Five Day Trip to Calais

Not the traditional start of an expedition to France

Day One, Thursday

 I don’t know anyone who has slipped across to Calais from Dover on the ferry to actually stay in Calais.

 It appears that opinion is divided on the usual purpose for a Dover-Calais crossing three ways (1) Pre-Christmas cheap booze from the local Hypermarché (2) Driving to somewhere more interesting (3) embarked on the ferry by mistake.

 Think again!

 Here’s how the adventure started…

 Leaving Bristol for Whitstable

 There was a dual reason for stopping in Whitstable. My grandparents’ grave is at St John’s, Swalecliffe, and I fancied going to inspect the grave and maybe sit there and commune with God in the late afternoon sun.

 Before setting off I discovered that the passenger side front tyre had a a slow leak – approximately 2 lbs per square inch (a wonderful scale) per day. So, the first decision of the day was to take the racing green MG (F) 1993 to the Ron Costello’s.

 The photo tells you everything you need to know.

 Tyre fixed for a paltry £15.00 I motored up the M32 and along the M4/M25/M26/M20 and M20 before entering the feared Thanet Way and descending via Tesco’s to purchase flowers, and strawberries and cream, to Paul and Ruth’s.

 Climbing in and out of the MG is never easy but when one has a bad back and severe bursitis in both shoulders it is imperative not to laugh as this will only inflame one or both conditions…but the exit/entrance is not as swift as it could be.

 A cuppa tea with Paul and Ruth and daughter Stacey, the first of three defeats on the chess board with Paul, and a fine shepherd’s pie, I drove down to sleepy St John’s, Swalecliffe not far from the sea. Whilst walking through the graveyard to find my grandparents’ grave I was attacked by three large seagulls swooping and screeching just above my head. On the final bombing raid, one of these ecclesiastical creatures thumped into my head, knocking my sunglasses off and digging its claws into my scalp, leaving me with cuts and bruises and a lumpy scab!

The vicious seagull graveyard guard, St John’s Swalecliffe

I pressed on past the killing zone to the grave but couldn’t really settle with the close attention of the birds making their feelings known: I was an invader that needed to be repelled.

 As communing with God really was not possible, I made my way back to Paul and Ruth’s for tea and sympathy.

 And sleep. It’s up early tomorrow and off to Dover.

Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles – foundations of the Christian faith

Passover = Pesach

Pentecost = Shavuot

Tabernacles = Sukkot

There were, in the Old Testament, three feasts of Israel that men were commanded to attend:

‘Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year: 

You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover) you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty; 

 and the Feast of Harvest (Pentecost), the first fruits of your labours which you have sown in the field;

 and the Feast of Ingathering (Tabernacles) at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labours from the field. 

Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.’   Exodus 23 v 14-17

Preamble

The temple, and before that Moses’ tabernacle (tent), and the entire Old Testament sacrificial system were ‘shadows’ of the reality fulfilled in the New Testament through Christ:

‘Priests offer the gifts according to the Law and serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly as Moses was instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said ‘See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain’…copies of things in heaven…for Christ has not entered holy places made with hands, copies of the true, but into heaven itself…Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many’ Hebrews 8 v 4 ff

If we reduce the teaching of the New Testament and the gospel to ‘having faith in Christ’ we impoverish our congregations.

We often need to be reminded that the term ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’ refers to the anointing of Jesus with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament only prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes oil was used to symbolise the anointing, such as when Samuel anointed David to be King, but Jesus as Messiah, the Christ, was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be Prophet, Priest, and King…King of Israel.

We place our faith in Christ because he fulfilled each of the three feasts which served as shadows and copies of the reality that was Christ. 

Passover

Passover (Pesach), was originally instituted to celebrate the Exodus from Egypt when Israelites daubed the blood of a lamb on their doors to ensure that the destroying angel sent by God would ‘pass over’ their house and the people inside. This is fulfilled in Christ, shedding His blood on the cross, as the lamb of God. Through His sacrifice, we are forgiven.

If escaping from Egypt for the Jews with Moses and escaping sin through Christ is important it is equally important to remember the purpose was not only escape ‘from’ Egypt under Moses but escape ‘to’ the Promised Land under Joshua. Equally, in the church, we must not only rejoice in our redemption ‘from’ sin, but also enter into our promised land, Christ Himself. We need faith to leave, and faith to enter in. The Israelites had to overcome many obstacles: Pharoah’s opposition, trials in the desert, and finally the battle at Jericho to enter in, and so will we. At heart, though, it was always a matter of faith for the Israelites, that God could do both, release them from Egypt and plant them in a new land. St Paul wrote ‘For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us’ 1 Cor 5 v 7. It is because of Him that we are redeemed from sin and because of Him that we can enter into our new identity, and new life, in Christ.

Pentecost

Pentecost (Shavuot) occurred fifty days after Passover. Pentecost means fifty. On the day of Pentecost after Passover, when Jesus was crucified, the Holy Spirit was poured out from on High. Jesus spoke to the disciples after the Resurrection:

‘John baptised with water but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit…you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you’  Acts 1 v 5,8

‘When the day of Pentecost had fully come…they were filled with the Holy Spirit’  Acts 2 v 4

In the Old Testament, Pentecost was celebrated to give thanks to God for the firstfruits of the harvest. Those who believed and received the gift of the Spirit were the firstfruits of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.

Also, the Law was given to Moses on this day, but in the New Testament, the Spirit was poured out.

Just as each believer needs to know they are forgiven through the cross and placed ‘in Christ’, each believer must be baptised in the Spirit. This is Christianity, it is not an optional extra, for Pentecostals or Charismatics. It is the fulfilment of the feast of Pentecost. The church is not to be a human organisation managed and led by men, it is a living body led by the Spirit with each ‘member’ of the body baptised in the Spirit so that every time believers gather together the gathering is led by the Spirit who pours out His gifts as He chooses.

Tabernacles

Tabernacles (Sukkot)

‘And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the…branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees…You shall dwell in booths for seven days…that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths/tabernacles/tents when I brought them out of the land of Egypt’   Leviticus 23 v 40

When Moses made the tabernacle according to the pattern God showed him, it was for God to dwell in. The Israelites lived in tents during their journey in the desert to the Promised Land, as did God. The tabernacle of the Lord was sited outside the camp and Moses would go in to meet with the Lord:

‘When Moses entered the tabernacle…the Lord spoke to Moses, face to face, as a man speaks to his friend’ Exodus 33 v 9-11

Just as Jesus was the true Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God, and poured out the Holy Spirit from heaven at Pentecost, so He was the fulfilment of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles:

‘And the Word made flesh and tabernacled among us’  John 1 v 14

The Greek for ‘tabernacles’ is usually translated as ‘dwelt’, but the Greek word means ‘pitched His tent’ i.e. And Jesus spoke to His heavenly Father as a man speaks with His friend.

The fulfilment is not confined simply to Christ. Just as the sacrifice of Christ on the cross as the Lamb of God enables everyone to be ‘saved’ from the judgement of God, and to know that salvation, so the fulfilment of Tabernacles is for the church as well as Jesus because the church is in Him, in Christ.

‘Do you not know you are the temple of God and the Spirit tabernacles (dwells) in you?’ 1 Cor 3v16

‘Do you not know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you…’ 1 Cor 6 v 19

‘You are the temple of the living God’  2 Cor 6 v 16

The Feast of Tabernacles as recorded in John’s gospel in chapter 7 is another occasion when Jesus was in Jerusalem:

‘The Feast of Tabernacles was at hand…about the middle of the feast Jesus went up to the Temple and taught…on the last day of the feast, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink…out of his heart will flow streams of living water’. This He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given.’   John 7 v 2 ff

In the desert the Israelites had no water and no source of food; this was supernaturally provided; manna for food each morning and water coming from a rock. This is now fulfilled in the New Testament with the streams of living water coming from the seemingly most unlikely place – the hearts of those who believe in Him, Jews and Gentiles.

Churches are the ‘ekklesia’ or the called-out ones who are ‘living stones’, as Peter calls them, or ‘temples of the living God’ as Paul describes us.

Interestingly, Jews celebrate Sukkot (Tabernacles) today by arranging palm branches or similar as a loose-fitting roof as they gather underneath. The story of their exodus from slavery in Egypt and their journey through the wilderness using these temporary structures is retold.

For Christians, this symbolises our exodus from the slavery of sin and our pilgrimage or sojourning in this world. And our rooves, individually and as churches, should not be permanent hard structures but open enough to the heavens, to heaven in fact. Open to heaven in the sense that we are the temple now, where God is present.

All three feasts are permanently fulfilled in us:

Redemption from the slavery of sin - Passover

Open to the baptism of the Spirit - Pentecost

Completely dependent on God as our life – Tabernacles

Churches today tend to reflect one or two of these feast fulfilments rather than all three simultaneously.

In very approximate terms Evangelical churches are secure in preaching, teaching, and believing Jesus as the Passover Lamb of God. They know and preach salvation from sin, that our sins are forgiven, but not Pentecost. Until the minister or others within an Evangelical church see that Pentecost opens the way for the baptism in the Spirit, and experiences it, the church will be left with a Passover-only foundation.

Pentecostal and Charismatic churches (of any denomination and none) will preach Passover and Pentecost: forgiveness, relationship with God restored, and the baptism of the Spirit. But how many preach Tabernacles? A cursory examination of a few commentaries that attempt to tackle the relevance of Tabernacles to the church offset it to after the return of the Messiah and the winding up of this age (Rev 21 v 3). Whilst all three feasts inevitably have an eternal dimension that finds their greatest fulfilment in the age to come, Tabernacles, just as with Passover and Pentecost, has a Now dimension that is often not preached.

