth.

As I sat quietly pondering with my after-prayer cuppa, I saw in my mind's eye, a huge rugged rocky mountain. It was as if I had emerged from my bivouac tent, unzipped the front, stuck my head out and - there it was in all its awesome terror. All my easy boasts of creating new growth and new life into God's failing Church in my land were as I was to this mountain.

The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, famously met the Irish President, Eamonn DeValera and said, 'the situation today in Britain is serious, but not hopeless'. De Valera replied, 'And the situation in Ireland is hopeless but not serious."  I think that this morning God said to me, 'the situation for the Church in Scotland is both serious and hopeless.'

I feel that since my conversion in 1982 I have tried every human trick in my knapsack: spiritual warfare, church-planting, even taking on the human powers-that-be in the Church. These have varied from at best ineffective to at worst catastrophic. I could spend the last of my three score years and ten repeating this nonsense - but it is all human stuff.

It is time for me to rely totally on God and see if he has any new ideas and plans that are better than mine have been. That will probably take a period of more contemplation, repentance, prayer, and patient waiting.

Brother John,
St Annan's Chapel.

Dirty Feet - a vision and meditation

"Floo'rs" - ©Dr John N Sutherland

"And now, O Lord, for what do I wait?

My hope is in you." 

[Psalm 39:7a ESV]

I was praying with a brother this week over skype when the Lord gave me a vision. It was a scene from John 13. The setting was the upper room in Jerusalem where the disciples gathered with Jesus to eat the Passover seder.

"... he rose from table, laid aside his robe and tied a towel round him, then poured water into a basin and began to wash the feet of his disciples, wiping them with the towel he had tied round him." 

[S. John 13:4,5 Moffatt]

I watched as Jesus, the Lord of glory, the mighty God, the King of kings, the creator and sustainer of the universe, knelt. In the vision I could see a row of chairs, and on each chair a naked-footed person sitting; all were watching him. Jesus took the foot of the first person in his hand and gently washed it with the other hand; removing grit and dirt by gently but firmly man-handling the flesh. It was all so tactile.  He took his time, washing, I expect, each person's feet, one foot at a time, one person at a time.

The entire scene was handled in silence except for the sound of water gently falling back into the bowl. Jesus was in no hurry, dealing with each person with the same gentleness, care and hands-on-ness.

My friend and I were praying in the midst of the current COVID-19, lock-down. We usually pray in his front room, but for now its online. Life has become becalmed for so many. Everything has slowed down in this great jubilee for people and the land.

As I explained the vision to my weary friend, weighed down by work and family issues, the Lord then explained the vision, which I believe is for all of us, not just for my friend. And for this I thank him for his openness and honesty; may we all be blessed by the vision.

During this shut-down we have a unique - yes, a unique - opportunity to spend time with the Lord Jesus Christ.  What are we gonna do with this time?  Well, I'll tell you what the Lord said to me in the explanation. Are we willing to stop, drop everything, take a seat, and wait for the God of glory to come to us. He is washing feet right now, if you wish him to do so for you. But, you must stop, drop everything, and turn aside to where he is washing feet.

Turn aside. Take a seat. Remove your sandals. Eventually, in his good time, God will kneel before you, take your foot in his hand, pour water over it, and gently and carefully, in no rush, wash your foot with his own hands (nail holes and all). His flesh will touch yours. His presence will come and reach out to yours. He will dedicate a short time to spend part of his eternity and your short span, just with you. He will give you as long as you need.

But, you have to come to him.  I am reminded of how Jesus called Andrew, Peter, James, John and Matthew and they simply dropped everything and went to him. Such faith.  And their faith was so well rewarded.

Perhaps in a few weeks the jubilee will be over, and what passes for normality will return with all its hassle, bustle and noise. Will you then look back and say you had such a blessing from that time you dropped all agendas, turned aside, went into the upper room, and sat waiting for God to kneel before you. And such a tale you will have to tell of that time of intimacy with him.

Brother John
St Annan's Chapel.

Survival in the Spiritual Desert

"All the prophets went off to the desert to meet God. The experience of God is inseparable from the experience of the desert." - Robert Cardinal Sarah

It is worth contemplating that we are told that Moses, John the Baptist, Jesus and Paul each went to the desert for a time, and all were deeply godly men. It was essential for each of them to become cut off from human contact and its stürm unt drang in order to begin their ministries.  Yet we - I - recoil from such deeply empty spiritual experiences. Don't get me wrong; it is the emptying that is humanly repugnant. Moses had to slough off his royal court upbringing; John had to become the mere forerunner, destined to be dead and gone, eclipsed by Christ; Jesus had to deny every human facility of reason and works; Paul had to lose his privileged and deeply academic upbringing, stop following his wits and start living by the Spirit.

