Eternity In The Heart

If you were to rifle through my DVD collection at home, every third or fourth disc would be some kind of stand-up comedian.

So I was really excited a week past on Friday when Bill Bailey came to the Exhibition Centre. Not only is he a good comic, he’s a really good musician as well. and in fairness to the man, we weren’t disappointed. It was a good show.

But there were a couple of sections that I found pretty uncomfortable, especially one where he was looking at different paintings of the encounter between the resurrected Jesus and doubting Thomas.

If you know that story, you’ll remember that Thomas refused to believe until he saw Christ with his own eyes and put his fingers into the wounds from his crucifixion.

And although the humour was pretty gentle, it’s part of a growing trend among many of the comedians I like to listen to – God bashing is in.

Eddie Izzard, Stephen Fry and many others are all at it.

It feels a bit like the school bullies Dawkins, Hitchens and Pullman have done their bit, and now some of the smaller boys are emerging from their shadow to offer a few well-placed kicks in the direction of the Almighty.

Who can take it, of course. No Fatwas in Christianity, though some might welcome that.

But it’s just another instance of where our culture seems to be heading.

I had to switch off radio 5 last week because the comedian Richard Herring was on talking about his new book called Christ on a Bike in which he hopes to earn a few bob by holding the Ten Commandments up for ridicule. I couldn’t listen to more than 5 minutes of it because it was so badly informed and so darned smug!

Of course, he can ridicule all he likes – but I’m pretty sure if Richard came out of the BBC studios to find his car nicked, or came home to find his girlfriend murdered or in bed with his best friend, the relevance of the Ten Commandments might strike him with new force.

But God-bashing sells just now, and so the bandwagon continues to rumble on.

And what gets me about it is that the comedians, and even some of the intellectual heavyweights, speak of Christianity and Christians as though we were some monolithic group of mono-browed Luddites who cling to superstition, while at the same time they fall over themselves to adore the discoveries of science.

Religious belief is nonsense for the gullible; science is the light of the world, it seems.

Now as someone with a foot in both camps, that really gets my goat. Perhaps you’ve noticed!

The claims of religion, and it seems to be particularly the Christian religion, are held to be beyond belief. All that miraculous stuff has to be nonsense, they say. It’s just too weird to have any basis in reality.

Ok. Let’s stop and think about that for a moment.

Here are some of the things that science is telling us just now:

Science is telling us that it’s possible for a single particle to be in several places at once.

It’s telling us that space and time aren’t linear, they’re curved.

That the vast majority of matter in the Universe – 83% - is stuff that we know virtually nothing about, called ‘dark matter’. We can’t see it, we’ve never obtained a sample of it. We only know it’s there because of the effect it has on things we can see and measure.

Although we’re used to thinking in terms of four dimensions, the latest physics - string theory - is suggesting that in order to understand reality we may need to think in anything up to 11 dimensions.

It’s telling us that it may be possible to travel faster than the speed of light and go back in time – contrary to what Einstein taught.

And in an astounding paragraph I read in Professor Brian Cox’s new book, Cox states that every electron in the Universe knows about the state of every other electron. There is an intimacy between the particles that make up our universe that extends across the entire Universe.

If I could tweak the energy of an electron in this molecule of oxygen I’m holding (!) an electron on the other side of the universe would know about it and maybe even change its energy level accordingly.

And you’re telling me that the claims of my faith are weird!

If science is teaching us anything just now - and it is - it’s teaching us how little we really know, and how much more there is to learn.

The best scientists, and the best believers recognise that, and cultivate humility and an open mind.

As the apostle Paul once said – “The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know!”

If we can’t get our head around what’s going on in this staggering universe, what chance have we of understanding the maker of the universe?

“He has set eternity in the hearts of men” says the writer of Ecclesiastes, “yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

We can look, and measure, and theorise, and wonder and learn, but we will never fathom. In the end, our study of the universe won’t answer the God question conclusively either way.

So perhaps it’s more constructive if we begin by looking at ourselves.

