God in the Garden 2. Hidden Problems

It even surprises me.

When we filmed the Easter Morning pandemic recording in the garden there was the awkwardness of a derelict pond motor cupboard, used by a previous resident to create a flowing water feature.  It is clearly many years into its decay.

'Why,' I wondered, 'have I never fixed it?'   

I ventured my best explanation - that in the summer it was hidden, because in truth I could hardly remember thinking about it in days in the garden over the years.

And so it proved to be.  I simply hadn't realised how totally the greenery in the pond left the old cupboard out of sight and out of mind.  Here it is in the summer:

That is why it is never fixed!

As we thought about at Easter, the reason for the coming and sacrifice of Jesus is because sin is never hidden from Him - it required action.  The reason why humankind can be equivocal about, blase towards or disinterested in the great salvation Jesus achieved is because we simply cover up our sinfulness to ourselves and among ourselves.  It doesn't need fixing, so we don't need Jesus.

This strategy fails to take account of the end of the story - where what God sees is the basis of our eternal accountability.

Good and Bad

This has been a challenging week in London with the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack, an attack perpetrated by a man who we now seem to know more about than we do about members of our own family.  A little late though.

It was also the week when Martin McGuiness, former IRA Commander yet peacemaker was laid to rest - a man who died as an awkward kind of hero, a key to the Peace process that he had earlier been a key figure in making necessary.

These two men who died challenge our assessment of human goodness and badness. 

It is clear that those who knew Adey the youngster often (but not always) regarded him as incapable of anything like what he did on Wednesday.   Somewhere he seemed to have gone bad.  Yet even that doesn't quite work as the hotel he stayed in the night before the atrocity found him to be a very pleasant guest.

As a youngish man Martin McGuiness was certainly marked out by many outside his immediate community as a great deal of trouble.  To what extent he was directly or indirectly involved in acts of terrorism eventually became a subject off limits.  Yet most saw in his championing of the Northern Ireland Peace Process (at considerable personal risk and cost) something heroic or at least laudable.

The easy thing to say is that there is bad and good in all of us.  The harder thing is how we judge it.  The best thing to say is that we really can't and that the Judge of all the earth (Genesis 18:25) will need to be left to do what is right.

It's a tragedy

People have been dying a lot recently.

Only in the past week we have seen the funeral of Ronnie Corbett, the death of Victoria Wood and the suitably mysterious decease of Prince.

Today, St George's Day, we remember the mysterious George (about whom we know little more than we know about the Dragon) and the more-mysterious-than-we-often-think William Shakespeare, star of stage and screen (though the screen was a time coming of course).

Four hundred years is a while and thus nobody is saying how much they miss William or that their 'thoughts are with his family' (whatever that phrase means when uttered by a politician).  Simply put we first encountered old William as dead.  We've never thought of him otherwise.  I think he would approve.

A few weeks ago we went to watch Hamlet and although we have seen many Shakespeare plays we had, surprisingly, never seen this famous one.  The subtleties of Shakespeare are legendary, but the one very unsubtle thing about Hamlet is that it is a tragedy.  At the end the major players are all lying dead on the stage (or off stage).  It is not subtle. "When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions".How true it is and how untrue.As we move through Easter toward Ascension Day the Greatest Drama of All is revealed to be death's crushing defeat as every one of its supposed clients is raised up to stand before the throne of the Man who left death dead.When resurrections come they come not single lives but all as Christ commands.

It's Missing 2. On the Brink

The Church has many reasons to be thankful for Matt Redman.  Matt has gone far past many contemporary worship lyricists in incorporating ancient words and biblical truths, some of which sit uncomfortably in the mindset of flashing lights, flashing teeth and flashing sales commercials which can substitute for true worship and togetherness.  I'm especially excited that the worship leader in our church loves this song because it is based on an amazing devotional poem by Robert Murray McCheyne.

McCheyne was younger than Matt Redman when he died and (I'm sure Matt wouldn't mind me remarking) made an even bigger impact in the terms of his day, especially in Dundee.  Like any devotional poem, not every verse should be sung.  In this poem - which is McCheyne's imagining of what he'd be grateful for when he reached glory - the second verse was included in only a few hymnbooks.  Unsurprisingly Matt (if he knew it existed) left it out of his consideration:

1. When this passing world is done,

When has sunk yon glaring sun,

When we stand with Christ in glory,

Looking o’er life’s finished story,

Then, Lord, shall I fully know—

Not till then—how much I owe.

2. When I hear the wicked call,

On the rocks and hills to fall,

When I see them start and shrink

On the fiery deluge brink,

Then, Lord, shall I fully know—

Not till then—how much I owe.

3.When I stand before the throne,

Dressed in beauty not my own,

When I see Thee as Thou art,

Love Thee with unsinning heart,

Then Lord, shall I fully know—

Not till then—how much I owe.

[continues]

There are three possible reasons to leave verse 2 out of hymnic consideration.  

The fact of hell.  That's enough for some, perhaps.  Yet if we only sing about spiritual positives we neuter those positives to an extent - verses 1 & 3 seem more worshipful to me in the light of this verse in between them.

The description of hell.  It is true that this is plucked straight from the church's tradition of horrors, though also from the words of the Lord Jesus . . .  Hell being eternal separation from God means that even the grimmest descriptors - far from exaggerating it - inevitably underplay what hell is really like.

The description of the saved.  This seems to me to be the best reason to leave the verse out.  Much as I admire McCheyne it is hard to see much Biblical justification (there is a little at a stretch) for a heavenly audience thankfully feasting on the spectacle of the lost on the brink of judgment.  I suppose that on the cross Jesus could have said to the repentant thief, referencing the unrepentant one, "You and I will be fine - wait 'til you see what happens to him".  But instead Jesus united the repentant thief to himself in paradise and the other was silently lost (as he shouted his insults) to the eternal salvation story.

If you have a life-saving hospital treatment you do not need to visit the mortuary to be any more knowledgeably grateful.