Internlog

In Mission Studies, we recently had a session on contextualisation – the idea that when we do evangelism, we need to present the gospel in a way that highlights its relevance by addressing the questions that people in a particular context or culture are asking whilst also challenging some of the culture’s assumptions. This means that having a neat abstract gospel outline might not be enough to challenge people to think about who Jesus is, but that we also need to know their culture and context.

Based on my experience of living in different countries and cultures, the best way to learn about a culture is not to study it in a detached academic style but to also immerse myself in it. However, culture is not limited to countries or nations, but also exists on a micro-level. Even just among Durham students – and this is ignoring the student-resident divide in Durham – we can probably find a number of different sub-cultures based on people’s backgrounds, worldviews, or interests, including (perhaps more than one) Christian culture. 

I have recently been thinking that some – by no means all – of us, myself included, are not very good at stepping out of this Christian culture, which can easily become a bubble. This has been particularly true for me this year working for a church at a time where social contacts in general have been significantly reduced. However, even as a student, I often found it more comfortable to stay in my Christian bubble and reduce interactions with people outside that bubble to a nice and polite surface level without immersing myself in their contexts or investing time to really listen to their stories. I sometimes only understand other people’s lives very superficially or am quite detached from their realities which means that I wouldn’t even know how the gospel can speak into their situations. 

Stepping out of that bubble and entering other people’s contexts might be uncomfortable and can raise a number of questions or present us with practical challenges – but is being comfortable what our lives are about? Ultimately, the Jesus we claim to serve and follow was also willing to leave his glory and comfort with the Father behind and enter into our world to serve and save us.

---

Photo by Marc Sendra Martorell on Unsplash

I wasn’t really sure what to write today. I feel like this has come around so fast since my last internlog and I put all my thinking into that. So I decided to open my Bible at random and write a reflection on the passage that came up, which was Ezekiel 43 and Ezekiel’s vision of the new temple, but I’ll do my best.

In fairness, this definitely has some relevance to the current situation we find ourselves in. We had a sermon series on Ezekiel and exile last summer focussing on Israel’s exile in Babylon and its parallels for us, a theme being continued in the current sermon series in our evening services on the minor prophets. We are now, of course, in a very different situation to last summer; to use Mark Bonnington’s metaphors, we’re either climbing up the basement stairs or coming to the end of the viaduct, and this passage speaks to that situation.

Despite the sermon series I am far from an expert on Ezekiel (the only thing I really remember was a lego model of Jerusalem), but I do remember that there’s a lot of condemnation from him, warnings of the Lord’s judgement and the destruction of the holy city. In chapter 43, as we approach the end of the book, the message has changed; we are now seeing glorious visions of the new temple. In our own way, we’re hopefully approaching our own new temple. 

Now to actually talk about the passage. A lot of this passage seems quite obscure, with lots of talks of sacrificing bulls and goats. There’s good stuff in there but I’ll focus on verses 10-12:

As for you, son of man, describe to the house of Israel the temple, that they may be ashamed of their iniquities; and they shall measure the plan. And if they are ashamed of all that they have done, make known to them the design of the temple, its arrangement, its exits and its entrances, that is, its whole design; and make known to them as well all its statutes and its whole design and all its laws, and write it down in their sight so that they may observe all its laws and all its statutes and carry them out. This is the law of the temple: the whole territory on the top of the mountain all round shall be most holy. Behold, this is the law of the temple. (ESV)

The new temple is filled with God’s glory. The place we are headed to will be filled with God’s glory. We can’t let it make itself and run itself. We have to know it inside out, as Ezekiel shows us. That’s my challenge and encouragement for today: we need to take responsibility for the shape of Church after lockdown, but God’s glory will fill it in the face of our insufficiencies.

---

Photo by Snowscat on Unsplash

This past week has finally felt like Spring might just have chosen to arrive. The sun has been shining, the crocuses and daffodils are beginning to appear, and the temperature has occasionally risen above 10 °C! Whilst I am definitely happy to see more sunshine, Winter is actually my favourite season so I am always saddened when so many celebrate its end and lament its imminent return. Therefore, this week I have been dwelling on the value of each season individually, and I have found music a really helpful tool in doing this.