But Tabernacles? Does your church meet under a partially open roof? In other words, do your leaders facilitate openness to the Spirit of God when you meet? Or is the meeting pre-organised? The songs, the notices, the teaching, prayers and so on. Some churches have a written liturgy others have an unwritten liturgy…but you can set your watch by when the children are allowed to go to Sunday school.

A church that has all three working together simultaneously and seamlessly knows it is the body of Christ and its meetings are not only spontaneous but scriptural:

‘Whenever you meet together, each of you has a song, a teaching, a tongue, a revelation, an interpretation, let all things be done for edification’ 1 Cor 14 v 26

If the leadership in a church is not permitting this to be the norm something is wrong. There is no room for human control in the church, there is one head of the church, Jesus. Just as our heads coordinate our body’s functions so Jesus will coordinate His body, the body of Christ.

The extent to which each feast is fulfilled in our understanding and experience will be the extent to which we can minister the life of the Spirit to others. A believer may have been appointed as a Vicar, Pastor, Minister, homegroup leader, worship leader, Sunday school, or youth leader, but he or she can only minister what they have received from heaven.

If a church congregation is caught up in believing all three feasts and how they are fulfilled in Christ and in then in them, they are unlikely to want to appoint one person to take up an overall leadership role – this is reserved for Jesus Christ. In Acts, the apostles appointed elders, plural, never just one elder.

Elders, then, are responsible for teaching the congregation and encouraging growth toward spiritual maturity, laying the foundation of the three feasts, amongst other tasks. They will also be open to the ministry of prophets, teachers, evangelists, or visiting apostles – see the account of the church at Antioch in Acts 13. All meetings will be open to the leading of the Spirit because Jesus is head of the body. Elders’ meetings, diaconates, leaders’ meetings, home group meetings, musicians and worship meetings, pastoral…and so on, none are business meetings in the sense that they are led by a chairman through a predetermined agenda. The agenda is not set by man. All meetings, the scripture says ‘whenever you meet’ are transformed.  

As in the other churches in Acts, there is no mention of one leader or of human decision-making processes at play in Antioch: ‘As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work I have called them’’ ’ Acts 13 v 1,2

If you are a Christian living in Europe or another Western country, and reading this, you are so because of this meeting in Antioch; it was Paul and Barnabas who carried the gospel around the Mediterranean to Rome, to Greece, possibly to Spain, and beyond. The origins of Christianity in Europe lie in this one meeting and the simple phrase ‘as they ministered to the Lord the Holy Spirit said…’ not as the Vicar held a strategy meeting with his churchwardens, or the Baptist minister worked through a list of projects with the diaconate, or the Pentecostal Pastor with the elders. All meetings had rooves open to heaven where everybody gathered knew that God now dwells (tabernacles) with His people and He has the pre-eminent place.

I think we’d all agree that the meeting as described in Acts 13 that led to Paul and Barnabas being appointed as apostles (apostles meaning ‘sent ones’) was a successful meeting!

We need to preach all three feasts to have a clear foundation – the ‘Christianity’ that will flow from such churches will be just like having Jesus in town…because that is precisely what it is.

Book Review: The Magnificent Moustache & Other Stories

When I read through the five stories, I asked myself ‘Would I have read these to my children when they were younger?’ And the answer is a resounding Yes!

Many of the very old children’s stories allow the child to escape into worlds unlike their own such as Cinderella meeting and marrying a Prince, these stories also. The setting for two of the stories, Tea’s the Thing, and The King and i, is in the Royal Family and The Magnificent Moustache, for example, has a 7th Viscount and Lords and Ladies as principal characters. And we meet a Welsh Dragon in the final tale.

Each story contains an entertaining mix of humour, tension, and happy resolution – perfect for a bedtime story – and, for the intended age range, could be read by the child in one sitting. The language is accessible but also introduces the reader to a few unfamiliar words, such as indiscriminately, elixir, and propagating so the collection doesn’t play too safe.

The imaginative content of each story is matched by vivid descriptions, but you never feel bogged down in unnecessary detail, each tale is told at an engaging pace which is maintained from cover to cover.

Like all good stories, there are important messages tucked away as the plots unfold. Whether it’s that we can escape ruts we fall into, gently ridicule the ridiculousness of life, make a fresh start after a tragedy, or overcome bad habits, each story conveys its core moral purpose very well without being preachy.

If I was to pick a favourite scene it would be the Queen’s butler, Jeffries, as he ‘bowed and exited as calmly as he could. Once out of the room, he sprinted back along the corridor and slid down the bannisters at alarming speed – a thing he hadn’t contemplated for over twenty years – saving every spare second in order to see how the tea blending experiment was going in the kitchen.’

In one paragraph everything is turned upside-down. The adult becomes a child, sprinting and sliding down the banisters. The cool-headed butler is flustered and panicking, and the Royal kitchen is given over entirely on a fruitless mission to blend a perfect cup of tea for Her Majesty rather than preparing a feast. Finally, an unpredictable twist saves the day, leaving the Queen as unruffled as all Queens should be. Brilliant.

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The Magnificent Moustache and other stories

Available as an e-book or as a paperback.

Purchase on Amazon or order at all good bookshops.

Signed copies are available from Jenny Sanders directly for £9 +p&p and you can message her via her social media accounts below:

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Also, please visit Jenny’s blog

Dancing Through Chaos

Baptism – beyond the controversy Part IV

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In our last of four blogs on Baptism - getting beyond the controversy we continue with Part IV: ‘By one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’ 1 Cor 12 v 12. The gospel repairs the broken relationship between man and God…we are reconciled not just with God but with each other…if we allow the Spirit to baptise us into one body. Is this more difficult for us in the West which prides itself on the freedom of the individual? 
Click here to read Part III

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Baptism into one body

1 Cor 12 v 12 ‘By one Spirit we were all baptised into one body’

So far, we have seen that the New Testament teaches that believers are those that have been baptised into Christ Jesus (Rom 6v3/Gal 3v26). Then we have looked at how Jesus baptises us in the Holy Spirit (Acts 1 and 2), and now, how the Holy Spirit baptises us into one body, the body of Christ.

None of these ‘baptisms’ involve any water!

We have been so taken up with the controversy over infant baptism v believers baptism that it takes a jolt to even realise what the New Testament teaches about being baptised into Christ Jesus, or the baptism in the Spirit, and now, in this post, baptism into a body.

If baptism into Christ and the baptism of the Spirit is an individual event, this baptism is not.

In this baptism, the one doing the baptism is the Holy Spirit. The person being baptised is the believer. But it’s the end of any notion of independence. There are no lone-rangers in the church. Or at least there shouldn’t be! Once we have ‘seen’ this all our attempts to make our Christianity a private matter are demolished.

The church is not a building. That much we probably know. Nor is it simply an assembly of believers in one place; that’s closer, but not what the scriptures tell us. Nor is it the ‘body of Christ on Earth’ as if the church is disconnected from its Head, who is in heaven.

Whilst the word ‘church’ borrows from Greek democracy where citizens are called out, ‘ekklesia’, to assemble together, it has a richer meaning than this.

The key passage is 1 Corinthians chapter 12. Verse 13:

‘As the body is one and has many members…so also Christ, for by One Spirit we were all baptised into one body’

When we think of our own bodies, we know that the whole body is made up of many cells, tissues, and organs, all working together to make the whole organism function spontaneously. Each cell is alive and yet alive with who’s life? There is only one life, it is the life of the whole organism, the whole person.

The cells in my big toe on my right foot cannot boast ‘I’m alive with my own life’ as if they’re acting independently to the whole organism. The truth is they are as much ‘John Stevens’ as the rest of me. So it is with each believer. Our life is His life. I am no longer independent from Christ and no longer independent from other believers.

Where does the cell in my right toe derive its supply? And its role in the body? The answer is from the other cells around it. Life flows around the body spontaneously. How do my skin cells know what to do? Or my kidney cells?

What about in the body of Christ? Some do miracles, some speak in tongues, some prophesy, some teach, some are prophets, some teachers and so on.

But it doesn’t work unless we are willing to lose our independence. For many of us, particularly in the West, with its emphasis on individual liberty, and independence as a mark of freedom, we can end up resisting the Holy Spirit. We struggle to let the Spirit lead us INTO the truth. We may see it as an intellectual or even a prophetic truth, happy to leave it there, but are we willing to allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into the truth – and the truth into us?

Are our hearts open? Open to our fellow believers? Open to God? Are our hearts places like Jesus saw they should be, places of rivers of living water, flowing from believer to believer.

At the start of Jesus’ ministry, he called twelve individuals. By the end, they had been formed into a body.

Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, to the church in Corinth, was corrective. There had been some moral failings in the congregation, and the church’s unity was under threat. The purpose of the letter was to encourage the church to return to normal, as one body, not fragment, and to allow the Spirit to work among them:

‘Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation, let all things be done for edification…’   14 v 26

He didn’t say whenever you come together, don’t worry, the pastor will decide which hymns we’ll sing, the pastor will preach the word, the pastor will…that is the experience in many churches – just substitute Vicar or Priest or Minister, if ‘Pastor’ isn’t the title you give your church leader. Or, if you want to shift church cultures slightly: ‘Don’t worry, the worship leader will decide which songs are sung and how many times, the preacher will preach on the pre-set passage of Scripture, the…

It’s not that leaders in a congregation; elders, pastors, or teachers, the Vicar even, have no role, and are of no importance, but it is their prime function to facilitate the life of the body, the life of the Spirit, not to be the substitute for the Holy Spirit. If it is only one man functioning, the rest of the congregation cannot, they become little more than spectators locked away in permanent infancy, perpetually needing feeding rather than growing, participating, and functioning as ministering parts of the body.

