andygoodliff

Wonderful Counsellor: A Sermon for Advent

‘And the government will be upon his shoulders.’

I can’t read those words at the moment without thinking of the forthcoming

inauguration of President Trump

and my expectation of how little he will resemble

the one expected in these words from Isaiah.

The words we have read from Isaiah 9

were probably written for a coronation, very much like an inauguration,

for the new king about to be crowned.

They were written in the hope of a new wave of peace and prosperity.

They were written in the hope that the new king would be one anointed by God

as a wonderful counsellor, a carrier of God’s power, an everlasting father and a

prince of peace.

In the main the hopes of Israel were ultimately found wanting,

very much like our own hopes in those who give the possibility of newness –

Kennedy, Blair, Obama, Trump …

and so the promises were pushed forward, awaiting fulfilment one day.

What does it mean to expect one who will be wonderful counsellor?

 

In the context of Isaiah 9

It is a reference to one who will govern with great wisdom,

whose plans and policies will be wonderful for all the people

and so serve the flourishing of the nation,

in terms of peace and prosperity.

Again we look to those who govern us,

to initiate and put in place plans and policies

that will benefit the whole nation,

that will result perhaps not in wonder, but at least in higher approval ratings!

 

We don’t just read this passage in its immediate context,

but also in the light of the gospel,

For the early church came to read the Old Testament

in the light of Jesus

and Isaiah 9 was rich in royal messianic imagery

and readily seen as pointing to Jesus.

So the question we ask is what does it mean to see Jesus as wonderful

counsellor?

 

Wisdom is certainly associated with Jesus.

Luke’s gospel twice says that the young Jesus was filled with, and grew in, wisdom

and, according to Mark’s gospel, when Jesus starts preaching the crowd

are amazed and ask what is this wisdom that has been given him?

And in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church, Jesus is said to be the wisdom

of God, although a wisdom that confounds the ‘wise’.

If Jesus is wise, he is also seen in terms of wonder in the sense that he is no

ordinary teacher or prophet.

Throughout the gospels, it is said the people were amazed, or astonished.

His teaching contradicted all usual assumptions.

His teaching confounded the authorities;

He engaged the powerless crowds,

He spoke of a world that was coming, and had come, in which the impossible was

made possible.

What is wonderful about Jesus, is the impossible becomes possible.

Jesus comes to re-describe reality.

 

Every Sunday the church declares the impossible is possible in God and with God.

There should be wonder every time we open the scriptures.

If you come to church and are never astonished at what is read, what is done,

then either you need to listen more carefully or the church is not announcing the

gospel.

Stories of coming to baptism, of the saints of old, of lives befriended, surrendered,

transformed leave us in wonder and we see that Jesus is not a person just of

words – he is not only our teacher - but a person of action, of deeds, of miracles,

of changing lives.

 

If Jesus provokes wonder, he also provokes opposition,

because his counsel, his governance is not more of the same,

but a challenge to the pattern and order of the world.

Those in power to not respond with wonder,

but with counsel on how they might end Jesus.

They were happy with the possible, and feared the impossible

that Jesus announced.

In there is both wonder and opposition,

before we too quickly think of the world as not including us,

we must come to terms with our rejection of Jesus’ wonderful counsel.

We must admit to ourselves and even to each other,

where we have not stomached the teaching of Jesus,

where we have called it impossible, foolish, romantic.

The church, like the world, continues to wrestle with Jesus the wonderful Counsellor.

We continue to need to be convinced,

to have eyes and hearts transformed.

We dare to believe, we cling to gospel stories in hope that,

then is now, that this is that, that the past is present. [i]

And where we do this,

we will find opposition, we will find those who cannot tolerate,

who will not tolerate this Jesus,

those for whom there is too much to lose.

Where the church faces no opposition, it is probably because we have allowed

ourselves to be dulled to the call, the vision, the demand of Jesus to follow.

The church is called to embrace the wisdom of Jesus,

which announces the end of the world as the world knows it,

and which from certain angles looks like foolishness,

but it is the only reality.

Walter Brueggemann says this:

            The ‘increase of his government’ will not be by supernatural imposition

            or royal fiat.

