Alternative audio

• A sermon by Rico Tice: Catching Heaven's Passion - Affection for the self-satisfied (2 Corinthians 6: 1-13). An absolutely stonking sermon I listened to a while back on the recommendation of Yemsee. Very arresting, it includes the wonderful line, "Do you see yourself as a laid back person.... it's unbiblical"
• An Interview by Michael Horton: Novelist Marilynne Robinson on her book of essays called The Death of Adam (HT and introduction to Robinson). Covers Darwinism, Calvin, Puritans and Prigs, the human condition, contemporary society, and what makes good fiction. I've read a few interviews with Robinson and they've all been a little disappointing. This interview between intelligent conservative-Reformed-theologian/radio-host and supremely talented liberal-yet-Calvin-and-Puritan-appreciating novelist is a wonder to listen to. Brilliant.
• 1979 Public Lecture at Moore College by Helmut Theilicke. I've only listened to it once and I'm still trying to work out what it was about. I don't think I was paying enough attention. But I'm still putting it out there because its probably the only audio out there by the great German theologian, and nobody seems to have mentioned it much.

Why we get on the merry-go-round in the first place

The lack of recent blog activity (now being overcompensated for) may have made you realise that I've been quite busy recently. I tend to go through phases of taking on too much, and Christmas was a wonderful rest from that. Tim Chester's The Busy Christian's Guide to Busyness is a brilliant book on how it is our lack of faith that often (although not always) leads us to be over busy. I highly recommend it.

But Helmut Thielicke said the same a few decades ago when preaching on the parable of the seed growing secretly (Mark 4:26-29):

Our overactivity, which constantly keeps us on the merry-go-round and yet, no matter how fast we go, gets us nowhere, but only makes us dizzy, is not caused by the fact that we were so nervous or that we had no time. It is just the opposite. We are nervous and we have no time because we think everything will stop without us and because we think we are so tremendously important - we parvenus [newcomers/upstarts] in this old business of creation! And this is why we can never let anything get out of our hands and be entrusted to others. That's why we hold on to everything convulsively and thus wear ourselves out all over again. Undoubtedly, all this is connected with the ultimate decisions of our life and not so much at all with medicine or with the problem of our modern way of life. And because we have thus taken over the management of the bankrupt assets of creation, because we do everything ourselves and therefore must always be producing something, we never get away from constant care and concern. For anybody who takes everything upon himself finds that everything depends on him.

(p.84f, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus)

Isn't the true gospel so freeing in comparison to the false gospel of our mastery over the world? No wonder it rest is so important in the bible. Not because passiveness towards the world is the ideal, but because God is active in caring for his creation.

Thielicke on the Parable of the Soils

Helmut Thielicke makes two really important points that I think I often miss when reading this familiar parable:

1. It is a solemn parable

I wonder whether we have caught the sadness that hangs over this story. Jesus spoke this parable at a high point in his life and activity. The people were flocking to him in great numbers [and yet] the parable is really pointing out how frequently the divine seed is destroyed - destroyed in stony hearts, by the heat of the sun, by choking thorns and predatory birds - this is why there is in this parable a deep sense of grief and sorrow. And all this is seen and proclaimed while outwardly the people are coming in droves, inspired with festive enthusiasm, and the hucksters are rubbing their hands with delight over this "colossal" attraction

(p.53, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus)

2. It is meant to provoke a response

We should be misunderstanding [Jesus] disastrously if we thought that this was simply an enumeration of the forces which obstruct and choke our faith for our information or even for self-examination. This is more than "analysis." Jesus is never interested in counting and statistics; he always puts us to work. He says: Weed out the thorns; see to it that the seed does not fall on the path; be careful lest you be people so shallow that the Word cannot take root. Jesus says: Be good soil.

(p. 59f, ibid)

Thielicke on interpreting creation

Listening to: Schubert: Symphony No.9

Hi everyone. In case you didn't know I've been away for a week in the Lake District, so sorry for the blog-silence. I had a good time, and read a fair bit which should mean lots of blogging coming up, but I probably won't have time to get any thoughts down so maybe it won't.