The apostle Peter put it like this:

‘Coming to Him as to a living stone…you also, as living stones, are being built into a spiritual house…’ 1 Peter 2 v 4,5

Each believer is a ‘living stone’ alive with the life of the Spirit.

Paul, in writing 1 Corinthians did not impose greater ‘control’ from the leadership, his main task was to remind the Corinthians that they had been baptised by the Spirit into one body and that they needed to function like human bodies function: full of spontaneous life, of different gifts and so on.

The Holy Spirit baptising us into one body in our experience, not just in theory, challenges our pride, ambitions, shyness, and all our fleshly desires to do things or not do things on our terms! If you’re an organiser, and an effective leader by nature, you may need to die to that ability and learn to be led by the Spirit. If you’re the type of person that reacts to every need by wanting to help and inspire others to do the same – you will need to die to that and learn to know when the Spirit is prompting, when to act, and who to involve. If you’re a teacher-type, quite cerebral, and have a love of doctrine and ideas, you may need to die to that and learn to be more spontaneous in the Spirit. And if you’re an artistic type and full of imagination and creativity, you may need to die to that and do what the Spirit is telling you to do.

This is perhaps the hardest baptism. Or is it just me? If you read the gospels with fresh eyes you’ll see just what a difficult job Jesus had with the twelve…and that’s before you get to their mothers! It’s all there: self-advancement, self-protection, self-confidence. It all had to die. And be replaced with confidence, or faith, in the Spirit of Jesus to reproduce the life of Christ in the body.

The apostles found it hard to maintain unity. Paul fell out with Barnabas and with Peter. Peter struggled with James. John was banned from one church. It’s no surprise we struggle and fail. Like the Corinthians, we need to return at times to the New Testament normal. The NT indicates that Paul and Barnabus were reconciled in the end. Peter, it seems, accepted Paul’s criticisms.

‘Normal’, in NT terms, is handing over control once more to the Holy Spirit, the One who sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God (Romans 5). That’s the starting point for us to re-open our hearts to one another, get the fire burning, and for our meetings, and everyday life, to be crackling and burning with the presence of the Holy Spirit and fire.

One final point. This is as much true if you’re a member of a church that meets in one room or part of a church of thousands. The question is: when you meet are you a functioning body, with the gifts of the Spirit freely distributed amongst you, or has that life of the Spirit been excluded from the congregation? If so, someone needs to press ‘Reset’.

Loose Change

Pig. The ceramic one that stares at me

Frozen in time

Is still fed, when food is found,

But his expression

Is little altered

A decade has passed

Since his last oil change

The rubber seal left undisturbed

Until this morning                                                                   

And out it, they, pour

Metallic sounds

Like snapping branches

And small sounding cymbals

Announce the purging

Tanners, shillings, and half-crowns

Jostling, like children

For their place

Woe betide anyone who says to them

‘Loose change’

The Queen’s face will not be amused

There is a date that must not be spoken aloud

Valentine’s plus one, 1971

In a stroke, at midnight,

The pig became a museum

And its currency lost all purchasing power

Like all of us, sons of Adam,

Caught up in a Messiah on a cross

Brought into His death

Losing all our old purchasing power

And buried, out of sight

And now? The whole of creation

Stands on tip-toe

Waiting for the new currency

God’s loose change

Sons of God, to be revealed.

Baptism – beyond the controversy Part III

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In the third of four blogs on Baptism - getting beyond the controversy we continue with Part III: John the Baptist prophesied that he baptised with water, but someone was coming who would ‘baptise with the Holy Spirit’. But what does it mean to be baptised with the Holy Spirit?  
Click here to read Part II

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Baptism in the Holy Spirit

Acts 1 v 5 ‘John truly baptised water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit’

There needs to be someone to administer the baptism: it’s not DIY.

When John the Baptist was preaching, he prophesied: ‘I baptise you with water, but there is coming One who will baptise you with Holy Spirit and with fire’   Mat 4v11, Mk 1v 8, Luke 3 v 16, John 1 v 33

Jesus repeated John’s prophecy to the disciples: ‘John truly baptised with water, but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit’.

He said this just prior to the Ascension. The three years of Jesus’ discipleship of the apostles, and others, had led to this moment. Jesus would ascend into heaven but from there would baptise the disciples with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus is the baptiser with the Holy Spirit and when the Spirit was poured out on the disciples on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2) true Christianity began:

‘When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place and there came a sound from heaven…and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them the ability’.

This pouring out of the Holy Spirit was repeated throughout the book of Acts, as people came to faith, they received the baptism in the Holy Spirit; some at the point of conversion, some before (see Acts 10 v44), some after (see Acts 8v 1-17).

Why are not all believers baptised in the Spirit? Most often because they either haven’t been told about the Holy Spirit, but we will deal with this later.

What should be commonplace in the churches is not. When I was taken to church in my childhood, I could not understand why the services were so unlike the ministry of Jesus and the apostles. It was largely because of this mismatch that I doubted the authenticity of the New Testament and, like so many, although I was attracted to Jesus, his teaching, his criticism of the religious leaders, and miracles, the disparity between what I was seeing and what was being read to us from Scripture was too great. Whatever longings I might have had to believe in Him were buried in the lack of evidence around me in church that the Scriptures were genuine. And so, I, along with so many of my generation, swelled the ranks of the agnostics.

I then began to hear and read accounts of individuals and churches that were experiencing the very things I knew as so lacking in my experience of church. After a great deal of soul searching and reading, I was faced with a choice. Eventually, I believed. I’m one of those who had an instantaneous conversion to Christ. Nothing dramatic. As an agnostic, I had stopped reciting the Apostles Creed during church services for years, but on one particular Sunday morning, I opened my mouth and as I said the familiar words ‘I believe in God, the Father…’ I believed. The speaking and believing were simultaneous. It was very quiet. No altar calls or dramatic music. And yet everything changed in that moment. It’s difficult to describe.

And yet I also knew, from reading accounts of the baptism in the Spirit, that this baptism hadn’t happened automatically for me at that time. That came later.

To return to the subject matter, baptism in the Spirit is not about baptism in water; Baptism in the Spirit is Jesus immersing us, flooding us, saturating us with the Spirit of God.

Jesus’ vision of the Christian faith is described in John chapter 7:

‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, , out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’ But this he said concerning the Spirit…Who had not yet been given’ (John 7 v 37-39).

This was Jesus’ understanding of the fundamental nature of what has become known as Christianity; it should be our normal experience.

The baptism in the Spirit is all about thirst. How thirsty are you? I’ve only been seriously dehydrated once. Foolishly, I didn’t take enough water with me walking around Snowdon and around the ridges leading off Snowdon away from the well-worn paths. There were no streams at all, it’s arid up there. And, unusual perhaps for Wales, it was a very hot, sunny day, with not a cloud in the sky. By the time I staggered back to where I had a small bivouac by a stream, I lay down headfirst in the stream and drank and drank, desperate for water.

The problem for so many of us in the West, in England and elsewhere, is that we have been steeped in a view of the world from the Enlightenment onwards that has left us with an empirical, evidence and reason-based view of the world…to the exclusion of spiritual revelation. As a Chemistry teacher by profession and someone who was always fascinated by science, I have been ‘baptised’ if you will in that view of the world. I love teaching about Galileo and others who were imprisoned for not following the church’s Aristotelean dominated theories about forces and so on, dropping weights from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Empirical evidence trumping the thought experiments of Greek philosophy. Both, ironically, exalting Reason above all else, the ability of the human mind to ascertain truth.

But Jesus did not operate like this. On one occasion he fed five thousand with just a few fish and loaves of bread. Reason would have told him to dismiss the crowd so they could go and buy some food. In fact, as I read the bible, Old Testament and New, I found out that all the bible characters had similar experiences. Somehow, they had heard from God, believed what they had heard, and ‘it came to pass’. Reason and evidence has its place, but not to be exalted above all else. It’s hard for us to switch systems! Not that God’s word is a system, the bible says it is living and active, like a two-edged sword, discerning between soul and spirit. ‘Soul’ being our reason, our will, and our emotions; ‘spirit’ being the part of us, our innermost being, where we commune with the Holy Spirit. Essentially, we are spiritual by nature. Our souls and our bodies are amazing, even if they malfunction, but our essential self is spiritual, spirit. And we can become so spiritually dehydrated our innermost beings cry out to be quenched.

The key is the baptism in the Spirit. If we are saturated with the Spirit, if the Spirit becomes this fountain that Jesus spoke about. It is easier to see, then, that we might begin to learn to operate like Jesus. Like the apostles. Like many other ordinary believers as recorded in Acts and the Epistles did. It’s not for the few, it’s for anyone who is thirsty.

Lastly, speaking in tongues and other ‘gifts’ of the Holy Spirit.

To start with I think it is worth saying that for many, like me, the miraculous is such a far cry from our childhood and maybe adulthood experience of church that it is hard to equate speaking in tongues, prophecy, healing, and miracles with church or ‘Christianity’, especially in England! Putting it bluntly, if you were to drive to the nearest town, attend the Morning Service, you are not likely to hear someone speak in tongues, or prophesy, or a miracle of healing take place before your eyes. These things are so foreign to our expectation of Sunday services, we would be shocked to see or hear them.

And yet this is exactly what the New Testament teaches, and the early church practiced. But not only then. There have always been churches that have known this reality and there are a growing number – even in England!