“He has set eternity in the hearts of men” says the writer, meaning of course, all humankind.

And what he’s saying is that there’s something within us that harbours an echo of eternity. And every now again we pick up the strains of that sound in our experience of living.

I was present at the births of two of my three children. 66.6% That’s a good pass in anyone’s book!

And being there was an immense privilege. Somehow in the middle of the incredible physicality of what was going on, there was something deeply spiritual going on too. This was a new wee life coming into the world. It was utterly amazing.

And I remember a few weeks after Ross was born, going in to the bedroom to check that he was ok, and he and I just stared at one another for ages, and ages without making a sound. And it was almost like I was looking through a window into that wee man’s soul. Another profoundly spiritual moment.

And you have your equivalents of those stories. You’ve had moments like that too; moments when the distance between heaven and earth feels paper thin and you’re caught up into wonderment.

Maybe you’ve been out for a day’s walking, or in some special place that you love, and the stillness and vastness of the landscape’s brought a deep sense of calm to your heart and mind.

Maybe you’ve negotiated an hour or two to yourself, and as you do what you love doing in those times, you feel like you’re coming back to yourself in the middle of all the different tensions that bear down upon your life.

Maybe you’ve sat under the stars, or turned the tractor home as the sun sets, and as you drink in the glory of creation you feel a pull on some inner part of you that you know is there, but you’re hardly aware of most of the time.

Maybe you’ve sat with someone as they’ve passed away, and you’ve been keenly aware of another reality beyond the dimensions of this earthly life.

“God has placed eternity in the hearts of men” says the writer of Ecclesiastes.

I believe that these moments, these little cameos, are us sensing eternity within our hearts. We’re not made solely for this world. We were made for something more. And within each of us there’s a yearning for that “something” that we can’t even begin to name.

So when we look at ourselves under the microscope, what do we find? Well, we find a shared experience of moments of wonder that make us feel that there’s more to life than we yet know.

But what do we do with those experiences? Where do they lead us?

Well for some, they lead nowhere. They come and they go and we return to everyday life without pausing to think about what they mean.

And I guess that’s where many people in our parish are at. Some are too busy to stop and think about life for very long. Others just don’t want to, because they’re scared of what they might find. And so they welcome any distraction that stops them taking a deep look inside themselves.

CS Lewis describes that sort of person beautifully in his book “The Screwtape Letters”. If you’re not familiar with the book, it’s in the form of a series of letters from a senior devil, Screwtape, to a junior devil, advising him how to go about the business of tempting and leading astray his ‘patient’ – the human being he’s responsible for. This is Screwtape describing an incident where he made distraction work in his favour:

I once had a patient, a sound atheist, who used to read in the British Museum. One day, as he sat reading, I saw a train of thought in his mind beginning to go the wrong way. The Enemy, of course, was at his elbow in a moment. Before I knew where I was I saw my twenty years' work beginning to totter. If I had lost my head and begun to attempt a defence by argument I should have been undone. But I was not such a fool.

I struck instantly at the part of the man which I had best under my control and suggested that it was just about time he had some lunch. The Enemy presumably made the counter-suggestion (you know how one can never quite overhear What He says to them?) that this was more important than lunch. At least I think that must have been His line for when I said "Quite. In fact much too important to tackle it the end of a morning", the patient brightened up considerably; and by the time I had added "Much better come back after lunch and go into it with a fresh mind", he was already half way to the door.

Once he was in the street the battle was won. I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper, and a No. 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps I had got into him an unalterable conviction that, whatever odd ideas might come into a man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of "real life" (by which he meant the bus and the newsboy) was enough to show him that all "that sort of thing" just couldn't be true. He knew he'd had a narrow escape and in later years was fond of talking about "that inarticulate sense for actuality which is our ultimate safeguard against the aberrations of mere logic". He is now safe in Our Father's house.

We’re so easily distracted away from the things that really matter. Who knows? It might even be happening today at this very moment!

So some folk drown out the inklings of eternity in their hearts with other things.