Instead, it will come about through daily intentional engagement

            of his subjects,

            who are so astonished by his wonder

that they no longer subscribe to the old order of power and truth

            that turns out to be in the long run,

            only debilitating fraudulence.

            It requires an uncommon wisdom

to interrupt the foolish practice of business as usual. [ii]

 

I wonder what it would mean, what it would look like,

for us to embrace the wonderful counsel of Jesus –

this ‘uncommon wisdom’. [iii]

It is almost impossible for us to see the world other than as we have it,

It is almost impossible for us to act in the world other than as we have it,

We are so entangled in the world,

            that to see and act in accordance with Jesus’ wisdom,

            seems beyond our reach.

And so why our first prayer must be,           

            God grant us the gift of eyes to see,

                                    ears to hear,

                                    hearts to respond,

                                    hands to act,

            that are in accordance with the mind of Christ,

                        that is, his wonderful wisdom.

The uncommon wisdom of Jesus

            will call us to live a different way of life,

            just read the Sermon on the Mount.

Or look to his ministry where we see it so clearly modelled for us:

            in how he makes time for children;

            in how he chooses to visit Zacchaeus, a tax collector;

            in how he calls the wrong type of people to be apostles;

            in how he doesn’t give up on his disciples;

            in how he responds to those who question him;

            in how he resists temptation by bring well versed in scripture;

            in how he extends forgiveness to those beyond the pale;

            in how he refuses the use of violence even when be faced with arrest;

            in how he is gentle with the woman at the well

                 and the woman who had been bleeding 12 years;

            in how tells stories which defy neatness and instead offer continual wondering;

            in how he does not ignore the cry of those who need mercy like Bartimaeus;   

            in how he sees beauty and not waste in Mary’s use of expensive perfume;

            in how he challenges the grip wealth can have on a heart;

            in how he brings freedom to a man bound by demons and chains;

            in how he sees faith in those outside the Jewish faith;

            in how he doesn’t disown the law, but brings it to his proper end;

            in how he sees his life as something to be laid down on behalf of others;

            in how he sees the cross not just tragedy, but glory.

This is an uncommon wisdom,

            which is both wonderful and wondrous,

                        and at the same time it is the politics of God

                                    an economy of grace,

                                    in which Christ is the key. [iv]

 

[i] This of course picks up the work of Jim McClendon.

[ii] Walter Brueggemann, Names for the Messiah, 16-17.

[iii] There is a reminder here also of a work by a Baptist minister John Peck who wrote with Charles Strohmer, Uncommon Sense: God’s Wisdom for Our Complex and Changing World.

[iv] Here I am deliberately echoing the titles of a series of books by Kathryn Tanner.

Barrie White: In Memoriam

The news has come that Barrie White, the Baptist historian and former Principal of Regent's Park College, Oxford died on Saturday 12th November 2016.

I'm sadly too young to have any memories of Barrie White in his prime. Hopefully others will fill that gap.

White was Principal of Regent's Park College, 1972-1989 and in the 1970s and 1980s the leading Baptist historian of his generation, especially of Baptist 17th century beginnings. His doctoral work completed in 1961 was published as The English Separatist Tradition: From the Marian Martyrs to the Pilgrim Fathers (Oxford, 1971). His other major work was The English Baptists of the Seventeeth Century (1983, 1994), but alongside that was as editor of three volumes of Association Records of the Particular Baptists. There would have surely been other book-length pieces if dementia had not taken its toll on his mind from the early 1990s onwards. White remains one of the most important non-conformist and Baptist historians and will be remembered alongside the likes of W. T. Whitley, E. A. Payne and G. F. Nuttall. He was honoured in 1999 with a festschrift, Pilgrim Pathways, edited by William Brackney, Paul Fiddes and John H. Y. Briggs.

Here are some extracts from early short articles written on the task of Baptist history.

The first is 'Writing and Preserving Baptist History', The Fraternal (April, 1965)

Why does more and better Baptist history need to be written? So that the wisdom and experience of our past may be harnessed to the making of decisions about our present and our future.

