Quote of the Week

Very helpful article by Jonathan Sacks in the Times last Saturday. The concluding paragraphs:

Idol worship and magical thinking happen when we believe some institution or person will bend the world to our desires, making problems vanish without effort on our part. The idol can be liberal democracy, the consumer society, science, medicine or genetic engineering.

Religious faith says all these things can be a blessing or a curse, depending on whether they are used with humility, restraint, concern for the common good and care for long-term consequences.

Humility involves the recognition that there is something greater than us to whom we are accountable. Restraint means that not everything we can do we should do. Concern for the common good means recognising that others, not just us, are in the image and likeness of God. Care for long-term consequences means believing in something that will last longer than we will.

Religion is not myth or magic. It is the recognition of how small we are in the scheme of things, and how great is our responsibility to others. It is the still, small voice reminding us that there is no achievement without sacrifice, no freedom without self-restraint. Those who worship the idols of the age perish with the age, while the worship of eternity lives on.

Lord Sacks is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth

We need I think to be making common cause with the cosmologists (such as Brian Cox) and the psychologists, as those who in time help teach us this humility. They are to some extent perhaps the psalmists and wisdom writers of our world - Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Job, some of the Psalms etc. point us to how little we know, how small we are in the vast scheme of things (as so the cosmologists) - yet in the appropriate places eg Psalm 8, show us how significant we are.

Sabbatical Day 11

Heathrow airport is a meeting of the nations. Ephesians 1.10 speaks of God bringing all things together in Christ. All nations made one, a reverse of Babel. (May we have a wonderful foretaste at Praise in the Park in July coinciding with the opening weekend of the Olympics.)

Just as in Christ there are no denominations but rather rich variation, so also in Christ God makes us one people with boundless and wonderful diversity. How wonderful and glorious is our creator God. As a boy I grew up expecting everyone to be somewhat like me; but God has changed that in me and continues to change it. How blessed I am by that!

The inflight film I go for is The Tree of Life. It begins with Job 38.4,7: Where we're you when I laid the foundation of the earth...?

The way of nature and the way of grace: there are two approaches to life. We have to choose, whatever comes. But what does this mean in the loss of a child? The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. An act of nature; how does grace respond?

In the film, through a death of a son the whole world is seen in a different light, through the lens of memory and loss. What are we to you Lord in the vast universe of your creation? In the film images of deep space and the grandeur of this world, replace the poetic images in Job of creation. We are taken to volcanoes, echoing perhaps Job which speaks of God as creator of the depths of the earth.

As the film flashbacks through episodes of life bringing up family, attempts to be in control of one's own destiny through discipline and hard work are rendered useless by the vastness of God's ways (as loss of work, loss of home and loss of life intervene). 'Where we're you when I made the world?' Though we may kick against life, yet it is bigger than we are.

Yet it is a film of exuberance. Through loss, life is valued afresh, enjoyed, delighted in. What remains is wonderful, a fabulous gift from God, something to be overwhelmed by, with thankfulness.

I am being opened to the vastness of God's world, not only its diversity but it's incomprehensibility. My Sabbatical supervisor suggested I allow myself to be overwhelmed by my experiences. To be baptised by them perhaps is one way of putting it. I understand that. In visiting my mother towards the end of her life, the daily experience was of being overwhelmed, but there, day by day it seemed, I found, or better, was found by, God's grace. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."

I note too a theme of this Sabbatical, the revisiting of loss (of my parents) where I know there is work to be done. In our baptism in Christ is our deliverance.