It all starts with being thirsty. As Jesus said ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink…’

The baptism in the Spirit is not an ‘experience’, although many do experience a sense of power, or speaking in tongues (other languages), or prophesy, but is the foundation and doorway of the true and normal Christian life, which is led by the Spirit, not our ability alone to think; our reason.

Please click here for Baptism – getting beyond the controversy Part IV

Baptism – getting beyond the controversy Part II

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In the second of four blogs on Baptism - getting beyond the controversy we continue with Part II: In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes about being ‘baptised into Christ Jesus’. The passage in Romans 6 is often used to explain the imagery of water baptism but what did Paul really have in mind? 
Click here to read Part I

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Getting beyond the controversy does not mean that baptism is not controversial! Look at this exchange between Jesus and his opponents, the religious leaders:

‘Tell me,’ Jesus said, ‘the baptism of John – was it from heaven or from men?’ Luke 20 v 4

They refused. They couldn’t say ‘heaven’ otherwise they should have been baptised. But they couldn’t say ‘men’ as they feared the crowd.

And Luke comments earlier in his gospel that ‘the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the will of God for themselves, not having been baptised by John’.

As a reminder here are three ‘baptisms’ we are considering are:

1. Romans 6 v 3 ‘Or do you know know that as many as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death?’

Romans 6 v 3: ‘Or do you know know that as many as were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death?’

The question posed by Paul is relevant today.

It’s really two questions:

• Do you know you were baptised into Christ?

• Do you, who were baptised into Christ, know you were baptised into His death

I have been a member of three ‘evangelical/charismatic churches’ and I haven’t heard one sermon, and certainly no consistent teaching, on ‘baptism into Christ Jesus’ and ‘baptism into His death’. Not one!

Isn’t that controversial?

As a taster of a fuller explanation, it appears that many theological colleges that prepare ministers and preachers for various denominations, especially Protestant colleges and seminaries, limit their understanding of the crucifixion of Christ to the ‘substitutionary’ nature of Christ’s sacrifice: He died for us and in our place.

That, of course, is wonderfully true. Hymns and songs are written in their thousands and sung with fire and passion to celebrate this truth:

And can it be that I should gain
An interest in the Saviour’s blood?
Died He for me who caused His pain
For me who Him to death pursued?
Amazing love! How can it be
That Thou my God should die for me?

Or…

Who brings our chaos back into order
Who makes the orphan a son and daughter
The King of Glory, the King of Glory

This is amazing grace
This is unfailing love
That You would take my place
That You would bear my cross
You lay down Your life
That I would be set free
Jesus, I sing for
All that You’ve done for me

This is Amazing Grace

But where are the sermons, where are the hymns and songs that are gripped with joy over the ‘inclusive’ sacrifice of Christ; that his sacrifice on the cross included us? If it is not taught in theological colleges, it’s therefore locked away in the New Testament like a well-preserved vintage wine. Maybe it’s time to pop the cork?

I think so.

I’ve heard many sermons on baptism explaining that it symbolises a believer’s conversion: leaving their old life behind, ‘dying to sin’ (v2), being buried under the water, like Jesus in the tomb, and then raised up to a new life in Christ as Jesus was resurrected.  But many limit themselves to verse 2 – and pick up on the phrase ‘died to sin’ – referring to the person’s decision to leave ‘sin’ behind and put their faith in Christ. Wonderful though that is, and important, this is not what Paul is referring to when he writes of being ‘baptised into Christ Jesus’.

It is not the act of water baptism that produces this spiritual transformation. Not even those who practice infant baptism say that by baptising a baby you ‘make them a Christian’. We don’t bury people to make them die! But when they have died, we must bury them! That’s the explosive message of the gospel! The good news! A new life, baptised into Christ Jesus!

To quote the first six verses of Romans chapter 6:

‘Do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so, we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him’

To understand how we can have ‘died with Christ’, been ‘crucified with Christ’, when we haven’t even been born when He was crucified, we need to understand the biblical concept of being ‘in’ someone.

The bible speaks of Levi, being ‘in Abraham’ paying tithes to Melchizedek. Abraham had paid the king of Jerusalem, Melchizedek, a tenth of his wealth. Levi was Abraham’s great-grandson and not born when Abraham paid the money. But by being ‘in’ Abraham’s loins (Hebrews 7 v 10) from a biblical perspective he paid the tithes. The Israelites following Moses through the desert were ‘baptised into Moses in the cloud and the sea’ 1 Cor 10 v 1. We are born ‘in Adam’. The biblical understanding is one of inheritance. Once we are ‘in’ someone we inherit all that they are and all they have done. In ‘Adam’ therefore we inherit a sinful nature which explains why we fail to keep any commandments (not just the Ten, but any rules we would like to impose on others; at some point we will probably fail even these!)

But now, says Paul, we have been baptised into Christ and so we are ‘in Christ’. Once we see this and believe it and place our faith in it, we begin to find out just how true it is!

In technical language, this is the ‘inclusive’ sacrifice of Christ. God included you and me in the death of Christ. In His burial. And in His resurrection. When we understand this, our life is put on a completely new footing. No longer is the Christian life one of attempting to be more like Jesus, or even trusting the Holy Spirit to improve us steadily or sanctify us. Rather it is a huge relief, and we are left permanently in a state of utter thankfulness. As if often said about grace: ‘We don’t deserve it, and we didn’t earn it’. It is given freely. As Jesus said ‘freely have you received, freely give.’ That ‘old man’, that ‘in-Adam’ man has been crucified with Christ.

‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me, the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me’ Galatians 2 v 20

Or as Paul says elsewhere: ‘we are new creations in Christ Jesus, the old has gone, see, the new has come!’

The word baptism, as we have seen, means to plunge into, to make thoroughly wet with whatever an object is being baptised into. If it was a piece of cloth being baptised into a vat full of a particular dye, it would emerge soaked in that new colour. Someone has to baptise the cloth; it can’t baptise itself!

In water baptism, usually, there is one person, sometimes two, who baptises the person; so the question arises ‘who is it who baptises us into Christ Jesus?

It is God who baptises us into Christ Jesus.

‘It is of God that you are in Christ Jesus’  1 Cor 1 v 30

We become thoroughly soaked with Christ…that’s Christianity. Just as you cannot separate the dye from the cloth once the cloth has been dipped, baptizo, nor can you separate Christ from the new believer of the believer from Christ.

Water baptisms are a great occasion. We are symbolically burying someone who has died. But, true to form, we are also celebrating the resurrection in Christ of a person who knows they have died and raised as Paul puts it to ‘walk in newness of life’; Christ’s life penetrating every part of this new life, like the cloth dipped, or baptizo, baptised with a vivid new dye.

To finish, remember the man who was in the hotel and was baptised standing under a sudden storm on his hotel balcony? The longer version of this story of that he had been struggling with Christianity and had decided to read the New Testament, probably the hotel room Gideon bible, I can’t remember. Over the course of a few days, he began to understand and believe what he was reading. Then he read about baptism and realised he needed to be baptised.

In his case God did both baptisms; the one in water as he was drenched in the shower and spiritually.

Please click here to read Baptism - getting beyond the controversy Part III

Baptism – getting beyond the controversy Part I

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This is the first of a short series of posts on Baptism and how baptism in water relates to three other baptisms mentioned in the New Testament: baptism into Christ, baptism with the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit baptising us into the body of Christ, the church. 

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I want to write something about baptism. But, if possible, get beyond the controversy over the means of baptism (sprinkling or full immersion) or the timing of baptism (infant baptism or ‘believers’ baptism).

In the New Testament, the Greek word ‘baptizo’ is used for a range of contexts, not just water baptism. The purpose of this article is to explore the following three:

• Romans 6 Baptism into Christ Jesus

• Acts 1 Baptism in the Holy Spirit

• 1 Cor 12 Baptism by the Spirit into the body of Christ

I’ll divide the blog into four separate posts. These will be published over the coming weeks.

The first is a brief run-through of the historical background to water baptism, particularly in England. It will touch on the ‘church/chapel’ divide and the ‘non-conformist’ denominations that grew up in Europe and England in part over the controversy over infant baptism.

Then a brief look at what Jews in Israel, alive at the time of Jesus and the apostles, would have made of John the Baptist’s insistence on water baptism before tackling the above trio of passages from the New Testament. If you want to go straight to the last section, you can! I’ll mark each section with a sub-heading.

The next three will tackle the three types of baptism, as mentioned above.

Post One: The historical background

My childhood included a reasonable degree of connection with the local Anglican church. This connection with the CofE and Christianity wasn’t limited to attendance of Sunday Morning services; there were the daily school assemblies with scripture readings, hymns and prayers, Ascension Day service in another CofE church, Cubs, then Scouts, and carol services in Canterbury Cathedral.

One way or another I, along with many of my generation, were soaked in scripture, we knew the major bible characters, Adam and Eve, Moses, David, John the Baptist, Jesus, and the parables. But the connection was mostly surface deep; there was little or no discussion about ‘religion’ at home or at school and certainly no expectation to ‘believe’. What was on offer was more tradition than conviction; th church was there for life’s important milestones, ‘hatch, match, and despatch’ – and hatch meant infant baptism, or ‘Christening’. A good excuse for a family celebration, photos, presents, expensive suits and dresses are bought and, if you’re lucky, a good feast is attached. Life goes on.

Anyone who does not ‘conform’ to this pattern is still included and so, whatever their true beliefs; it is the willingness to go along with tradition that keeps the traditions alive. Many Vicars will baptise the infants of atheists and agnostics as much as the children of the more devout. It says something of the place of the CofE in the life of the nation – it is almost seen as part and parcel of their civic duty, a ‘service’, if you will, to anyone born in the Parish.