Tradition has a place: what the Holy Spirit taught yesterday may have, must have, a bearing upon what He would teach us today. Nevertheless we must beware of a crude fundamentalism, which in place of "Holy Church says" or "the Bible says" inserts "the Puritans say" and so commit our mind and conscience to the keeping of another age. That way lies blind dogmatism and a theological strait-jacket. Some of our brethren might like to appeal to John Smyth, others to the Confession of 1677, others yet again to the assembly of 1689, and still others to the wide canvas of the 17th century Baptists. They are all wrong: we may not confide ourselves to the keeping of a man, or of a confession, or of an assembly, or of an era. But we should listen respectfully to what they have to say when, in the light of Scripture and of the Spirit, we are on our knees on behalf of our tomorrow.

When we make up our minds about our denominational policy and future (and these may not be quite as much bound up together as some people think), when we strive to evaluate just what it is that God has entrusted to us, which we have to contribute to the wider family of the people of God- then let us take into account our yesterdays. To neglect this is to deny, implicitly at least, that the Holy Spirit ever had anything worth saying to another generation which has not yet been said (or heard!) by ours.

... the brutal fact of the matter is that the state of Baptist historical writing at the moment, in both quality and quantity of work done, is such that it is virtually impossible to claim that any era of our history has been treated in depth.

I believe it is high time that we got down to producing big books on Baptist history ... What we need is detailed studies covering the ground at six inches to the mile, and they are just not available. And not only are the monographs chiefly notable for their absence but, as a denomination we are, generally speaking, almost criminally careless with our primary records.

 ... it is really remarkable that there is no detailed study of what English Baptists have said about Baptism over the years. Neither have there been full-length studies across the centuries of our attitudes to ordination, to the Lord's Supper, to authority in Church and State.

Fifty years on we have made some progress. Some big books have been written - the four volume series on English Baptists, to which White contributed the 17th volume, and more recently David Bebbington's one volume Baptist Through the Centuries. Likewise we now have more detailed studies of Grantham, Kiffin, Taylor, Keach, Rippon, Fuller, Spurgeon, Faringham, Steele, Shakespeare, as well as a reader on 17th Baptist Women Preachers.

Sadly I think it might be said that we can still be not as careful with our recent primary records as perhaps we should, but as Baptists we now have a wonderful, accessible resource in the Angus Library, in which Barrie must have spent many hours.

The second selection of extracts comes from 'The Task of the Baptist Historian', Baptist Quarterly 22 (1968):

... "Why bother with Baptist history anyway?" there are certain things which can be said at once: first, if Baptists do not investigate and care about Baptist history no-one else will. No-one else is likely to take the time or the interest to sift the diamonds from the dust of our denominational yesterday. No-one else will be prepared to attempt the reconstruction of that yesterday from our generous but annually diminishing early source materials. No-one. else will have the same creative sympathy with that yesterday and under- standing of the texture, the subtle overtones and undertones, of our denominational heritage in its national setting. To say this does not, of course, mean that non-Baptists should not be encouraged to write Baptist history or that Baptists from other lands should not touch English Baptist history. There is certainly always a sense in which the onlooker sees most of the game: a detached observer may well discern patterns and meanings which those too closely caught up in their own personal or partisan enthusiasms. may miss. Nevertheless, when all this has been readily and cheerfully admitted, it remains true that if Baptists are to wait for others to do their fundamental research for them they will still be waiting, with a sense of growing disappointment, for a good many years to come.

... Baptists can far less easily ignore their own history, their own heritage, than they can that of other Christians. To slam the door, as it were, upon their yesterday would be, first, to lose their identity and most of their understanding of why they stand where they do and, secondly, to limit all their insights into the Word and the Will of God to the narrow vision of the present generation and even, on some occasions, to that of the local congregation. On the other hand Baptists dare not allow their yesterday to dominate their today for two other reasons: first, because their own past does not speak with one voice; there is, for them, no golden age of an "undivided church" where all the Fathers spoke with a single unanimous voice. T h e second reason why Baptists cannot allow their past to have the last word is that to do so would be to bolt and bar another door: that against the continuing, contemporary, guidance of the Holy Spirit in the Church.

... Baptist historiography is always in danger of domination by a spirit of historical fundamentalism according to which the past becomes a chunk of dead rock from which anachronistic but superficially relevant proof-texts are chiselled to the required shape.