Last night I started a book of sermons by Helmut Thielicke on Jesus' Parables. By way of a preface he discusses the idea of the parables as "God's picturebook", and how the world can also function in this way. It has some baring on one of the niggling thoughts of this year - the gospel in creation - so I thought I'd post it at length:

For anybody who does not see the world from the point of view from which Jesus Christ, the teller of the parables, sees it, the whole profusion of parabolic images turns into a confused labyrinth; for him the doors are shut instead of opened. Are the birds of the air and the lilies of the field really nothing more than pointers to the Lord of creation, who cares for all his creatures? Or are they not also figures of a world of nature that is dumb, nature that is silent to me, that goes on its way, careless of my concerns and my loneliness. Are the stars just symbols of an eternal order or are they not also a sign of orderly processes that go on quite indifferent to my lot? May they not chill me with the cold of cosmic space rather than make me feel the pulse-beat of a Father's heart? And one thing more; may not the picture language of this world lead us to gods and idols instead of to God? Do not all the pseudo absolutes and all the isms, the hubristic attempts of philosophy to attribute to a single phenomenon - whether it be spirit, matter, or an idea - the prerogatives of ultimate reality - do not all these have their source in this same attempt to interpret the picture language of this world and derive its favorite symbols from it?

[...] In the parables of Jesus the opposite way is taken. He first shows us his Father and points to the "heart of all things." Then from there the things themselves gain their meaning. We start with God and then learn to discover the world anew; but anybody who tries to discover God through the world sees only the distorted reflections of created things, a reflex of his own mind.

That is the reason why the picturebook of created things is in itself of no use at all. Indeed, it confines and limits us to this introverted creation. The mystery of our temporal and eternal destiny is disclosed to us only in the great textbook of God - the Word in which he speaks to us and tells us who he is and what his purposes are. But it is of the mercy of his condescension that in doing so he employs the images and figures of our world. And these images are helpful and comforting; they find us where we are at home. They are so homely that they make us feel at home and give us the certainty that God is not in some remote, inaccessible beyond, but that he gives to everything around us a relationship that leads to his heart, not only grain and fruit, but also the far country and the father's house, summer and winter, lamps and night, money and clothing, weddings and death.

When we read the parables we are surrounded by the scenery of a world that is very near, our world. But everything depends upon our finding the right entrance from which their meaning is discovered [...] The heart of all things discloses the things themselves; but the things themselves do not reveal the heart.

(pp.11-12, The Waiting Father: Sermons on the Parables of Jesus)

As an aside, does anyone feel that this kind of "God is the key"/"God must be the starting point" argument you find in Barth, Forsyth and so many others often seems to assume that if you just start with the right intellectual starting point all will work out ok? I.e. dump natural theology and start with the concept of the Crucified Lord and all becomes clear.

Perhaps this misses the need for repentance and faith and for the work of the Holy Spirit. Only with the Gospel preached as wisdom of God, accompanied by the Spirit, and grasped by faith, will the world open up to us.

PS for an fascinating story about the encounters of Helmut Thielicke, Karl Barth and Billy Graham have a read of this post.

Sources of disquiet

Helmut Thielicke puts into words some frustrating feelings that I have about my experience of speaking to those who wouldn't call themselves Christians:

Aren't discussions, by their very nature, endless? Do they not go on spawning new discussions? Doesn't every serious discussion end with the conclusion that this is where we really have to begin, and that we have arrived not at a period but only at a colon? Isn't this constant beginning anew the sign that we are moving in a circle, a curved line that never ends? This is disquieting, for the circle is ultimately the symbol of noncommitment.

If one examines the conversations of Jesus, one will note that they always end in an arrest, in a sudden termination of the circular. Without exception they end in a "Hix Rhodus, his salta." ["Here you must leap or retreat"] They end at the steep escarpment of a message which cannot be avoided by any detour.

(p.x, I Believe: The Christian Creed)

From this he explains why it is important to teach the "forbidding wall" of the Apostles' Creed. That certain facts must be reckoned with and confessed. However, he is somewhat troubled by his own conclusion, and again puts into words a feeling I have, this time speaking to those who would call themselves Christians but don't seem to know what that means:

We must ask whether the creed is not a continual enumeration of some things which we must believe. Is it permissible to speak of faith at all in this additive way? Are we allowed to say anything more than the simple confession, "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief"? Is there such a thing as a minimal content of belief, the possession of which gives me the right to call myself a disciple? Didn't the people to whom Jesus attributed great faith actually believe very little so far as content was concerned, and, what is more, was not that little - as in the case of the woman with the hemorrhage (Matt. 9:20 ff.) - actually very questionable?

(p. xii, ibid)

... lots of questions which I share. No answers!