Touch Wood

My daughter and I were sitting in the University Lecture Theatre.  Very impressive it was too.  And perhaps just as impressive were the credentials of the Professor who was explaining to us the course my daughter might be taking next year.

As the Professor explained the various ologies that were the components of competence and their necessity in the whole scheme of human understanding it seemed profoundly unlikely that faith and belief would figure at any point.  Especially the Professor's own faith and belief. 

He was explaining something important about the course and the success it had enjoyed.  And then he said, "Touch wood".  Now more than once on visits to Church members and adherents I have had the bizarre experience of the visited saying, "touch wood" and on one memorable occasion at a hospital bedside reaching out to the conveniently near bedside cabinet to do so.  This, I felt, beggered the question as to whether there was any point in praying to our supposed Creator regarding the illness when touching the bedside cabinet presumably warded off the spirits that, according to folklore, lived there with possible malevolent intentions to spoil the party.

Had the Professor simply said, "Touch wood" I probably would scarcely have noticed.  However at the moment he said it he was stranded at the front of the large hall, far away from anything to touch save himself and the remote control with which he controlled the projected display.  Well, that's OK - it's just an expression, isn't it?

The stranded Professor turned aside and headed to the desk on which his projector stood. - it was the nearest piece of furniture and he touched it.  This took but seconds yet walking several paces mid-speech made it noticeable.  However, on touching the desk a new problem emerged for him.  The desk was not made of wood.  Nor even the pseudo-wood of the bedside cabinet my hospital patient in earlier years resorted to.  It was metal!  Since when did any self-respecting nature spirit reside in a metal desktop?  Now the Professor had temporarily stopped talking, his whole (substantial) mental faculty devoted to the pursuit of wood.

Thankfully for us all the front row of the lecture theatre had a long counter made out of something passing for wood and a few seconds and another walk later he had finally touched wood and we were able to resume the information about pursuing a science degree.

I doubt there has ever been the remotest value in touching wood to placate the spiritual nasties.  Even if there was, there hasn't been ever since Jesus, er, nailed that victory for us on his very own wood. 

Spurgeon's Birthday

On the great man's birthday it seems fitting to ponder a few of his uncounted numbers of quotations:

It is a wonderful thing, that even if you have been a prodigal, and have spent your living with harlots, yet if you are his child, you may call him “Father.” Did not the prodigal say, “Father, I have sinned?” There is good pleading in this fact, for you are not unchilded even by your sin.

There is only one church. Here and there, earth and heaven make a little division to our senses, but there is no division in the mind of God; he sees one general assembly of all his people, of all nations, and kindreds, and people, and tongues.

There are some who do little else but complain. They complain of the times, of the weather, of the government, of their families, of their trade; if, for once, they would complain of themselves, they might have a more deserving subject for fault-finding.

The Lord knows how, without violating the human will (which he never does), so to influence the heart that the man with full consent, against his former will, yields to the will of God, and is made willing in the day of God’s power.

My horse invariably comes home in less time than he makes the journey out. He pulls the carriage with a hearty good will when his face is towards home. Should not I also both suffer and labour the more joyously because my way lies towards heaven, and I am on pilgrimage to my Father’s house, my soul’s dear home and resting place?

Take life and death just as they come, bit by bit. You know how the Spartans endeavoured to keep back the Persians. They took possession of the pass of Thermopylæ, and there the brave two hundred stood and held the way against myriads. The enemy could only advance one by one. Now, do not think of all the armies of your troubles that are coming in the future, but meet them one by one. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

A Capital Weekend

It was in the shadow of rising Nazism that a Conference met in Oxford in 1937.  Drawn from many different Christian expressions it wrestled with issues that have since - and not least this weekend - shaped the post-War world too.  It was notable for its clarity, something rarely achieved in Ecumenical conferencing.

As the Greek people vote in the most economic of all elections it is interesting to notice the 1937 Conference's warnings about Capitalism.  It was a feature of the Conference that it refused to identify any overarching political system with the Kingdom of God (at a time when every overarching political  system was claiming to be God's or, in the case of Stalinism, god).  Fascism and Communism have (for a while) had their day, Monarchy fell earlier and now we have Market Capitalism and Democracy which are starting to fall out with each other.

"Could anything, possibly, be wrong with Capitalism?", my Western generation asks, expecting the answer No.

In 1937 the Conference believed it systemically brought the following four negatives  - enhanced acquisitiveness; shocking new inequalities; irresponsible possession of economic power; diminishing Christian vocation.

Last night I returned from visiting someone on a nice new well-staffed ward (yes I know that the NHS has its problems but . . .).  Earlier in the day I had collected a regular prescription and dropped it into the nearest pharmacy I was walking past.  This morning I listened to a Doctor in a Greek Hospital telling how there was one nurse for 50 children and that they had to scour the region for drugs that they needed, sometimes failing to find them.

And I thought.  My generation of Westerners has reaped great rewards from Capitalism.  But the negatives those Christians saw are alive and well in the way it works today; where the added suffering of a sick child in Greece is deemed positive to protect a currency union.  It takes a spiritual outlook to believe that the child will, in fact, outlive money and not the other way round.

Reigning, Raining

It was a wet day in London yesterday as I stood on tip-toe to see a distant glimpse of the Queen on the river.  Nearly as much water above her as below her!  I thought I owed it to her long reign to make some effort as I had last seen her in 1961 when she was driven past our flat.  (I was very, very young . . .)

I'd been thinking.

Queen Elizabeth has now reigned longer than all but one of the Kings of Israel in the Bible. The one who reigned a little less than her is proof, if such were needed, that longevity is not itself a virtue. Our Queen has witnessed marked spiritual decline in her nation during her reign but she herself has exercised considerable goodness and God-fearing stability in the midst of it all. Mannasseh reigned in Jerusalem for 55 years and no such compliments can be paid to him.

As with all long-reigning monarchs he started early - at twelve years old in fact. The son of the godly king Hezekiah he set about undoing all the good that his father had done. Over centuries since Joshua led them into the Promised Land the Israelite people and kings had struggled to be holy and good among the Canaanites. Mannasseh didn't appear to struggle - he behaved exactly as if he was a Canaanite king. He involved his own son in fire sacrifice, practiced witchcraft, placed the sex symbol Asherah pole in the middle of God's temple and more besides. He was astonishing but for all the wrong reasons: longevity gives its beneficiary time but not goodness.

Thankfully Israel's longest reigning monarch demonstrates that goodness itself has greater longevity than evil. His was a peculiar enthronement - his initial throne the place where he was lifted up to die, his title King of the Jews written first by a foreign official, his crown one of thorns, his miltary escort spitting at him and his people telling jokes at his expense or running away.

The prophet Isaiah, though, foresaw that a throne will be established in steadfast love, and of his government and peace there will be no end. The King of the Jews remains the world's longest serving human monarch, an honour recognised in Queen Elizabeth's own coronation service when the Dean said, Receive this Orb set under the Cross, and remember that the whole world is subject to the Power and Empire of Christ our Redeemer.

Manasseh's story is remarkable for its ending. The Assyrians captured him, bound him and dumped him in a dungeon far away in Babylon. When, records the Chronicler, he was in distress, he entreated the favour of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.

He set about undoing some of the spiritual carnage he had created. How grateful Manasseh and every human being should be that the longest-serving monarch and the One who will remain on the throne when all other thrones have fallen, is unalterably good and unfathomably merciful.