more by Margaret Killingray

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 14-07-08) 

Arise, shine… as a bridegroom rejoices over his bride, so will your God rejoice in you.  Isaiah 60:1, 62:5

LICC’s emphasis on whole-life discipleship reminds us of one aspect of our relationship with the Lord – we are disciples, who learn by listening and by ‘disciplined’ application.  But, of course, the Bible overflows with a variety of metaphors to explain our relationship to God – shepherd and sheep, king and subjects, saviour and rescued.  There are two that draw particularly on the universal experience of everyday intimate relationships – Father and child, husband and wife.

In this verse the marriage imagery fits with the ‘now and not yet’ theme of Isaiah’s last seven chapters.  This relationship can start for us now, as we turn in love and commitment to the Lord.  And John takes up this imagery in the final chapters of the Bible when we, as the bride of Christ, sit down at the final wedding feast, when the heavens open for us and all the promises of our betrothal are fulfilled.  You will be called by a new name (Isaiah 62:2) – Hephzibah (My delight is in her), Beulah (married).  

There is, though, a dark side to this metaphor.  Jeremiah (2:31-3:1) and Ezekiel (ch.16), as well as Hosea (2:8-20), use the words adultery and prostitution to describe the rebellion of the people of God, their rejection of his love as they seek other gods.  Ezekiel’s picture is particularly raw and shocking, some commentators reacting negatively to the development of the metaphor, women reacting to the emphasis on the wife as adulterer and prostitute, and men feeling a little silly as a bride!
 
Isaiah speaks of God’s relationship to his people as the deep, passionate, committed love of a husband.  Sometimes it is easy to lose sight of the intense love in this picture of our relationship to the Lord.  We major on orthodoxy, on doctrine, on assessing the theology of others.  It is as if we were getting out our marriage certificate each morning before going to work, to prove the relationship is orthodox, instead of just kissing each other.

This morning and for ever, the Lord is our lover and we can look forward with total certainty to all the rich fulfilment of that promise when the day of the Lord comes.

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 16-06-2008)

Slaves, accept the authority of your masters with all deference, not only those who are kind and gentle but also those who are harsh…  For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example… when he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten.
1 Peter 2:18,21,23

 by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 09-06-2008) 

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to release the prisoners.  Isaiah 61:1

Isaiah’s final chapters ring with the certainty that the Lord will come, bringing the vindication of his sovereignty before all nations, and blessing and salvation for his people.   However bad the present oppression, whether by Assyria or Rome, Israel longed for the day when they would be acknowledged as ‘a people whom the Lord has blessed’ (61:9).  The Lord would sweep in and put all things right.  

We can perhaps imagine the shock in the synagogue at Nazareth when Jesus read these verses and then said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ (Luke 4:18-21).  Isaiah’s words had rung with the promise of spectacular events – not just liberty for captives, but ruined cities rebuilt, and Israel enjoying the wealth of nations.  On this ordinary day in the synagogue, a young man, whom they had known from childhood, read from the scroll, as was the custom.  Suddenly the mood changed to a shocking moment of outrage at his effrontery.  Jesus did not fit their understanding of the powerful rescuer who would defeat their enemies and bring them blessing.  

As we look round the world this morning, we may well long to see good news brought to the oppressed, the broken-hearted bound up, the prisoners freed.  And for ourselves, healing for those we love, damage we have done forgiven and put right.  But we would like someone else to sweep in and do it - politicians, world leaders, economists, or on a more homely level, the pastor, the counsellor, a friend.  Or, better still, as Isaiah prophesied, the Lord to come again in glory and bring all things under his reign.

Did anyone in that synagogue look at him as Jesus claimed this role of carer, rescuer and saviour, and remember Isaiah’s words in chapter 53?  Was there, perhaps, another kind of rescue?  The Lord would lay on him the iniquity of us all, and through that self-giving anyone was welcome into the glory of the new earth and new heaven.  Meanwhile, we are the ones who do his work, proclaiming the good news, binding up the broken-hearted, proclaiming liberty...

 by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 02-06-2008) 

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewellery and fine clothes.  Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.  1 Peter 3:3,4

Most of us live with a certain amount of dissatisfaction about the way we look.  We are bombarded with images of clothes, cosmetics, style and fashion, makeovers and surgery that just might give us the look we long for.  Peter was talking to women, but today cosmetics and fashion are no longer just a female issue, as sales of make-up, grooming products and cosmetic surgery for men continue to increase.  