Just what are each of us willing to give up in order to spend time in the wilderness with God? This is no mere academic question, but one that faces many of us every morning. For, in the West, we stand in a huge spiritual wilderness, greater than all the physical deserts of the world combined. We are told nothing about the times spent in the desert by Moses, John and Paul, but scripture leaves us a clear understanding of what Jesus faced in his desert.  Matthew and Luke provide the greatest details. What do we learn from their gospel accounts (both, purely incidentally, in their respective chapter four.)

The circumstances are that Jesus was famished and parched. To go into the desert isn't a quick experience; we must create an inseparable gap between our old way of life and the prospect of the new. In between comes the lack that creates hunger, thirst and desperation. Many Christians in the Great Western Desert know we are precisely in the geographical centre of this vast wilderness.  And we are dying of lack of nourishment. And we know it. Good - we are then ready to face the tester, the tempter, the enemy of our souls and of God. We don't need to turn to seek or face him, he will find us out in due time, and he will bring us three temptations, just as he brought them to Christ.

"Then Jesus was led into the desert by the Spirit, to be tempted by the devil."

Matthew 4:1 tr. Moffatt

The first temptation is to run away. The tester says to Christ: make your own bread so that you can eat. Christ responds: God will provide me with what I need.  Many moons ago I had fallen out badly with a young pastor who was strong in his own confidence. I decided to return to Roman Catholicism, and so went of to see the local priest. However, this was not God's will to feed me the spiritual nourishment I was badly needing. I was forced to wait by God, who eventually provided another source of His bread and wine.

The second temptation is to do something spectacular in your human strength. The tester says to Christ: throw yourself off a building in public and see if God will do what He has promised in some randomly picked verses. Jesus responds: I won't try to manipulate God to follow me; I will follow Him. This temptation is to rely big time on our human rationality and to turn God merely into a man in a Book.  We cannot use the Bible in order to contradict God's will. If God has sent you into the desert it is His purpose for you in order that you become a better Christian from the experience.

The third temptation is to simply pack it all in and go native; to abandon the faith and head back to the town and get partying.  The tester says to Christ: there is an easier, surer way; simple follow me. Christ replies: you liar; my purpose, whatever the circumstances, is to worship God.  That has never been a strong temptation for me; perhaps some of the other two are less so for you, but I know many who have taken the third exit offered by the devil. It is terribly hard just sitting on the sand, under the arid sun, in a waterless and food-less place, for all intents and purposes dying.

But, this is God's will. As we in the Great Western Desert simply sit, this is what we must do until God turns up and we are ready to learn the lessons He wishes to teach each one of us. Or we could take an easy exit: take matters into our own hands, use our own brains, or simply give up. When God comes will he find faith in the land? When He comes, may He find you waiting, and desperate for Him.

Bro' John
St Annan's Chapel.

The Pen of a Ready Writer

This is far from my first blog, or even writing experience. But, today the world changed; at least the world which is Christendom.

It is Resurrection Sunday, April 12th 2020. From the Last Supper until AD1054 the Church was a united body. The sign of this unity is - or, was - the Eucharist. There was one body, one bread, one cup and one Church. But the bonds linking the Latin church, based in the old Imperial capital of Rome, and the Greek churches, centred on the new imperial capital of Constantinople, were torn asunder. Emissaries from Rome entered Hagia Sophia and slapped down a deed of excommunication against the ancient Patriarchs, from Jerusalem and beyond. And the Church of Christ became two communions.

Over half a century later a radical German priest nailed to a church door a litany of complaints against the Church of Rome, and the whole of northern Europe was torn from southern Europe, creating not just three communions, but a geometric escalation of closed tables. Rightly, the late Cardinal Grey, Archbishop of Glasgow, said,

"This [the divided Eucharist] is the sixth wound in the body of Christ."

What changed today? For the first time since AD1054 all Christians are united again on the Eucharist. How so? Because, due to Corona virus (COVID-19 / SARS-2) we are all locked out of our churches, and there can be no valid Eucharist anywhere in the world.

As my younger son, Dr Malcolm, said,

"God has said to Mankind: go to your room right now, and don't come out until I say so. And, if you do come out, there will be hell to pay ..."

We are now globally reunited in being without the Eucharist. What was intended by Lord Christ to be the sign of our unity, and has become even more so with each passing century, the sign of our disunity, and distrust, and hatred, and misunderstanding, and worse.

I have heard some say that this isn't God - no, this is the devil; as if God and the devil were a ying and a yang of equal forces. But, even a cursory reading of the Scriptures tells us that nothing comes to us that He has not ordained.

"I form the light and I make darkness, 

I bring bliss and calamity; 

I the Eternal, the true God, I do it all." 

[Isaiah 45:7; tr. Moffatt]

Much is going on around us, for those with eyes that see and ears that hear; brains that would understand, and hearts that would learn. Since I have found myself in a new season of spiritual filling, I intend to share some reflections here, for whoever may come across them.

God bless you.

Bro' John, St Annan's Chapel.