But others follow those inklings, but to the wrong destination. They feel the impulse to worship and to wonder, but they end up worshipping the wrong things.

As the apostle Paul wandered round Athens he saw an altar with the inscription “To an Unknown God”. And there’s a real pathos in those words that speaks into our times.

We were made to worship, but we’ve forgotten who it is we’re supposed to be worshipping!

And so people end up worshipping themselves, or money, or celebrity, or a god of their own construction (the old word for that, of course, is idolatry).

We can’t evade that sense of ‘eternity’ that God has placed in our hearts, but we don’t know how on earth to find the God who put it there.

And the answer I’m going to leave you with this morning, is the same one Paul gave to the Athenians 2000 years ago. The same one we celebrate each year in the Season of Advent.

You don’t have to go searching for God. He’s already come looking for you.

In Jesus - who was more than a good man or a prophet or a teacher, but God in human form

The unnameable God has been named.

The invisible God has been seen.

The unknowable God, high over all, has come among us in flesh and blood.

You want to see God, to know what he’s like? Then take a look at the life and person of Jesus Christ. He’s the closest we get to seeing God this side of eternity.

“God has placed eternity in the hearts of men”.

An echo of eternity still resonates within your heart and within mine.

How are you going to respond to it today?

Amen and thanks be to God for the4 promise and the challenge of his word.

Psalm 139: There's Knowing and there's Knowing

A Remembrance Sunday Sermon.

This morning we’ve heard the story of how the Grave of the Unknown Warrior came to be, and a poignant and moving story it is.

We’ll never know who’s buried there in Westminster Abbey, and that, of course, is exactly the point. It could be any of the men who were lost in the battles of the First World War, and that’s what makes this particular grave such a powerful symbol for so many people.

In treating this one man with such honour, that honour was conferred on every other soldier who fell in battle and was never laid to rest in a marked grave that could be visited or tended. Tens of thousands of families who were left in limbo, with no place to mourn, now had somewhere as a focal point for their remembrance, and the comfort that their loved one was thought fit to rest among kings.

It was as noble a gesture as could be managed, I think.

But a gesture is all that it could ever be. The reality it could never erase was the unimaginable carnage of those fields in France where a whole generation was lost in war.

I’d heard of the Grave of the Unknown Warrior before today but didn’t know the story behind it, and the more I read the more I found myself reflecting on that word ‘unknown’.

In one sense, of course, the soldier was exactly that. Unknown. We don’t know his identity. But in another sense, he is known, and known completely.

Around the Warrior’s tomb are four Biblical quotations:

The first – John’s gospel - speaks about sacrifice: GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS: (that he lay down his life for his friends)

The second – 1st Corinthians - speaks about hope we can have in the face of death – IN CHRIST SHALL ALL BE MADE ALIVE. One of the claims of the Christian story is that Christ’s work will overcome even death in the end.

The other two speak about knowing:

Paul – 2nd Corinthians: UNKNOWN AND YET WELL KNOWN, DYING AND BEHOLD WE LIVE.

2nd Timothy: THE LORD KNOWETH THEM THAT ARE HIS.

The consistent witness of the Bible is that God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves.

Psalm 139 conveys that truth with beauty and conviction.

1 O LORD, you have searched me
and you know me.

2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.

3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.

4 Before a word is on my tongue
you know it completely, O LORD.

We are known.

And the apostle Paul emphasises that in those words we heard right at the beginning of our service.

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.”

No matter where we are in the world’s pecking order. No matter if our unformed eyes never get to see the light of day beyond the womb. No matter if we die in a foreign field with no headstone to honour our sacrifice.

We are known., valued, understood, remembered and loved by God.

There are no nameless people in the eyes of our maker.

The story of the man who lies beneath that slab of marble in Westminster Abbey is no mystery to God. And nor are the stories of the hundreds of thousands of men who could equally well have occupied that space. And nor are the stories of the people they left behind; and nor are your stories, or mine.

We are all of us, however we live, however we die, known by God.

And that might be enough for us to hear today on this Remembrance Sunday. And I would love to leave it there.