One of my favourite hobbies is listening to classical music and as the seasons change I am always drawn back to Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. It’s a beautiful piece consisting of four violin concertos split, unsurprisingly, across the four seasons. In listening to this piece I noticed that despite the clear differences between the sections of this piece each is beautiful in its own distinct way, and that without all of them the music would be less in its entirety. Each individual movement contributes something different to the overall piece, just as each season in nature contributes to different aspects of God’s creation. 

But how can this recognition of the value of each season’s contribution to creation be applicable to our lives? In thinking about this I was drawn to Ecclesiastes 3 which speaks of the importance of different times in our lives being for different purposes. This always fills me with encouragement as it serves as a reminder that despite the struggles certain seasons may bring us, after the often bleak Winter days comes new life and growth in Spring which then flourishes well into Summer. As for Autumn, this is a season where change abounds and new things are planted ready to bear fruit in the coming seasons. Which areas of your life do you see as being in Winter? Why not pray for God to bring new growth; for Spring to emerge out of current hardships. Conversely which areas of your life contain fresh growth or are bearing fruit? Let’s not forget to also praise God for the good works He is doing in our lives!

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven. Ecclesiastes 3.1

Nothing embodies the spirit of camping more than the camaraderie of re-pitching your tents together in the pouring rain in the pitch black. Yes, it may look sunny in that picture, but a mere twelve hours later every tent on that field was flooded or collapsed and the display of care from absolute strangers as tea was made over stoves was incredible to see. So clearly your neighbour isn’t simply a friend…

One of my placements as an Intern is helping to lead a youth group for 11-14 year olds. This term we have been looking at some of the parables Jesus used in his teaching and last week it was my turn to lead a session on ‘the Parable of the Good Samaritan’. Whilst this is a story that many of us could repeat at the drop of a hat I was deeply challenged when preparing the study at the depth of teaching these 12 verses can offer.

We can grasp the importance of loving our neighbour and that our neighbour is anyone who needs our help, even at a material cost to ourselves. Nothing embodies this better than the shared camaraderie of a campsite (especially if bad weather is involved!). When this is followed by the realisation that Samaritans and Jews really did not get along we are able to comprehend that this love can require sacrifice in the form of loving those who are traditionally our enemies.

But what about loving our neighbours who we just find a little bit annoying? Or our neighbours who we find just a little bit more challenging to love? Do we truly apply this teaching from Jesus in these circumstances to our neighbours? Or do we assume that Jesus’ command was somehow conditional, or that someone else will love them for us, someone for whom it will be easier…

In that case, who in the story do we become like? Unfortunately, I think we can probably all think of far too many examples of times where we have behaved more like the priest and the Levite; too wrapped up in our own holiness to risk loving a neighbour when it could get messy. Thankfully, God has grace for us in these situations and there is the opportunity to try again. And we can do better: Jesus ends this section of teaching with an instruction about how to love our neighbour that is so simple it almost seems impossible:

‘Which of these three, do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’ The lawyer said, ‘The one who showed him mercy.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go and do likewise.’

Luke 10.36-37 (emphasis added)

In the youth group we used this command from Jesus to pray about someone we each personally struggled to be a neighbour to, in order to ask for God’s guidance in how we can show mercy and kindness to them. Maybe God has placed someone on your heart whilst reading this?

Reflecting on the last week of this most unusual of years, the thing that stands out most for me was being involved in the family worship service. For those who don’t know me, choosing to don a hideously bright yellow t-shirt and dance around in the chilly Appleby Rooms on a Thursday afternoon is a long way from my standard idea of fun. I would normally be much happier reading a book, trying to write a bible study or, come to think of it, a whole host of other normal things. For those who do know me, you can be rightly shocked that I was there. But there I was anyway.

On Saturdays this year, I am trying to go on walks outside of Durham, to somewhere new each time. Recent highlights have included the very well-hidden Brancepeth Castle, Quarrington Hill and a couple of walks near Sunderland Bridge – I would highly recommend. It has been refreshing to see more of the scenery around this city that I have called home for 4 years, and a needed break from the necessarily higher than normal screen time.

Both of these have in common something that I have been thinking about for a while now, namely that a lot of the most important things that we come across in life are actually a lot simpler than we like to make them seem. Whether it may be marvelling at a creation so intricate and so vast and a sense of the simple perspective given on all that we busy ourselves with doing, I think that we (or maybe just me – that’s up to you) hide behind complexity in many aspects of life. Likewise, with faith. There is value in our theories on theological issues, debates going back and forth, and I am not one to ignore the deep insights that can be found there, but they do have their place. When the disciples were discussing which of them was the greatest, and asked Jesus for his thoughts, he didn’t give them a treatise on the meaning of greatness, or begin a discussion about the future nature of resurrection bodies. Instead,

“He called a child…and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven’”. 

