I am in the process of creating an online magazine. As you can imagine, this has taken up much of my free time and mental space.
I'll plan to share updates on this blog until the magazine is launched.
In the meantime, if you're interested in learning more, please get in touch.
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| Horses at Silecroft, Cumbria |
The other day, Miriam and I were walking in a nearby park when we ran into Miriam's secondary-school PE teacher. But Miriam knew her better as her orienteering coach.
Orienteering is a racing sport combining running with map-reading. Athletes navigate their way on a course (in the South Lakes, the courses are usually outside through woods and fields or on top of moors) seeking checkpoints, or 'controls', usually in a prescribed order. They record their arrival at each control: in Miriam's time, the control was a kind of hole-puncher, each with a distinct design that athletes would punch on a card they carried; nowadays it's electronic. Then they run to the next control, repeating this until they arrive at the finish line -- and whoever gets there first wins.
So this week, when Miriam ran into her former coach and another orienteer and they caught up on old times, I imagined the enjoyable struggle of orienteering.
As one of Miriam's family friends has described it, orienteering requires the skill of 'cunning running' -- cunning because one must navigate on one's feet, and running because one must be quick about it!
Orienteering can be a helpful image of the kingdom of God. Like orienteers, we too are engaged in a race: a joyful struggle to enter the kingdom of God (as I have written about here), in which God is restoring the world, and we are summoned to compete and win, overcoming spiritual forces of evil. But unlike orienteers, our victory does not come from our skill or strength; our victory comes from God.
As Psalm 147 says. '[God's] pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of a man; the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love' (vv. 10-11).
The strength of the horse and the legs of a man refer to power harnessed by humans, and one can hear in these images echoes of war. This too relates to orienteering, which originated in the late 1800s as a competitive sport among Scandinavian military officers.
In the Old Testament, there is a direct connection between horses and war. We can see this in the book of Job, in which God describes the fierce strength of horses:
'Do you give the horse his strength
or clothe his neck with a flowing mane?
Do you make him leap like a locust,
striking terror with his proud snorting?
He paws fiercely, rejoicing in his strength,
and charges into the fray.
He laughs at fear, afraid of nothing;
he does not shy away from the sword.
The quiver rattles against his side,
along with the flashing spear and lance.
In frenzied excitement he eats up the ground;
he cannot stand still when the trumpet sounds.
At the blast of the trumpet he snorts, "Aha!"
He catches the scent of battle from afar,
the shout of commanders and the battle cry.' (Job 39:19-25)
Further, whereas some of the nations surrounding Israel tamed horses for war, God told the Israelites to not use horses so that they would not be tempted to return to Egypt, the land of slavery, where horses could be obtained (Deut. 17:16).
Perhaps, too, God wanted to teach the Israelites to rely upon him, and not on horses, for their victory. As I read through the accounts of Israel's battles against foreign armies, conquering and inhabiting the Promised Land, it becomes clear that although their courage and skill were important, the true source of their victory was not the strength of their weapons or might, but God alone.
As Moses tells the Israelites,
You may say to yourselves, 'These nations are stronger than we are. How can we drive them out?' But do not be afraid of them; remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt. You saw with your own eyes the great trials, the miraculous signs and wonders, the mighty hand and outstretched arm, with which the LORD your God brought you out. The LORD your God will do the same to all the peoples you now fear. Moreover, the LORD your God will send the hornet among them until even the survivors who hide from you have perished. (Deut. 7:17-20)
Fast-fowarding to today, if we are engaged in a race or a battle towards God's kingdom, then what does it mean to compete with fear of God and hope in his unfailing love?
To answer this question, I want to look at two biblical examples. The first is the widow described briefly in the Gospels as giving two small coins for the temple offering after the rich gave their gifts. Jesus sees her and says she has given more than the others because they gave out of their wealth, whereas she in her poverty gave all she had to live on (Lk. 21:1-4).
About a decade ago, I attended the wedding of two friends of mine. The minister marrying them preached a sermon based on this widow, using her as an image of my friends offering themselves completely to God through their sacrificial love for one another in marriage.