But conscience doesn’t allow me to, because as I reflected on this I realised that the Bible has more to say on this, and what it says, we may not wish to hear.

What it has to say is that there is knowing and then there is knowing.

Let me illustrate with a story from Billy Connolly’s childhood.

Connolly tells a story about one Friday evening when his neighbour, Mr Cumberland, came home from his work at the Shipyard. Now I think Mr Cumberland had already had a refreshment or two on the way home, and he was fully intending to go back out to the pub after he’d delivered his pay packet had his dinner.

But Mrs Cumberland was having none of it. She’d been inside with ‘they weans’ – all day and if he wanted to go out for a drink he would need to get ‘they weans’ bathed and off to bed before he even thought about it.

So Mr Cumberland, rather the worse for wear, set off round the streets to round up his ten children and get them ready for bed. The only problem was he missed out two of his own kids and rounded up two Connolly’s by mistake – Billy and his sister. And before they knew what was happening they were scrubbed, changed and tucked up in bed with the Cumberlands!

Meanwhile, two wee Cumberlands were wandering the streets wondering where on earth the rest of their clan had gone!

There is knowing and there is knowing.

There’s a knowing which is about knowledge and there’s a knowing which is about intimacy and relationship.

Mr Cumberland knew he had ten children. He got that fact correct. But with a few drinks in him, he didn’t know which ten they were!

Couldn’t fault him on the facts. Did a bit less well on the relationship side of things!

There’s a knowing which is about intimacy.

Anyone who’s ever dipped into the King James version of the Bible will be familiar with phrases like “And Adam knew Eve, and they conceived a son”. “And Joseph took Mary home to be his wife, but he knew her not until she had brought forth her firstborn son. And he called his name Jesus”.

Knowing is about intimacy – mutuality.

Sometimes, years into a marriage, a man and a woman can find themselves on rocky ground, and one of the things that’s often said in those times is “I just don’t know you anymore”. And what’s meant is that the intimacy’s gone.

And we need to realise that when the Bible speaks about our knowing God, and being known by God, it’s not mere knowledge we’re speaking about. It’s talking about intimacy – a two-way relationship that’s right at the heart of things. This is what God wants for all his children.

In a sobering passage at the end of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus speaks about the day of judgment when the peoples of the world will be gathered before God to give an account of themselves. And it’s a very interesting read – not least because some with little or no expectation are welcomed into the kingdom. while some others, who are a little too sure of themselves, come a cropper.

And the words God says to those who are sent away from his presence are haunting. He says “I never knew you. I never knew you.”

In once sense, we are all known by God. No-one is nameless. No-one is forgotten or unknown. But we’re also called to a deeper knowing; a two-way relationship between the creator and the created, and it’s the work of Jesus that makes that kind of a relationship possible.

We’ve been thinking about how the Unknown Warrior became a representative of all those men who fell and were lost in battle.

One of the ways the Bible speaks about Jesus is as a representative. A representative of all humanity. We’re told that on the cross he took the blame for all our wrongdoing, so we could know peace with God, sinners though we are, if we trust in him.

And just as the honour that was afforded the Unknown Soldier spilled over to bring glory to his fallen comrades, so those who trust in Christ get to share in the honour that belongs to him, as the only begotten son of God.

There’s a story told about a young man who desperately wanted to see President Lincoln about an urgent matter, and he travelled all the way to the White House to get an audience with him.

But the man had no credentials, so the guards on the door refused him entry to the building.

As he sat disconsolately on the front steps of the White House, a young lad came running round the corner, and noticing he was upset, he sat down beside him and asked him what was wrong. The young man poured out his story and the wee boy drank it all in.

When he’d finished talking, the boy said – “Come with me, I think maybe I can help you”. The boy took him by the hand, led him into the White House through another entrance, and led him all the way to a grand oak door which he knocked in what sounded like a secret code.

He pushed the door open, and there behind the desk sat Abraham Lincoln. “Hello Tad – what can I do for you?” he said.