A child does not stay awake into the night wondering about what it means to be a child, or about the moral integrity of their parents. They simply love the parent who gave them life, and trust them. Maybe we need to be more childlike.

Probably not unlike many others, I have found myself growing increasingly tired of lockdowns, of working from home and not being able to make fun weekend plans or see close friends in other places. It often feels to me like we just need to wait for this time to be over and for life to be filled with excitement again. And we obviously do need to wait for many of the joys and freedoms that we so easily take for granted to return. But I have also been reminded through different elements of Intern teaching this week that this time of waiting does not have to be a time that is wasted.

Firstly, in our School of Theology session on Mission Studies, we talked about the missio dei, the mission of God – the idea that God is at work in this world and that we are called to join Him in that. I, and I suspect I am not the only one, often see mission as something we do for God and centre it around myself and my own actions rather than around God. In a video we watched, there was a challenge to “listen, notice, and stay”; to explore what God is already doing in a place or a situation and to then start participating in His work. Perhaps, we can use this time in which our normal ways of “doing mission” are disrupted to pray and listen and think about how we can get involved in God’s work and prepare for that.

A second challenge this week came from a discussion on what it means to “go deep” with God in a teaching session on spiritual disciplines. Most of us, myself included, probably tend to see our own outwardly visible actions and the actions of others as signs of growth and maturity and of God’s work in our lives. But just like a healthy tree needs deep – but largely hidden – roots to survive storms and other crazy weather conditions, we need to invest into a deep and intimate relationship with God in order to sustain our ministry, particularly in times that can shake up our faith. I wonder if being stripped, at least to some extent, of our ability to take action actually frees us up to contemplate God’s beauty, pour out our hearts to Him in prayer and seek Him in ways that are hidden to the people around us.

I have been encouraged this week to try and make the most of this time of waiting which, whilst being difficult in many ways, might have more value than we now imagine in the years to come.

My family has a thing for hedgehogs. Unfortunately, you may be more likely to see one run over at the side of the road these days than curled up like the fella in the picture but I’m prepared to bet that half the people reading this agree with me that they can be very cute. Their snuffly little noses, timid walking style, dens made from piles of leaves in the back corner in the garden away from disturbances and so much more. Even the prickles aren’t too bad if you have a good pair of thick gloves on. As I say, it’s a thing. 

Growing up I didn’t think much about hedgehogs, other than the annual warning in late October that hedgehogs can crawl into the middle of a bonfire once it has been prepared, so you should always check for little hogs before lighting it. However, we had a couple of them stay in our garden last winter and that got me thinking. Hedgehogs spend the autumn stocking up on food when there are plenty of beetles and worms about so that they have enough energy to last them through the cold season. They then burrow down into their little leaf dens and hibernate for the majority of the next few months to get them through the winter, until they can emerge into the sun in springtime and go about their business.  

I saw one which had clearly not got the idea of hibernation whilst on a walk this week. It doesn’t sound like a bad deal when you think about it – eat loads of food in late autumn, curl up under a duvet and blankets, or leaves if you want the truly authentic experience, and wait out till the spring with its promise of vaccines and, whisper it very quietly, seeing friends again. I would guess that most of you would take that if offered it. 

But, and it is really quite a significant but, we are not hedgehogs. Hedgehogs may, in their own way, hope for nothing more than the feeling of sun on their spines, but we have a much deeper and more profound hope. We are not meant to withdraw from each other and just ‘get through’ the next few months, tempting though it may be. Again and again, the Bible speaks of hope. It doesn’t tell us to hope in the future, to hope in friends and fun and vaccines. As the psalmist says, ‘now, O Lord, what do I wait for? My hope is in you‘. Our hope in God is meant to be more foundational than a looking forward to, but a grounding to our every day, which in turn fuels our daily activities. Paul writes to the church in Thessalonica, praising their ‘endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ’. I don’t know about you, but I find myself precisely in need of this endurance at the moment. Let us hope once again in Jesus, and trust that this hope will produce in us endurance to make it through the winter.