At the time, the widow seemed to me an unexpected sermon topic for their wedding. My friends were and are both capable doctors, whereas the widow was in those patriarchal times among the most vulnerable of people, being without a husband and protector. At the time, if I had guessed which passage of scripture the minister would preach from, I might have said 1 Corinthians 13 (the famous 'love' chapter) or something similarly obvious.
But now I see wisdom in choosing the widow as a model for their marriage, because marriage involves sacrificial love, and sometimes such love is invisible to people looking for 'the strength of the horse' and human power. Jesus, on the other hand, sees deeper than the surface; he delights in the widow's fear of God and hope in his unfailing love, expressed through her ultimate gift, and he invites us to also look at the world through his vision.
The widow did not have much in terms of possessions or wealth, but what she did have, she gave with all of her heart to God. Thus, in a spiritual sense, she was a stronger athlete than all the rest; she triumphed through completely trusting God and seeking his kingdom first.
The second example of what it looks like to fear God and hope in his unfailing love comes from the Apostle Paul's farewell speech to the elders of the Ephesian church, as told in the book of Acts (20:17-38). Paul reminds them of how he lived among them in the face of fierce opposition: for three years, night and day he steadfastly proclaimed the Gospel to them.
Like the widow, Paul offered his all -- particularly his strength, energy and effort:
You yourselves know that these hands of mine have supplied my own needs and the needs of my companions. In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.' (vv. 34-35)
Paul used his intellect and zeal to serve God, the church and those in need. In Paul, we see that 'the strength of the horse' and human power, though not essential in God's kingdom, are not meaningless, either; rather, what matters is how one uses one's power in whatever form that power comes.
Knowing the challenges he faces, Paul tells the Ephesian elders that he considers his life worth nothing to him 'if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me -- the task of testifying to the gospel of God's grace' (v. 24).
Paul sees himself as a runner on the last leg of the race, and he gives it everything he's got. Although historians understand that at this point, Paul has many years of ministry ahead of him, we see that he lives each day as though it were the end of a race, similar to the widow's complete offering to God in the temple.
I'm not saying we should be reckless and burn ourselves out. Part of being an athlete is knowing one's limits and taking care of one's body. From my own memories of running long distances in secondary-school PE classes, I needed to pace myself if I wanted to finish well; simply trying to sprint the whole time resulted in fatigue and was unsustainable.
Finishing well is the goal. Miriam has described to me that the end of the race is the most exciting part of an orienteering event, when the orienteer has recorded their last control and all that remains is making a mad dash to the finishing line, where all their family and friends are cheering them on.
But the finishing line can feel far off or even nonexistent in these days of COVID-19 and lockdown, when we may be exhausted and perhaps even lost.
This is when we need hope the most to sustain us: hope that the finishing line -- the kingdom of God -- is awaiting us, where God and all the saints and angels are rooting for us, even if we can't always see or hear them, to finish the race well through being faithful to God.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Heb. 12:1-3)
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| Elimo Njau, Nativity, 1959. St James' Anglican Cathedral, Kiharu, Murang'a, Kenya |
This sheds new light, for me, on Jesus' teaching that 'anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it' (Lk. 18:17).
Like little children depending on their parents (ideally both parents) not only to live but also thrive, we depend on God for everything we need and receiving his kingdom.
Psalm 131 provides a helpful image of this, comparing our relationship with God to a weaned child with their mother:
My heart is not proud, O LORD,
my eyes are not haughty;
I do not concern myself with great matters
or things too wonderful for me.
But I have stilled and quieted my soul;
like a weaned child with its mother,
like a weaned child is my soul within me.O Israel, put your hope in the LORD
both now and forevermore.
Whereas our culture encourages us to be self-reliant and independent, this psalm reminds us that everything we have and need come from God. Whereas success in our time is defined by our achievements and awards, success in the kingdom of God is defined by the quality of one's relationship with God.