“Well, Father, I met this man outside and he’s desperate to talk to you” said the wee boy. And before long, the young man had his chance to talk with the President.

He’d known Lincoln by name and reputation. But now he had a different kind of knowing. The beginnings of an intimacy in relationship, made possible because of what the son had done.

There’s knowing, and then there’s knowing.

The good news of the gospel today is that none of us are strangers to God. We’re all known.

But the challenge of the gospel is whether we’re prepared to take things further and pursue the intimacy with God that Jesus made possible.

As ever, he leaves the choice in our hands.

Amen, and thanks be to God for the promises and the challenges of his word.

Psalm 134. Blessing

Business trips aside, there’s often something wonderful about coming to the end of a long journey.

If you’re going somewhere new, there’s the excitement of your first glimpse of a different country as you make your way from the airport or the harbour to your destination. Drinking in the sights and smells of a strange land.

If you’re visiting family, there’s that moment when you spot one another as you push your laden trolley through customs and out into the waiting area, and find yourselves enveloped in hugs and smiles.

And even for the weary traveller returning home – there’s the blessing of the familiar to be welcomed. The comfy chair; your own bed. The arms of your loved ones.

Today’s Psalm marks the end of a long, punctuated journey up to Jerusalem that we began over two years ago. Psalm 120 got us moving; the sheer struggles of life making us yearn for a better world, and getting our pilgrim feet on the road of discipleship.

And as we’ve travelled with these Psalms, we’ve found them challenging us and encouraging us at every turn, always and everywhere reminding us to keep God at the centre of all our living.

But today, with Psalm 134, we’ve arrived. We’re in the place of blessing. We’re at our journey’s end.

Anyone who’s ever been abroad to a warmer country knows that in the evening, the place seems to come alive as the temperature drops a little and darkness falls. Whole families come out to amble through the streets, in search of food, or a bargain, or just a good conversation.

I imagine Jerusalem at night, with crowds of folk walking through the streets, but if we could watch them from above, we’d see how their steps are leading them all to the same place. They’re winding their way up to the Temple, which is blazing with light, as folk gather to worship. The place is thronging with people, bringing their sacrifices and their thanks to God.

“Come, praise the Lord, all his servants, all who serve in his Temple at night” says the Psalmist. “Raise your hands in prayer in the Temple and praise the Lord”.

And that’s exactly what they do. A sea of voices swells. A forest of hands is raised in prayer. It must have been powerfully moving to have been a part of it.

Our journey through the Psalms of Ascent is ending. We started out in discontent and restlessness, but we end in the joyful blessing of God. And it’s the business of blessing I want us to think about this morning.

I have to confess, I was pleased to discover that the phrase ‘Praise the Lord’ in verses 1 and 2 is better translated ‘Bless the Lord’. For me, the phrase "Praise the Lord" conjures up images of the worst kind of tele-evangelist, and I tend to think of 'praise' as something you reserve for children or well-behaved pets!

But I like blessing the Lord, or thanking the Lord. I can get my head around that!

But here’s a question – when the Psalmist says “Bless the Lord, all his servants. Raise your hands in prayer in the temple and bless the Lord” is that an invitation, or a command? It could be both. And in fact, it probably is both.

As an invitation, everyone is encouraged to join in, regardless of how they happen to be feeling.

“Did you have a fight with your spouse on the way? That’s all right. You’re here now. Bless God. Did you quarrel with your neighbour while making the trip? Forget it. You’re here now. Bless God. Did you lose touch with your family while you were coming in and aren’t sure where they are now? Put that aside for the moment. They have their own pilgrimage to make. You are here. Bless God. Are you ashamed of the feelings you had while travelling? The grumbling you indulged in? the resentment you harboured? Well, it wasn’t bad enough to keep you from arriving, and now that you’re here – Bless God. Are you embarrassed at the number of times you gave up and had to have someone pick you up and carry you along? It doesn’t matter. You’re here. Bless God”.

It’s an invitation that’s open to all, regardless. But at the same time, it’s also a command.