... it is not the denominational historian's task to be a partisan, he must always be aware of the greater army marching the same way to the left and right of him; he must resist the temptation to rub the rough edges off history in the interests of a later respectability and he dare not forget that whilst Baptists have often been brave they have even more often been bigoted. It is not the Church historian's task to whitewash anyone, least of all his own side.

... One thing should now be entirely plain: whilst the basic ingredients [of Baptist history] may remain the same, there is a great. deal more involved in telling that plain, unvarnished tale adequately than perhaps some of our predecessors ever realised.

There will be a thanksgiving service at New Road Baptist Church, Oxford, where Barrie had been a member for many years, on Monday 28th November, 12pm.

A Vision for Life in Strange Times: A Sermon

Adam Curtis is a BBC documentary maker

whose films seek to explain and explore our world.

His most recent is a BBC iplayer only film called Hypernormalisation. [i]

Curtis begins with the claim:

We live in a strange time.

Extraordinary events keep happening

that undermine the stability of our world.

Suicide bombs, waves of refugees, Donald Trump,

Vladamir Putin, even Brexit …

and no-one has any vision for a different, or a better kind of future.

He goes on to say

‘We’ve constructed a simpler, but fake world into which we’ve all bought …’

and where ultimately ‘nothing ever changes.’

Curtis says

This has allowed dark and destructive forces to fester and grow outside.

Forces that are now returning to pierce the fragile surface

of our carefully constructed fake world.

It is a bleak analysis.

I said to a friend this week who recently had a baby,

What kind of world are we bringing our children into?

To which she replied, ‘utterly terrifying.’

And another Baptist minister friend was asking this week

'What in heaven's name are we to do with what the Hell is going on around us?' [ii]

Now this might be overstating things,

But it is certainly true that 2017 is going be a different world

than we began in 2016.

Someone told me this week if you had place a bet on Brexit, Trump for

presidency and Leicester winning the Premier League, you’d be a multi-millionaire!

These strange times lack perhaps much to be cheerful about …

(thank God for Ed Balls on Strictly!)

And this is Remembrance Sunday

in which we remember equally non-cheerful times

in which millions died, or more accurately millions were killed.

The church after 1918 and 1945 was left searching for something to say.

For the wars in Europe saw Christian kill Christian.

We bear the scars of these wars today,

There is a worry that we might be re-opening them.

Adam Curtis I think is right in that we have not been offered a vision for a

different, a better future.

The visions at the beginning of the 20^th century failed,

resulting in two world wars.

The visions of Clinton and Blair and their ‘third way’ failed,

The vision of Bush to defeat terrorism with military might has failed.

The hope of Obama is about to be overturned, and ultimately his hope

has not reached and transformed the lives of many in middle America

and so one reason why the result this week is what is it.

But there is a vision,

A way of seeing, a way of living,

That offers hope, and peace, and life.

It is called the kingdom of God.

The prophets announce it:

            ‘See I will create a new heavens and a new earth’ (Isa. 65.12)

            ‘The days are coming when I will make a new covenant’ (Jer. 31.31)

            ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! … I will put breath in you …’ (Ezek. 37.4, 6)

            ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people …’ (Joel 2.28)

           ‘They will beat swords into ploughshares,

                        and their spears into pruning hooks.’ (Micah 5.3)

Moses teaches it:

            Consecrate the fiftieth year

and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants.

            It shall be a jubilee for you. (Lev. 25.10)

The Psalmist sings it:

            He upholds the cause of the oppressed

            And gives food to the hungry.

            The Lord sets the prisoner free,

            The Lord gives sight to the blind,

            The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down,

            The Lord loves the righteous.

            The Lord watches over the foreigner

            and sustains the fatherless and the widow (Ps 146)

and Mary joins in:

            He has brought down rulers from their thrones

            But has lifted up the humble.

            He has filled the hungry with good things

            But has sent the rich away empty (Lk 1.52-53)

Jesus proclaims it and embodies it:

            Blessed are the poor in spirit

            Blessed are those who mourn

            Blessed are the meek

            Blessed are who hunger and thirst for righteousness

            Blessed are the merciful

            Blessed are the pure in heart

            Blessed are the peacemakers

            Blessed are those who are persecuted (Matt. 5.3-11)

The church in Acts practice it:

            All the believers were together

            And had everything in common.