Cardinal John Henry Newman says it this way:
We cannot be our own masters. We are God’s property by creation, by redemption, by regeneration. He has a triple claim upon us. Is it not our happiness thus to view the matter? Is it any happiness, or any comfort, to consider that we are our own? It may be thought so by the young and prosperous...But as time goes on, they, as all men, will find that independence was not made for man – that it is an unnatural state – [that] may do for a while, but will not carry us on safely to the end. No, we are creatures; and, as being such, we have two duties, to be resigned and to be thankful. (From his sermon 'Remembrance of Past Mercies')
But isn't simply '[being] resigned and thankful' too easy? Doesn't entering God's kingdom involve struggle? Doesn't Jesus teach that we must enter the kingdom with force (as I wrote about last week)? How do we reconcile joyfully struggling to enter God's kingdom on the one hand with receiving God's kingdom as little children on the other?
It takes great effort to still and quiet our soul, to rest in the love of God. When our passions and external forces tempt us to seek possessions, status or anything other than God, it takes discipline to put our hope in the LORD instead: in the life that he gives, in the future he is bringing.
Receiving God's kingdom like children doesn't mean being thoughtless or thinking uncritically. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus challenges his followers, inquirers and opponents to engage critically with his teachings and their own practices, and encourages those who would follow him to first count the cost, like a man planning to build a tower or a king preparing to wage war (Lk. 14:25-33).
Nor does becoming childlike mean diminishing our self-worth. Receiving God's kingdom results in becoming fully alive, courageous in Christ, as we were created to become (as I have written about here).
Nor does it mean we shouldn't work hard or tend to our practical needs. As I have written about before, we are called to offer ourselves to God as living sacrifices, worshipping God and sharing our possessions and our very lives with others -- and this involves our best effort and our love!
Instead, becoming childlike means that in the midst of our work, our relationships, our downtime, our daily lives, we continually ground ourselves in God's love, putting our hope in his kingdom more than anything else.
Although to an outsider, it may not look like there is a difference between those who are children of the kingdom and those who are not, I think there is an internal difference: those who are little children in spirit offer themselves to God and others from a place of stability, not anxious striving. Their roots grow strong, deep and firm in the soil of God's love. They are confident about their identity as beloved children of God .
I introduced this blog post with a painting of Jesus' nativity because that event, which Christians also call the Incarnation, shows us that God himself became like a little child in order to enter -- in fact, establish -- his kingdom.
The God who created, redeems and regenerates all things became one of us, learning dependence on his parents and others by being born as a baby -- and in a cave of all places, among animals, because the world had no room for him.
G K Chesterton writes about the significance of Jesus' being born in a cave:
Christ was not only born on the level of the world, but even lower than the world. The first act of the divine drama was enacted, not only on no stage set up above the sight-seer, but on a dark and curtained stage sunken out of sight; and that is an idea very difficult to express in most modes of artistic expression.
But in the riddle of Bethlehem it was heaven that was under the earth. There is in that alone the touch of a revolution, as of the world turned upside down. (The Everlasting Man)
Jesus began the revolutionary upside-down kingdom of God by becoming a little child, thus leading the way for us. Through dependence on his immediate family, he developed dependence on his Heavenly Father, who at significant moments in his life clearly revealed his love for him, such as at Jesus' baptism and his transfiguration. Throughout his life, Jesus took time to abide in God's love, and it was from that centre that he offered his love to the world. At his crucifixion, he surrendered himself completely to God because he knew that God's love was strong enough to save him from death. After his resurrection, he told his disciples that through him, they too -- and we along with them -- can know with certainty that we are God's beloved children.
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| A beck flowing through a grate into a pipe beneath our garden |
One morning a few days ago, our neighbour knocked on our door. She reminded us that the beck (stream) running through our garden was blocked, causing the water to flood our lawn and even begin flooding her own garden.
Although we had been regularly clearing the beck in the previous few days, when the fallen leaves from nearby trees had begun blocking the flow, her announcement compelled us to do so again that morning. With a garden fork and in my wellies (Wellington boots), I cleared away fistfuls of soggy leaves clinging to the rusty grate that covers the entrance to the pipe that runs beneath our garden. Over the course of about five minutes, the water level sunk back to normal.