Having arrived at the place of worship, will we now sit around and tell stories about the trip? Having gotten to the big city will we spend our time as tourists, visiting the bazaars, window shopping and trading? Having gotten Jerusalem checked off our list of things to do, will we immediately begin looking for another challenge, another holy place to visit? Will the Temple be a place to socialise or receive congratulations from others on our achievement? A place to share gossip and trade stories, a place to make business contacts that will improve our prospects back home? That’s not why you made the trip: Bless God. You are here because God blessed you. Now you bless God.

Bless God. It’s an invitation, but it’s also a command. Why do we need the command? Isn’t the invitation enough?

Well, there may be times for you and me when blessing God comes naturally. We’ll be keenly aware of the ways in which we’ve been blessed, and we’ll want to give God thanks for what he’s done for us and through us.

But it’s amazing how quickly and superficially that can change. It can change with our digestion, or with a bad day at work, or with the weather. Is it just me, or is it easier to feel thankful on a sunny day than on a wet day? That’s how fickle we are!

My inclination to bless God ebbs and flows like the tide, depending on the circumstances of my life. But is God any less deserving of thanks when I happen to be at a low ebb? I don’t think so!

So there are times, when against my inclination, I have to stir myself to thankfulness. Just as there are mornings when an athlete has to stir herself to get out of bed and do the training. We can’t let our feelings run the show, otherwise we won’t make progress. And some authors reckon that’s why the Psalmist exhorts his listeners to raise their hands in prayer. We’re psycho-somatic beings. What we do with our bodies affects how we think and feel.

If you’re not in the mood for worship, but you knuckle down to it anyway, it’s not long before you find yourself feeling more involved and engaged. If you drag yourself out of bed for that run in the morning, it’s not long before your mind gets over its reluctance and starts enjoying the experience.

And that word enjoyment is so important for us as we draw this series to a close.

Church life, institutional church life anyway, is filled with so many duties and responsibilities we can end up suffering from what Gerry Hughes calls ‘a hardening of the oughteries’. I ought to do this. I ought to do that.

But before church is about any of that, it’s about you and me coming into relationship with the living God, in whom we live and move and have our being. He is there to be known – that’s the gospel we proclaim.

Our 'chief end', according to the Reformers, is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

One commentator puts it this way:

Glorify. Enjoy. There are other things involved in Christian discipleship. The Psalms of the Ascent have shown us some of them. But it is extremely important to know the one thing that overrides everything else. The main thing is not work for the Lord; it’s not suffering for the Lord; it’s not witnessing to the Lord; it’s not teaching Sunday School for the Lord; it’s not being responsible in the community for the sake of the Lord; it’s not keeping the Ten Commandments; not loving your neighbour; not observing the Golden Rule. “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him for ever.” Or, in the vocabulary of Psalm 134, it is to “Bless God”.

If we bless God with our time and our attention, our love and our obedience, we in turn will find a blessing. We’ll know more of what Jesus calls life in all its fullness. This is how things seem to work, in the economy of God. The one who gives, receives. The one who blesses, is blessed.

I loved anointing the children last week during our communion service. As they came up I called them each by name, and in a wee reminder of their baptism, I said “the Lord bless you and keep you” as I made a little cross on the back of their hands with that fragrant oil.

When our Isla came up she had that look on her wee face that I know she’ll grow out of in a few years time. It was that look of love and adoration a child wears in those glorious years when she’s innocent enough to think her daddy really is the best daddy in the world. I’m determined to enjoy it while it lasts.

And I was so in the moment, taking her by the hand, and anointing her with the oil, that I didn’t properly notice that as I was blessing her, she was busy kissing me on the arm in return. I only found it out later when a couple of folk said how sweet it was that she’d done that.

What a lovely reciprocity.

Keep that image with you as we leave the Psalms today.

The Father, reaching out in blessing. The child responding in gratitude and love.

For this we were made.

And for this, the up-and-down journey of discipleship is worth every step of the way.

(Quotations in purple from "A Long Obedience In The Same Direction" by Eugene Peterson)