Baptism in the New Testament was anything but normal or uncontroversial. Nor was it confined to baptism in water. The term ‘baptism’ was a Greek word used around the Mediterranean for a number of contexts and its use in the New Testament is not restricted to water baptism.

‘Baptizo’, the Greek word for baptism, can have a range of everyday meanings such as sprinkling, dipping, or submerging, or immersion. It is used as the verb to immerse a cloth in a dye, or to wash away or cleanse, or, figuratively, be overwhelmed, or buried. John the Baptist and subsequently the writers of the New Testament, would not have thought of the word ‘baptizo’ as a word exclusively related to spiritual matters. It was a word in common use.

‘Baptizo’ : sprinkling, dipping, or submerging, or immersion

Unlike for us. In Britain and elsewhere, the word baptism is almost exclusively used in connection with either christening or as an initiation into a church. It can be used metaphorically, borrowing from biblical phraseology, for example the phrase ‘baptism of fire’ is used for someone of any age who is joining a team or a business that is known to be a challenging project, either due to controversy or great success.

Throughout church history, since the first century, there have been groups of Christians who have believed that the time to baptise an individual is after they have ‘come to faith’, or ‘believed’, or been ‘born again’, or ‘saved’, or ‘converted’ to Christ i.e. not at birth or shortly afterwards. Famous amongst those groups are the Baptists and Anabaptists who were persecuted and discriminated against for holding such subversive and non-conformist views. It seems odd to us in the 21st Century but until the Toleration Act in England in 1688, holding that view about baptism often resulted in imprisonment and execution. So it has a residual element of controversy to this day.

Churches such as Baptist, Pentecostal, Methodist, and Quakers are still referred to as ‘non-conformist’ churches and the divide between ‘church’ and ‘chapel’ persists even if the heat has diminished.

In this sense I am a non-conformist. My reading of the bible is that it is only those that had committed their lives to Christ that were baptised – you will not find an exception to this in the pages of the New Testament. An infant cannot be expected to make such a choice! The term ‘anabaptist’ means to re-baptise. Many who joined the anabaptists had previously been christened but were baptised once they had come to faith in Christ.

An often-quoted phrase that summarises the belief about baptism amongst many non-conformists is that baptism is an ‘outward sign of an inward spiritual reality’. Arguments will continue on whether those who are ‘christened’ in infant baptism, can take that baptism as sufficient once the spiritual reality has become their experience later in life. That is a personal decision.

This article is not about the controversy surrounding ‘infant baptism’ or ‘believers’ baptism, or the method of baptism: sprinkling, full immersion, in a river, the sea, and so on. This article is about the spiritual realities that are at the heart of the references in the New Testament with respect to baptizo, or baptism.

John the Baptist and after John

We know from the gospels that John the Baptist baptised many in the River Jordan. Jesus spoke of John’s baptism as a baptism of repentance:

‘The word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.’   Luke 3 v 3

Not far from where John was baptised were communities of the ‘Essenes’, Jews who were looking for the kingdom of God to appear. To prepare spiritually for the coming of this new kingdom they baptised themselves daily.

John’s baptism, therefore, was similar in that the forgiveness of sins was not simply about being cleansed from personal guilt but, without forgiveness, they would remain in exile, outside the kingdom of God.

When Jesus’ disciples were baptised, the meaning of baptism had advanced, the kingdom of God had arrived in the person of Jesus the Messiah and so the people were now baptised in the Name of Jesus the Messiah (Messiah is the Aramaic word meaning Anointed One, in Greek: ‘Christ’).

Baptism, then, is a highly symbolic act. It represents a clear dividing line between the past and the future.

Later, after Jesus’ resurrection, ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit, we see how baptism had taken on new significance. An important insight is given in the opening verses of chapter 19 of Acts:

‘Paul…came to Ephesus and, finding some disciples, he said to them ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ They said to him, ‘We haven’t heard whether there is a Holy Spirit’. And Paul said to them ‘Into what then were you baptised?’ They said, ‘John’s baptism’. Paul then said, ‘John indeed baptised for repentance saying to the people they should believe on…Christ Jesus’. When they heard this they were baptised in the Name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them, and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.’

Today, if a Gentile wishes to become a Jew, he or she is baptised in a pool with a flow of water, like a river. The river flowing past takes away his or her old identity as a Gentile and he or she is raised out of the water as a member of Israel.

Baptism, then, is a highly symbolic act. It represents a clear dividing line between the past and the future.

In the following posts, which are about references in the New Testament using the word ‘baptizo’ but in a different context to water baptism, it is important to hold onto one thing: baptizo was a common Greek word meaning to plunge into or be submerged into or dipped under to be soaked by.

‘Full immersion’ is a good phrase that gets to the heart of the meaning of the word ‘baptizo’. ‘Sprinkling’ is OK but only in the sense of having a very long shower, so you are completely soaked. The very cursory sprinkling carried out by many priests in the CofE or Catholic Churches and others maybe is sufficient ‘symbolically’ but only if you know the true meaning of the word baptizo. Personally, I prefer a full immersion.

I’ve seen baptisms in church baptistries, in the sea, in large tubs in someone’s back garden. I know someone who was so keen to get baptised but was in a hotel in a non-christian country. He prayed and felt God say go and stand on his hotel balcony. It was a hot, arid country. He obeyed this inner ‘nudge’, went outside. A black cloud came overhead and he was deluged in a sudden storm. He took that to be his baptism!! The method is the least of our worries… it’s what baptism means that matters.

I hope you enjoy reading the next few posts.

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Please click here for Baptism – getting beyond the controversy Part II

Psalm 23 for the Invisible Ones

I am a film star
But no-one know
I have forgotten my own name

I am a doctor healing
And no-one saw
The coldness creep over my heart

I am the pastor preaching
Yet I am the one
In deepest need

I am the navigator
And no-one knows…
…I can’t see my way home

I am the one sheep
Alone in the herd
Needing to hear your voice
Just one word

My name

And peace, the quiet waters by
Restore my addled mind
River running
Cool. Calm. Clear. Deep.

The Number 4 Bus…or Unless a Seed revisited

From the perspective of the bus, the starting point was the bus station. So each of my morning journeys was really a journey to the start punctuated by various stops.

It’s a little like this for my Facebook and website blog posts. I’ve arrived at the start; the start being Jesus’ very short parable about the seed falling into the ground and dying. Short but it packs a punch.

‘The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone. But if it dies it produces much fruit.’ John 12 v23-25

The crowds had just greeted Jesus as he made his way on a donkey into Jerusalem ‘Hosannah! The Son of David! The king of Israel!’ was shouted from the onlookers as they cut down the palm branches and their coats for the donkey to walkover. Palm Sunday. Glory, the coup d’état to remove the Romans, coronation…all seemed possible…Israel, at last, redeemed, the Messiah the Son of David is here!

Jesus agrees ‘The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified’ but the route to true glory was, he knew, via crucifixion and death. But he understood that death as the necessary prelude to glory.

Seeds are alive

Seeds are alive. A small part of the seed is alive. Most of it is a food store, but just a few cells are respiring slowly. That’s why Jesus said a seed ‘has to die’. Imagine an apple ‘pip’ or seed falling into the ground. As it germinates and grows a small root and shoot and the first leaves, it uses up its food store…the seed has died. What is growing now is not the seed. The seed has done its job and has died. The same life but in a different form is growing. Eventually, a tree is formed, branches, blossom in the summer and fruit…hundreds maybe of apples. Inside of which are 6 seeds. Just like the original. Containing the same life. The original seed has reproduced its own life in countless other seeds inside the fruit. That is Christianity.

Into the grave went the Messiah. The one seed. ‘Messiah’ means the Anointed One. In the OT Kings, Priests, and Prophets were anointed by the Spirit of God. Jesus was all three. The Son of David, the true High Priest, and a Prophet speaking the word of God.

Each believer in Christ is one of those new seeds. The whole plant is the resurrected Christ but ‘in Him’ are all the believers. We are ‘in Christ’ and Christ is in us. In fact, the NT goes further than this. Consider each of the apple seeds. Their life IS the life of the original seed. There is no life independent of the original seed or the rest of the tree. Their life is produced and sustained entirely as a result of the one seed going into the ground and dying.

Half a Zebra

How not to measure sanctification

I have three friends who are physicists. In my experience, these Guardians of the Universe treat us lesser mortals with equal measures of pity and patience. When answering any question, glasses are removed and polished languidly, before replacing them, having considered how to explain to a mere mortal the intricacies of The Standard Model as the basic kit needed to peel away the scales from my eyes.

You may know the drill?

Shocking news then this week that the Standard Model which has proven to be an excellent theoretical basis for, well, everything…may not be as perfect as once assumed. The W Boson, apparently, is heavier than predicted by the Standard Model and this has left Physicists scratching their collective heads.

Shocking news also for evangelical theologians as their Standard Model may need to progress to 3.0 from 2.0

In Science, theories and Standard Models are as good as they are until a result comes its way that requires the theory to be modified or rejected. History tells us that pioneers of the former theory fight tooth and nail before yielding to the greater wisdom of a new theory. A classic example is the Newtonian Theory of Universal Gravity yielding its pre-eminence to the warping of the space and time care of Albert Einstein in his superior theory of General Relativity.

Is this the case in theology? By ‘theology’ I mean, in essence, correct biblical understanding of the scriptures, or doctrine, if you will.