A few hours later, though, I looked out the window and saw that our garden was flooded again. This time, when clearing the debris, I did something different: I lifted the grate and watched in awe as water bubbled and quickly sank, returning to normal levels in just a few seconds. The grate was now tilted at an angle, revealing a large clump of leaves in one corner that hadn't dislodged before, the removal of which had made all the difference. As before, rather than overflowing onto the lawn, the force of the water now flowed swiftly into the pipe beneath our garden.
This image of water forcing its way through the unblocked grate into the pipe illustrates what Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke about people entering the kingdom of God: 'the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it' (16:16).
But what does it mean that people are forcing their way into God's kingdom?
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom writes that entering God's kingdom requires an attitude of joyful struggle:
This notion of joy coupled with strenuous effort, with ascetical endeavour, with struggle indeed, may seem strange, and yet it runs through the whole of our spiritual life, the life of the Church and the life of the Gospel, because the Kingdom of God is conquered. It is not something which is simply given to those who leisurely, lazily wait for it to come. For those who would wait for it in that spirit, it will come indeed: it will come at the dead of night, it will come like the Judgement of God, like the thief who takes us unawares, like the bridegroom who comes when the foolish virgins are asleep. (Meditations on a Theme)
Metropolitan Anthony continues to write that this joyful struggle involves mastering ourselves so that we can listen to and obey God; ultimately, forcing our way into the kingdom is taking up our cross and following Jesus.
The Apostle Paul illustrates this with a sports image:
Do you not know that all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. (1 Cor. 9:24-25)
Seeking God's kingdom requires our best effort. We might learn from presidential candidates when they run a campaign election: for months, sometimes years in advance of Election Day, they fight and campaign as if their lives depend on it -- as if the life of the nation depends on it.
We too are running a campaign, or rather we are invited to join God's campaign in overthrowing the reign of sin and evil in this world. Our job is to force our way into God's kingdom through offering ourselves to God.
This effort is not to earn our salvation, which comes as a gift from God. Rather, it is our response to God's gift. His love for us awakens our love for him. This joyful struggle is the expression of our desire to give him our very best because that is what he deserves.
What gets in our way? What are the leaves, twigs and other debris that block the flow of water, that keep us from joyfully struggling towards the kingdom?
One can think of several answers, such as our passions (I have written about this briefly before). However, recently I have been thinking about another answer: idolatry.
The prophet Ezekiel similarly describes idolatry as blockage. At one point, when the elders of Israel come to Ezekiel to hear God's word, God tells Ezekiel that 'these men have set up idols in their hearts and put wicked stumbling blocks before their faces' (Ezek. 14:12). The idols that the elders worship block their inner vision and their relationship with God. God warns that he will turn against such clogged-up people unless they 'Repent! Turn from your idols and renounce all your detestable practices' (v. 6).
In this time of waiting for the election results, it can be tempting to think that if only our favoured candidate wins the election, if only our party kept or gained power, then surely God's kingdom would come at last. It can be easy to think that our salvation is found in an ideology, whether conservative or liberal, socialistic or libertarian or nationalistic or anything else.
But this is idolatry, devoting ourselves to the systems of this world rather than to God. As Father Alexander Schmemann says,
there is but one essential sin, one essential danger: that of idolatry, the ever-present and ever-acting temptation to absolutize and thus to idolize "this world" itself, its passing values, ideas and ideologies, to forget that as the people of God "we have here no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come" (Heb. 13:14). (Church, World, Mission)
The kingdom of God does not come through the Democrats or Republicans, through one or another candidate. No matter who wins this election, the US -- and the rest of the world, for that matter -- are in the same position as before: in need of the life that comes only in Christ.
I'm not saying it's wrong to vote or to be involved in political decisions. I myself voted and have certain political views, and I hope that I sought God's kingdom through how I voted. I believe it is right to hope that our communities, politicians and nations would reflect and seek God's kingdom above all else in the decisions they make.
But this is usually not the case. Political parties and nations usually seek their own kingdoms first, not the kingdom of God. No party or nation is completely righteous. Putting all our hopes in political leaders is like blocking a beck with dead leaves on a grate; it keeps us from joyfully struggling towards the kingdom of God, which is the only true source of our salvation.