            They sold property and possessions to give to anyone in need.

            Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

Praising God (Acts 2.44-47)

Paul preaches it:

            ‘There is no longer Jew or Greek,

            Slave or free,

            Male and female

            You are all one in Christ Jesus’ (Gal. 3.28)

John of Patmos sees it:

            ‘there before me was a great multitude that no one could count

            from every nation,

            tribe, people, language,

            standing before the throne and before the Lamb.’ (Rev. 7.9)

And again:

            I saw a new heaven and a new earth …

            I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem,

            Coming down from heaven from God …

            He will wipe every tear from their eyes.

            There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain (Rev 21.1-2, 4)

That’s a vision,

a re-describing of reality

a learning to speak Christian,

a ‘believing that a coming future of God will prevail

over the deathliness of the present.’ [iii]

In the kingdom of God

            There is a refusal to see those that are ‘other’ as threats,

but as human beings

            There is a refusal of economics that only serves our interest,

but practices generosity      

            There is a refusal of war as a means of making peace and reconciliation

            There is a refusal of environmental self-indulgence,

but practices humility and compassion

            There is a refusal of nationalism either seeking to isolate or dominate,

but instead builds bridges and opens doors

            There is a refusal of adult arrogance and power,

                        but an embrace of the child

The purpose of the Bible

is to impress upon his readers a different view of the world,

a world in which there is a Creator

            a world in which there is evil

            a world in which Christ has come

                        and at the cross terminates one world

                                    and in the resurrection raises a new world.

The purpose of the Bible

to refurbish the Christian imagination with

alternative heavenly and divine visions of how the world is and will be.

The purpose of the Bible

is to reveal Jesus as Lord.

Jesus

who is the First and Last,

who is the Living One,

who is the faithful witness,

who is the Lamb who was slain,

who is coming soon.

The book of Revelation says

that the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of Jesus,

and so while kings, queens, presidents, prime ministers of this world

will rule for some years,

Jesus will reign for ever and ever.

Jesus is our future,

the author and perfecter of our faith.

Where do we go from here?

We pray for the gift of discernment –

            To see the possibility of death where others find progress or success

            To see the reality of resurrection and hope where others

are consigned to despair [iv]

Alongside that, we immerse ourselves in the Bible:

            ‘In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word.

Amidst babel, speak the truth.

Confront the noise and nonsense and falsehood of death

with the truth and power and efficacy of the Word of God.

Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word,

defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word.’ [v]

It is in the Word

            that we will come to see the world in new ways

            and so see the crucified and risen Jesus at work in the world

and so attend to his way.

Where do we start in the Bible?

The Beatitudes is a good place.

In these nine blessings we find a vision for life,

We find what it looks like to be Christian: [vi]

            It is dwelling with

those who are poor, those who are mourning, those who are meek

            It is allowing God to change you into

those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

                        those who practice mercy

                        and those who are pure in heart

            It is living the life of

                        those who are peacemakers

                        and those who love God even in the face of death.

In these strange times,

Where everything seems to falling apart

Where today we remember those who fought in wars

because no alternative could be found

We say there is a vision,

            A vision for life

            And it is found in Jesus

Let us continue to be captivated by it,

            Continue to trust in it,

            And continue to live it

                        For the love of God

                        With the grace of Jesus

                        And in the power of the Holy Spirit

                        Amen

 

[i] http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p04b183c/adam-curtis-hypernormalisation

[ii] Jim Gordon, ‘Thinking of Advent, Worrying About the News, Recovering Faith in the Good News’: http://livingwittily.typepad.com/my_weblog/2016/11/thinking-of-advent-worrying-about-the-news-recovering-faith-in-the-good-news.html

[iii] Walter Brueggemann, ‘Vision that Trumps Violence’ in The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann Vol. 2 (WJK, 2015).

[iv] William Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land quoted in Charles L. Campbell, The Word Before the Powers (WJK, 2002).

[v] Stringfellow, An Ethic for Christians, quoted in Campbell, The Word Before the Powers.

[vi] I borrow this from Sam Wells, ‘Dwelling in the Comma’ in Learning to Dream Again (Canterbury, 2013).