My thesis on the Standard Gospel Models

Standard Gospel Models 1.0 and 2.0 are fundamentally flawed. The evidence for this is that 1.0 and 2.0 fail to explain the NT position on sanctification and glory. As 1.0 had to yield to 2.0 so 2.0 will yield to 3.0.

NB the original apostles who wrote the NT understood, taught and experienced all of the material they wrote. Much of that early teaching was diluted and forgotten as church traditions grew. Since the Reformation we have been in a ‘recovery’ mode of rediscovery; 1.0; 2.0; and 3.0 are all necessary stages on that recovery road.

Standard Model 1.0 Evangelical (from 1520 to 1900)

Romans 1-5 the remaining chapters are outliers e.g. confusion over Romans 6 and 7 and straight contradiction of Rom 8 v 28 – 30.

In summary:  salvation from sin and the gift of eternal life, the gift of righteousness, salvation by grace not by works, sola fide, and justification by faith.

The Reformation theologians re-discovered much of 1.0.

Standard Model 2.0 Pentecostal/Charismatic (1900 to…)

As above but in addition the rediscovery of Jesus not only as Saviour and Lord but as Baptizer in the Holy Spirit and a re-awakening to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through each believer e.g. the gifts and the fruit of the Spirit.

Charles Fox Parnham was the early 2.0 pioneer  Charles Fox Parham (1873-1929) (revival-library.org)

Standard Model 3.0 Nicknames take a while to land…

Before we look into 3.0 there is an important point to face.

Luther and others who defied Rome and called for a Reformation and rediscovered what was always there in the Scriptures were shunned, opposed, persecuted, and worse. European history is a sorry tale of Reformation and Counter-Reformation, of opposing politico-religious forces, with consequent wars, theological tussles, and wrestling matches. It was costly moving into 1.0.

Equally the early Pentecostals who experienced the baptism of the Spirit were often rejected by evangelical churches and forced to form their own churches, the Pentecostal churches. Many mainstream denominational churches in the 1970s embraced baptism in the Spirit as part of their NT doctrine, taught it, becoming the charismatic churches we see across the UK and the world – whatever the denominational label on the side of the building.

But still, in 2.0, sanctification and glory are ‘outliers’, Romans 6 & 7 are not integrated into the theology and Romans 8 v 28-30 is routinely contradicted. They stick out like wrong-shaped jigsaw pieces.

Standard Model 3.0 attempts to incorporate Romans 6 & 7 and Romans 8v28-30 and gets to grips with what it means to be ‘in Christ’.

Billy Graham preached the 1.0 version of the gospel, as had Luther, Calvin, John Wesley, George Whitfield, and countless others before him. Those converted under those ministries speak of being ‘born again’ or of ‘being saved’ or of the assurance they have of their salvation from the ‘witness of the Spirit’. They would be encouraged to be part of a church, pray and read their bibles as the word of God and be willing to share the gospel with others. It is estimated that over 3 million individuals came to faith in Christ through Billy Graham’s ministry alone. I have met many in the UK converted through his preaching.

From 1967 until 2019 another evangelist, the German Reinhart Bonkke, trained in Swansea Bible College before preaching mainly in Africa. It is estimated that over 70 million came to faith in Christ through his ministry. He preached the 2.0 gospel like Charles Fox Parnham and William Joseph Seymour at Azusa Street in Los Angeles in 1904 had before him. In many other continents since the 1960s and 1970s many ‘evangelical’ 1.0 version preachers and ordinary believers experienced the baptism in the Spirit and saw miracles. Churches were transformed and the greatest growth in the church worldwide has come from the Pentecostal/Charismatic churches. In all the major cities and many towns across the UK, you will find at least one if not many churches that preach 2.0 and have done for at least a generation.

My contention, and the contention of many others, though is that the biblical basis for 2.0 is restricted to Romans 1-5 + baptism in the Spirit. Hopefully, I can give a clear explanation of the differences between 1.0 and 2.0, and 3.0.

Under 1.0 and 2.0 salvation is understood as Justification by faith followed by a lifetime process of sanctification and then resurrection and glory. Inherent in this understanding of the gospel, sanctification is seen as a gradual transformation of the individual into the likeness of Christ.

By the end of Romans 5 Paul has taught us that the crucifixion of Christ was ‘substitutionary’. I was the sinner that deserved to be punished but Jesus, in dying willingly on the cross, stood in my place and took the punishment I deserved. A typical illustration used is of a thief awaiting sentence in court. But the judge acquits the criminal: ‘Acquitted. Fine paid.’ The guilty man looks at the judge in astonishment. The judge himself had paid the fine and the criminal is free to go.

The great problem with this illustration is that, although the debt had been paid, the nature of the thief has not fundamentally changed. He is still the same man that leaves the court. Whether he commits another crime or lives an exemplary life from that point on is not the point; he is still the same man. In more biblical terminology: his sins have been forgiven but the sinner remains. He may even use the phrase to describe himself as a ‘sinner saved by grace’ – this is a distortion of the gospel.

In Romans chapter 5 Paul begins to use the language to describe the whole of humanity as either ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’ to show that, in the crucifixion of Christ, God not only dealt with our sins but sin itself and, therefore, the sinner. For example, v19: ‘For as by one man’s disobedience (referring to Adam) many were made sinners, so also through one man’s obedience (referring to Christ) many will be made righteous’.

How this has occurred is explained in the following chapter, chapter 6.

‘Do you not know that as many of us were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death…knowing this that our old man was crucified with Him…’ v3-6

Paul is showing us that Christ’s death was not only ‘substitutionary’ but ‘inclusive’. That the old ‘in-Adam-sinner’ died, was crucifed with Christ and the new ‘in-Christ’ person has come to life.

Our salvation, then, is not just that our sins have been forgiven (that is wonderful of course) but that the sinner has been dealt with in the crucifixion. This is consistent with verses elsewhere in the NT:

1 Cor 1 v 30 ‘But of Him you are in Christ Jesus who has become for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption’

‘If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, old things have passed away, behold all things have become new’ 2 Cor 5 v17

‘I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ, who lives in me. The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’  Gal 2v20

‘For you died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life…’ Col 3 v 3,4

Once we ‘see’ this it changes our starting point as believers. We are brand new in Christ. The future then is a process of growth and maturity, not self-improvement. We have been sanctified by God setting us apart in Christ. Sanctification/holiness and saints are all equivalent Greek words. 1 Corinthians – a letter written in part to address serious moral failings in the church in Corinth – affirms that the believers are saints i.e. are holy, are sanctified. That isn’t in doubt:

‘To the church…to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints…’ 1 Cor 1v2

NB translators who are from 1.0 and 2.0 contradict Paul’s statement and insert ‘…called to be saints…’ but this is not in the Greek text. If you belong to 1.0 or 2.0 then clearly in Corinth the problem was a lack of sanctification. But in 3.0 sanctification is the starting point. We are saints, not, of course, by virtue of our innate goodness or moral superiority, but because we have been made new in Christ. The problem, as Paul argues in 1 Cor 3, was of immaturity, of living by the flesh, and imitating ‘mere men’ i.e. old-in-Adam men not by the Spirit.

‘I could not speak to you as spiritual people but as carnal as babies in Christ…you are still carnal…and are behaving like mere men’ 1 Cor 3v1-4

This is why the NT describes the Christian life as one of moving from glory to glory not Adam to Christ; our starting point is Christ as is our end:

‘But we all…are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory’ 2 Cor 3 v 18

In 1.0 and 2.0 this is simply re-interpreted as ‘from our old man progressively into the new man’…a self-improvement programme run by the Spirit. But this verse shows us that in the first instant of time after placing our faith in Christ we have been glorified and are set then to grow in that glory…because the glory is in Christ.

In 3.0 Romans 8 v 28-30 works smoothly.

‘’…whom he called, these he also justified; and whom he justified he also glorified.’

Paul’s use of the past-tense for ‘glorified’ doesn’t fit with 1.0 and 2.0 and appears to be the wrong-shaped jigsaw piece. Consequently, commentaries written by 1.0 and 2.0 believers routinely contradict and re-work Paul’s use of the past tense:

FF Bruce

Sanctification is glory begun, glory is sanctification is glory completed. Paul looks forward to the completion of the work.

Thomas R. Schreiner

The glorification posited here does not start in this life

Douglas Moo

While not experienced yet the divine decision to glorify those who have been justified has already been made

Ellicott

Glorified: strictly, the glorifying of the Christian awaits him in the future, but the Apostle regards all these different acts as focused together as it were on a single point in the past.

Matthew Poole

Some, under this term of glorification, would have sanctification included; because, otherwise, they think there is a great defect in this chain of salvation.

Cambridge Bible School

Glorified: a past tense used, with wonderful power, of a thing future.

None agree with Paul that glorification, as well as sanctification and justification, are all wrapped up and describe the salvation we enter by faith. They cannot agree because their Romans 1-5 faith is limited to the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Once the cross is seen as inclusive as well as substitutionary Paul’s use of the past tense makes sense and is logical.

We move, as the apostle wrote, from glory to glory.

Paul’s prayer in Ephesians ‘to Him be glory in the church in all generations’ Eph 3v21 is within the remit of the gospel not a fanatical hope and cannot be postponed to the end of the age if the glory is to be in the church in every generation.

Final Comments

1.0 and 2.0 Christians believe in half a zebra.

If you are in 1.0 or 2.0 you believe and hope that there will be a little less of me and a little more of Jesus as time progresses, mirroring John the Baptist’s words ‘I must decrease; He must increase.

But, as we have seen, according to the New Testament, you have been crucified. You cannot decrease!

