Word for the Week

 by Antony Billington (Word for the Week 06-05-2008) 

‘Then he said to me, “Son of Man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the house of Israel.” So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.’ Ezekiel 3:1-2

It was a crucial lesson for a prophet to learn: his words would not be his own, but God’s. He would not have to fabricate his message, or concoct it out of thin air. He’s assured that what he spoke would be nothing less than God’s word.

And yet it has to become his own before he can present it to others. He must absorb it into his own personality. And in that process of digestion, the words of God would also be nothing less than Ezekiel’s own words.

He will sound like he has always sounded; his mannerisms will be recognisably his; his interest in all things to do with holiness and the temple will be readily apparent; and he will still have a curious penchant for going into more detail about those matters than many of us care for... Even so, God will embody his own words in the words of a human being, such that Ezekiel’s message will be fully God’s message.

In Revelation 10:8-10, John undergoes a similar experience. There too we have a dramatic picture of a prophet of God internalising the word of God. It’s a powerful demonstration of what we’re called to in our own engagement with God’s word. Not that we will become merely more technically competent in handling Scripture, nor even that we just learn more about God and his word; but that his word will become so much more a part of us. It’s an encouragement to read the Bible and to be read by the Bible; to read not merely to be informed about God, but to be transformed by God. It’s a challenge to make sure we do not stand over Scripture seeking to make sense of it, without first making sure we stand under it, allowing it to make sense of us, to work on us from the inside out.

It’s a great image to keep before us as a directing principle for the ethos of our whole lives; as we live for Christ in the face of the contemporary world, we seek do so in line with Scripture: eat this scroll.

 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).   

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 21-04-08)

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).   

 by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 07-04-08)

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere mutual affection, love one another deeply, from the heart.  1 Peter 1:22

Peter repeats this command to love several times in this letter: Love the brothers and sisters (2:17), love one another (3:8), love each other deeply (4:8).  We are not advised to wait for love to overwhelm us, like a Disney fairy touch with a sparkling wand.  We are told to love from the heart, deeply, now – to go beyond ‘sincere mutual affection’ and to love at full stretch.

It is clear that Peter is talking about love within Christian fellowships – not just compatible friends, nor beloved family members, but the arbitrary mixed bag of humans who worship together.  That is demanding enough, but Jesus told us to love our neighbours as we love ourselves and explained that he meant anyone.  Moreover we may find ourselves the love target of those we dislike, as the man on the road to Jericho did.  

How do we obey this command to love?  First, we have to make a decision of the will to ‘love’ someone, however we feel about them.  We cannot wait for feelings of love to arrive, nor for dislike to evaporate.  Secondly, we need to work out what actions love will require.  So I see a colleague coming and I ignore my deep desire to avoid him.  I recognise that he has a hard lonely time and needs to talk.  So I ask him out for lunch, and listen.  I look at my overworked line manager and I curb my desire to talk to him about the minor issues I want him to sort out, at least for a day or two.  

But sometimes being loved also presents problems.  So, once again, the will has to conquer reluctance and I will allow myself to be encouraged, rather too loudly for my delicate sensibilities, by a neighbour on the train to town.  And I will be happy to be prayed over by a very loving member of my church.

by Margaret Killingray (Word for the Week 31-03-08)

In the prime of my life must I go through the gates of death and be robbed of the rest of my years? For the grave cannot praise you, death cannot sing your praise. The living, the living – they praise you as I am doing today. Isaiah 38:10,18

Hezekiah voiced one of the great cries of the human heart. Is everything simply going to fade and go to waste? Is death the end? Literature is full of this deep sense of futility. From Euripides,

        ‘…and so we are sick for life, and cling
On earth to this nameless and shining thing.                                                                                                      
For other life is a fountain sealed,
And the deeps below us are unrevealed
And we drift on legends for ever’.