He was also, I imagine, talking about jewellery and clothes that spoke of wealth and status, and braided hair that suggested a personal maid’s attention.  But how should we read these verses?  Christians over the centuries have had very different views of outward adornment, from Roundheads and Cavaliers, hermits and cardinals, Quakers and Anglicans.  If we enjoy fully participating in the fun of fashion and colour coordination, then we have to face the reproach of the drab slightly out-of-date ‘avoiders of the world’.  Philip Larkin described a middle way in his moving poem, Born Yesterday.  Don’t wish beauty for the baby, ‘May you be ordinary… not ugly, not good-looking… nothing uncustomary to pull you off your balance.’  

So our outward adornment should not display wealth, nor excessive engagement with our appearance, but a workable normality, with occasional bursts of fun and exuberance.  Yet it is difficult not to feel our self-confidence being sapped by our perception that we don’t look quite attractive enough, for our audience, our customers, or our colleagues.   First impressions matter far too much in our fast moving, over-busy western world.  

Working at the gentle and quiet spirit of our inner self may take a lot more time and effort than getting a better hairdresser.  A habit of prayer where we bring to the Lord the anxieties, fears and disappointments that disturb our spirit; a conscious ever-present quiet joy in his undeserved love; and a recognition of the unfading beauty of gentle and quiet spirits in those around us, may make us less reliant on how we look.

 by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 28-04-2008)

My beloved speaks and says to me: ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.  The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.  The fig tree puts forth its figs, and vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance.  Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away’.  
The Song of Songs 2:10-13

Today we walked on the hills high about the Swale estuary in north Kent, where a number of woods curve round the northwest of Canterbury.  We were walking on farmland now reclaimed by the Woodland Trust and planted with tens of thousands of native trees to link together two areas of ancient semi-natural woodland, forming an area of woodland second only in size to the New Forest.  There was sun and rain, kestrels and skylarks, bluebells and primroses.  The hedgerows were a vibrant brilliant new green, May was in blossom and the trees in the apple orchards were faintly tipped with pink.

The winter is past and some of the songs of spring I sung at school came back to mind.  ‘Spring, the sweet spring, is the year’s pleasant king.  Then blooms each thing and maids dance in a ring.’   Or perhaps, more powerfully, Gerard Manley Hopkins –

Nothing is so beautiful as spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens…

What is all this juice and all this joy?
 A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden.

Why does spring have such a powerful attraction?  This may, of course, be mainly a feature of seasons in the earth’s temperate zones.  Yet it does speak of resurrection, new life, regeneration and renewal, of the dormant brought out into exuberant life.  And our delight in spring is a delight in a new earth washed clean, a promise of a new heaven and a new earth that will be both glorious and familiar.  And also, I hope, a delight in love!  Praise him!

 by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 21-04-2008)

For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable through the living and enduring word of God.  For, ‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field’.  1 Peter 1:23

There are moments in life when we are told that something has happened that changes our status and our future forever.  You are now a citizen of the United Kingdom… I pronounce you man and wife…You have a baby boy… You have been born again.  

You have been born again.  We can appreciate the emotional impact of getting married or having a baby, but we can too easily lose sight of the depth and power of this picture of what being a Christian means – made new as a child of the living God, transferred from the perishable, where all human glory fades, to the imperishable.  John speaks in the same way of being born not of natural descent, but born of God. (John 1:13)  Now we are clothed in immortality and the power that takes us and makes us new is the living and enduring word of God – the word that spoke and a universe was born out of nothing, the word that will endure forever.  

It’s unfortunate that the phrase ‘born again’ is used popularly as a mainly derogatory term for Christian, as is ‘fundamentalist’, ‘bible-bashing’ or ‘tub-thumping’. I asked a group of Christians what their answer would be to the question, ‘Are you a born-again Christian?’  They would be tempted to reply, ‘What other kind is there?’  But they agreed that they would probably change the terminology and describe themselves as committed Christians to avoid the negative overtones of ‘born again’.    

Maybe we need to reclaim the title and status and tell ourselves this morning that we have been born again.  We have a fresh start, forgiven and reinstated, with an inheritance that will last forever.  That should put a spring in our steps.  Especially if we are more than usually aware this morning that ‘our days are like grass, the wind passes over it and it is gone’ (Psalm 103:15,16).