You cannot measure sanctification on a supposed scale of holiness, in holy Zebras, or any other unit of holiness, there is no scale.

‘Of Him, you are in Christ Jesus who has become for us our…sanctification…(so)…glory in the Lord’’ 1 Cor 1v30

The Normal Christian Church Life – Watchman Nee

I first read The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee in 1977. It was only a few months ago, though, that a friend, Chris Welch, mentioned he had also written The Normal Christian Church.

What you’ll find below are some key quotations from the book and a few personal comments where relevant.

Some context:

Have you noticed during the Pandemic that many preachers are crackling with static electricity, presenting a range of prophetic indicators about the future of the church on the basis that the pandemic has afforded us an opportunity for a re-set, a pause, a time-out, and a re-think. This, of course, is mirrored in the world: the name of the 50th World Economic Forum in 2020 was ‘The Great Reset’.

If you’re familiar with Naomi Klein’s book ‘Shock Doctrine, you’ll see how Milton Friedman free-marketeers are similarly disposed to respond to disasters, such as the Boxing Day Tsunami 2004, taking the opportunity of destruction to reconstruct economies in a way that suits their purposes.

In the mid-1970s when I, a poorly informed agnostic, was considering Christianity seriously, there was much discussion of Jesus’ parable of ‘new wine and new wineskins’ and looking at the early church, as recorded in Acts, for inspiration as new churches were forming. In other words, whilst the experience of the baptism in the Spirit was sweeping the parts of the church that were thirsty, they turned to scripture for guidance.

Watchman Nee’s Normal Christian Life, a series of lectures on Romans, and The Normal Christian Church, a series of instructions to his co-workers, do the same; open to God but looking to scripture for inspiration.

In this exercise, I am like a small boy throwing stones into a pond. Each of these quotes is one of those stones. You’ll see by my occasional comments that I’m not saying he is ‘right’ but I do feel as if his thoughts, written in 1939, are worth a fresh airing.  

One final comment before the ‘off’: if you haven’t read The Normal Christian Life…I thoroughly recommend it.

Quotes from The Normal Christian Life

Quote #1

“If we belong to any human organisation, then divine headship ceases to be expressed in our work”

This will be a recurrent theme, that once a group has human leadership in place to execute a purpose, the persons employed in that purpose obey the human leader. This is not how the church should be.

Quote #2

“A stationary apostle is a contradiction in terms”

By apostle Nee is not referring to just the 11 originals. One more apostle was selected from among Jesus’ disciples after Judas departed. Then Paul and Barnabas were appointed apostles and sent out from the church in Antioch. Nee takes the view that the Spirit sends out certain members of churches as apostles to break new ground. But once new converts are formed into a church the apostles appointed elders to govern the church and they moved on.

Quote #3

“One of the reasons why so many present-day converts are not filled with the Spirit is that the apostles  settle down to shepherd them and take upon themselves the responsibility that belongs to the Holy Spirit”

Quote #4

“The present pastoral system is quite unscriptural; it is an invention of man. In scripture…there was always more than one elder…in a local church”

By ‘present pastoral system he is referring to churches that have one leader e.g. a Vicar, a Priest, a Minister, a Pastor, a Leader

Quote #5

“The failure of Protestantism is that it has substituted organised churches for the Church of Rome instead of returning to the divinely ordained local churches”

Whilst this is historically accurate for several groups it is worth noting that since the very beginnings of the church in the First Century there have been groups that have rejected any ‘organisation’. They have often found themselves at the butt end of rifles, persecuted non-conformists that defy the authority of organised churches. EH Broadbent’s excellent book The Pilgrim Church researches many of these groups.

Quote #6

“In…divinely constituted companies…authority is spiritual, not official”

To do justice to this quote I would have to quote a few paragraphs but this is the essence of his argument. Like the opening quote, in a human organisation authority comes from rank whereas in a church, if it is divinely constituted, it is run by the Head of the church just like our heads coordinate what our bodies do. And Christ is the Head of any local church and His will is made known by the Holy Spirit. It is an entirely different modus operandi.

Quote #7

“The trouble today is that men are taking the place of the Holy Spirit…workers have no direct knowledge of the divine will, but simply do the will of those in authority over them”

Quote #8

“A good organisation of men serves often serves as a bad substitute for the power of the Holy Spirit, by holding itself together even after all its vitality has gone”

Quote #9

“Central control has many evils. It makes it easy for God’s servants to disregard the leading of the Spirit and readily develops into a popish system”

I don’t want to diminish the size of that stone as it lands in the pond. That’s more rock than stone perhaps?

Quote #10

“In not a single scriptural church do we find mention of a “minister” controlling its affairs; such a position is always occupied by a group of local elders”

By ‘scriptural’ he is referring to the various churches recorded in the New Testament

Quote #11

“In God’s word there are local elders, but no local apostles”

The word ‘apostle’ is Greek for ‘one sent out’. The Greek words that have often been translated elder are otherwise translated as overseer or bishop. The term bishop tends not to be used in non-conformist denominations in the UK that have distanced themselves from the Church of England. The CofE and other more hierarchically organised churches tend to reserve the use of the word Bishop for those that oversee a number of Priests or Vicars in local congregations.

A few personal reflections

I was brought up in a family that attended the local CofE church, so my introduction to church included a model of leadership of a one-man leader, the Vicar, who was paid a salary. The next church I attended was a Baptist Church led by a Minister, paid for by the church. He was an excellent bible teacher and introduced an eldership, but he was still the paid Minister. After, during my University years, I was in a ‘charismatic church’ with a group of elders one of which was the lead elder. I don’t know if he received any income from the church. Then a church that originally had an eldership none of whom were paid by the church. That has evolved into a church that employs several workers and, in certain circumstances, pay their congregational leaders. I supported this trend. I’m reviewing that now in the light of scripture.

NB At first sight you might think that Watchman Nee is simply pushing the ‘Brethren’ or even the ‘Quaker’ view of church. Not really. They may mimic certain structural ‘church government’ thoughts but the essential mix Nee is looking for in the church, to make it truly scriptural, is that the eldership is not only formed around leaders of good character but they must be baptized in the Spirit and led by the Spirit, exercising gifts of the Spirit, exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit, and recognising that the same Spirit is at work in each member of the church; hence Paul’s description of typical church services in 1 Cor 14 with the underlying theology of gifts and fruit in 1Cor 12 and 13. You can have a Brethren Assembly with an eldership as dead as a Dodo and an Anglican one-man ministry who is leading his congregation into the fullness of the Spirit. Take your pick!

I have benefited immensely from each church I’ve been a member of. But this exercise is a meditation on scripture. A meditation in the Spirit, not just an academic exercise, treating the NT as a manual, like a Haynes Manual (just to show my age!).

I lob these quotes out there for your reflection.

Melancholy – a prelude

Above ground we are all Mariupol
Tulips remaining in bud
Nervous to unfold vivid colours of Spring
Clinging to the past
In hope of what?

Above ground a million Covid masks
Squelched into the mud
Trailing from bins
Forgotten in jacket pockets:
Yesterday’s news

Today’s news, a jumble of images
A glossary of sadness:
Oligarchy, Donbas, Slava Ukraini,
Thermobaric bombs
An A-Z, or just unjust Z.

Below ground. How are you?
It’s in the winter that spring is planned
That invisible quiet hinterland
Of the human heart
Where the seeds of heaven fall

Where melancholy gives way
Where winter loosens its grip
Where…those that go out in tears
Bearing seeds for harvest
Will come home rejoicing.

The Upside-Down Kingdom – or ‘A twist of lemon’

The ‘Upside-down kingdom’ is one of those catchy phrases that bible teachers use to rip away at the familiar wrapping paper surrounding the message of the New Testament.

In the UK and other countries where Christianity has had a foothold for centuries, there is a real problem: the ticking clock that you can’t hear anymore.

We drive past churches, even visit the ones that are open, without wondering too much about the beliefs that drove men and women to build them. Or we have bibles on our bookshelves but rarely open them. It’s as if we’re inoculated against the Christianity that peers at us curiously from some past era that we’ve outgrown.

To get past that deafness and blindness preachers and teachers hunt for ways of presenting the message with a twist of lemon, hence using non-biblical phrases such as the ‘Upside-down kingdom’ to engage our curiosity. We’re all used-car salesmen at heart!

The idea it tries to convey is that the ‘kingdom of God’, that Jesus invites us to be part of, is unlike any other kingdom or political power that is seen on the earth that relies, like Rome in its day, on wealth and power to execute its rule.

So, here are some thoughts about the Upside-down kingdom. And it’s to do with letter writing protocols and etiquette, not, it would appear the raciest of titles. But hang on…everything is upside down, remember?

Point One: writing to the Queen   Etiquette & Protocol – Kent Lieutenancy (kent-lieutenancy.org.uk)

‘There is no strict protocol about how a letter should be written, though some people wish to observe the traditional forms. In which case, people may write to The Queen with the formal opening ‘Madam’ and close the letter with the form ‘I have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty’s humble and obedient servant’.

In the New Testament, there are 27 books of which 19 (arguably 20 if you count Revelation) are letters written by the apostles Paul, Peter, and John to churches and some individuals.

The letters follow a loose protocol and etiquette which may appear to our circumspect British eyes as mere formal courtesies like ‘Dear…’ when the truth may well be that the person you are writing to is anything but Dear to you!

• All Paul’s letters: ‘Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ’ Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon

• Hebrews – not written to a particular person or church

• 1 and 2 Peter: ‘Grace to you and peace be multiplied’

• 1 John – as Hebrews

• 2 John – ‘Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you from God the Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ…’

• 3 John – ‘Peace to you’ written to close the letter

Here’s the ‘upside-down kingdom point 1:

We need to invert our thinking. The apostles are not at the top of some pyramidal structure called the church to which they are deigning to share their spiritual insights like gurus. – for a fee! Nor are they trying to herd cats and keep them on the straight and narrow by exerting authority and power.

In the kingdom of God they are the servants writing to ‘kings’ – ordinary’ pew filling, hymn singing, hand raising, tongue-speaking, Holy Spirit saturated believers.

In 1 Corinthians Paul writes: ‘You are already rich…you reign as kings…God has displayed us apostles as…fools for Christ’s sake…as the filth of the world, the offscourings…’ 1 Cor 4 v 8-13

And Peter writes: ‘But you are a royal priesthood…’ 1 Pet 2 v 9

And John: ‘To Him who…has made us kings and priests…’ Rev 1 v 6

It is so hard to shake free from the grip that of the usual picture of a kingdom where one person reigns and is fabulously wealthy and powerful and whose reign and authority trickles down through a hierarchy to the lowly servants. Even many churches mirror this view in their structures if not in their spiritual ethos with a pyramidal authority structure, a Pope or equivalent, then layer upon layer of administration, until we reach the humble believer not allowed to wear priestly robes. In the New Testament, every believer is a king and a priest and wears robes of righteousness.

In the New Testament the apostles did not rule over any church, they were its servants. Delivery boys. They came with supplies. Fresh supplies. Supplies for each believer who they considered to be Kings. 

Fresh supplies of grace, and mercy, and truth.

Paul put it like this:

‘For if by one man’s offence (Adam) death reigned…how much more will those who receive the abundance of grace…reign in life the rough the on (Jesus Christ)’  Romans 5 v 17

And the Upside-down kingdom point 2:

Fresh supplies. Not of money or power or influence. Not a worship band upgrade or pimping up the church website. Or wearing a sharper suit. Or by elevating those with theological degrees. Or by increasing tithes.

Apostles are not CEOs in the hiring and firing game, protecting and promoting their brand.

No. They come with supplies of fresh grace. And mercy. And the cooling streams of peace.

The whole kingdom is sustained by grace. Our reign as kings and priests in Christ is not dependent on our hard work. The kingdom is not a meritocracy. It’s grace. Freely you have received freely give. That’s what Jesus taught the disciples. Jesus, The King, didn’t take a salary. Didn’t ‘earn’ the power to do miracles through his moral uprightness and hard work. It was grace.

John put it like this:

‘We beheld his glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth…and of His fulness we all receive, grace upon grace’ John 1 v 14-16

Grace doesn’t make you lazy, it frees you to be filled, just like Jesus, and live like Jesus, in thankful dependency on the Father. Many of our struggles are because we live in a world that preaches meritocracy. It’s hard to be re-tuned. But in the kingdom of God, we can’t earn a penny, and nor shall we ever deserve it. Everything is different. Upside-down, Inside out, back to front – just not as we’re so used to. And the apostles arrive with fresh supplies.

Mercy too. Yes, we might need fresh mercy ourselves at times. But God fills us with others in mind as well. In the parable of the Good Samaritan Jesus concludes ‘go and do likewise’. The man who was robbed, beaten up, and left for dead, received mercy. He then could ‘go and do likewise’. It’s a parable, a description, of how the kingdom works. We may identify with the man, beaten and robbed, left on the side of the road, but God will have mercy. He will pour oil on our wounds, and pay for our recovery, filling us with mercy so we can be merciful to others.

Peace. Peace was more than a greeting. When Jesus appeared to the disciples the first words he said were ‘Peace to you!’ It wasn’t a formal or even a casual ‘Shalom’. They needed that peace. They were confused, in grief, shock, and fear. Sometimes our need for peace is acute.

But the point about the upside-down kingdom is this. We run on good fuel: grace, mercy, and peace. And just like cars, we need to be taken to the garage every so often for a good spiritual MOT.

Out from our thinking goes the old oil of meritocracy, or the worn brake linings of our hardness of heart, or our forever blinking indicators of inner turmoil. In comes fresh supplies: grace mercy and peace.

1054 and all that…

Surely you mean 1066
Hastings and one-eyed Harold
The Conqueror and Norman arches?
One Sunday in October
Dawn quiet disturbed
And weary autumnal soil
Running blood red:
All over by tea.

Another Sunday
Twelve years before
Split East from West
Constantinople from Rome
Communion wafers suffering schism
No longer handed one to the other
You can still hear the painful cries:
The tearing of the map

No more so than in besieged Kiiv
Or battered Mariupol.
Turning our tears to
Higher ground
The wounds to heal,
Turning our tears
To Higher ground
Our wounds to heal

Revolution

Press Lord, press me under
Under, under your grace
Wrench me free
Free from regulations that fail to regulate
From striving that fails to check self and sin

‘We are born free, yet everywhere
We are in chains’
I’m not so sure Jean-Jacques
‘For freedom, Christ has set us free’
Paul, for this, my unending applause

The Pharisee chained no longer to law
Out of his depth in grace
Feet off the bottom grace
Nothing, no more, depending on him:
Swimming in unexpected love

‘Freely you have received
Freely, freely give’ you say
No charge, it’s all in the offering
Press Lord, press me under
Under, under your grace

Seeds – dead or alive?

Let this retired Chemistry (and a spattering of Biology) teacher try and be as clear as a crystallised amino acid.

1. All dead seeds are dead – they have shuffled off their mortal coil

2. All other seeds are alive – dormant, resting, inert; all these wonderful Norwegian Blue parrot contributions are somewhat nailed on the fence

One of the great joys in teaching is to ask a provocative question and let a class or an audience battle it out. Quite often, in fact, they know the answer but need to follow the breadcrumbs from what they already know to the answer, reversing out of some blind alleys along the way.

Here’s what you probably already know. (Oh! I should warn you: if you’re mad enough to read this…you are being drawn into a theological trap. You have been warned)

Pollen grains contain male sex cells or gametes. Along comes an unsuspecting bee; the pollen grains stick to the bee’s back and legs, are carried to the next flower, and transferred to the female stigma. (Faint memories from school days resurfacing?). The pollen grain then grows a tube down through the stigma to the ovaries where the female eggs are located. Down the tube fall the male sex cells, now liberated from the pollen grains, and they fertilise the eggs to form seeds, which mature, grow, and harden. That’s pollination and fertilisation. Still awake?

‘Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but, if it dies, it produces many seeds’

Recap. The male sex cells are alive. Not much good dead! The female eggs awaiting fertilisation are also alive. Therefore, the fertilised eggs, called seeds, are alive. But…

Only a small part of the seed is alive. Most of it is a food store. The living cells located in the ‘embryo’ of the seed just tick over. They are taking in oxygen, respiring, and excreting carbon dioxide but very, very, very slowly. Nevertheless, all seeds (unless they have died) are alive and well – but one could hardly say their life is that exciting compared with what could happen after germination.

That seed will exist like that unless (usually) it falls into the ground. Even in the ground, it will remain dormant, unless the ground is moist and at the right temperature. But given the right conditions germination follows. The living cells in the dormant seed wake up and start reproducing…they take their food for the growth of the shoot and the root from the food store until they can poke their first leaves above ground and make food for themselves by photosynthesis. By this time the seed itself has vanished. The food store has been raided and the cells that were in the seed have been transformed into plant cells.

Jesus frequently spoke about nature, seeds, farming, harvest, birds, the sky and so on. Perhaps one of his most profound nature parables is found in John 12v24:

‘Unless a seed falls into the ground and dies it remains alone; but, if it dies, it produces many seeds’

Jonah’s 3rd Day

I remember the past
But cannot tame its power
When coins had names:
A tanner, half-crown, and a shilling
When ten-bob notes were brown
Coal was black and coke was grey

An age of miracle and wonder
Rolling Rs, blowing gum bubbles
As big as your head,
Waggling ears and wood-pigeon coos,
And smiling girls perfecting handstands
With long straight hair

Early mornings full of swirling fog
The sound of cars sawing
Choke in and choke out
Of ice inside the windows and
Fighting for the three-bar-fire
Winter school in shorts

And family secrets
Dying with the pipe-smoke in the lounge
My hero demoted to decay
The strong so weak
Wretched mourning over the empty chair
And the failure of truth to hide

Making my way detached
From anyone who could know
The questions no-one had words to answer.
No-one I knew anyway
Until I, in the pub,
Spilt my beer – and my words:

‘Christ!’
And she said:
‘Why did you say that?’
That was the prodigal son
Coming to his senses
That was Jonah’s third day
The light guiding me home
O! I remember the past
But cannot tame its power

‘Christ!’ I say now
Kneeling with tears of joy

Steadfast

A poem for Ukraine inspired after walking past Antony Gormley’s one hundred iron statues on Crosby beach, unmoved, facing the wild waves and gale-force wind off the Irish Sea.

***

Who ignited this fire you must not see
Behind my sad stern eyes?
Impassive and unflinching I stand
Tight with resolve: 
I shall not be moved

Pack me in your ice floes 
From the east and from the north
And I will melt you
I may look cold as steel or as a statue of stone
Yet, you will find, I am too hot to touch

A day is coming when I will bend once more
When I will shed a tear
When I will again export wheat and rum and light
When my flames will brighten the night sky
And I will walk in Another Place

Keeping it simple

Jesus went out of the house and sat by the sea

No publicity

Just sat on a beach

I like that

Mary left the kitchen, put down her knives

And sat at his feet

No fuss, no words

I like that

I need that

To keep it simple

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