Ancient Lessons from the Garden

An Our Daily Bread article by Sheridan Voysey immediately made me think back to a recent visit to the famous Kew Gardens in London. For me, that trip was the fulfilment of a long-standing ambition ... but I little thought I would learn a Bible lesson in the process!

Voysey writes:

"Last spring I decided to cut down the rose bush by our back door. In the three years we’d lived in our home, it hadn’t produced many flowers, and its ugly, fruitless branches were now creeping in all directions.

"But life got busy, and my gardening plan got delayed. It was just as well—only a few weeks later that rose bush burst into bloom like I’d never seen before. Hundreds of big white flowers, rich in perfume, hung over the back door, flowed into our yard, and showered the ground with beautiful petals.

"My rose bush’s revival reminded me of Jesus’s parable of the fig tree in Luke 13:6–9.”

This passage goes,

“A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down’” (Luke 13:6-9 ESV).

“In Israel,” Voysey continues, “it was customary to give fig trees three years to produce fruit. If they didn’t, they were cut down so the soil could be better used. In Jesus’s story, a gardener asks his boss to give one particular tree a fourth year to produce. In context (vv. 1–5), the parable implies this: The Israelites hadn’t lived as they should, and God could justly judge them. But God is patient and had given extra time for them to turn to Him, be forgiven, and bloom.

"God wants all people to flourish and has given extra time so that they can. Whether we are still journeying toward faith or are praying for unbelieving family and friends, His patience is good news for all of us."

An incident on my Kew Gardens trip brought Jesus’ parable vividly home to me. We were given a walking tour during which we were shown an old tree, a cross between an English and a European oak. The walk leader explained to us that the tree had not grown particularly well over 200 years but had been uprooted in the violent storm of 1987. 

To the astonishment of the gardeners, the stricken tree seemed to be doing rather well. After some head-scratching, they worked out that the roots were gaining precious nitrogen from the air, a nutrient they had long been denied in the impacted soil that surrounded the tree.

Once the tree had been righted and re-planted, the gardeners made a point of loosening the soil around its base every year. This worked wonders for the health of the plant. They decided it was a policy they should follow with their other trees.

It struck me that familiarity with the Bible story would have taught the staff that lesson already. Nonetheless, we must not overlook the main lesson for the tender plants which are our spiritual lives. God is patient with us, 

“not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

That patience is not endless. We should be real about the danger of complete shipwreck that we are in, and about the greatness of the gift God offers us in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Far be it from us to try His patience.

Wisdom

Another stint of guest house ministry in North Wales draws near. I’ve been working on that most intriguing of Bible books, Ecclesiastes, as the subject.

To understand Ecclesiastes you need to know what the Bible thinks about wisdom. Although King Solomon is not named as the author of the book, he is usually linked with it. He is also connected with Proverbs and the Song of Solomon (Song of Songs). These, plus a few psalms and some books which never made it into the Hebrew Bible, constitute the Wisdom Literature. Yet the wisdom in them does not always chime in with what we today usually think of as “wise”. This word nowadays makes us think of the times when Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army discreetly advises Captain Mainwaring, who is about to embark on some madcap scheme, “Do you think that wise, sir?”

Solomon had a reputation for being “wise” that spread throughout the Middle East. The Queen of Sheba arrived at his sumptuous royal court, curious to find out what this reputation was based on, and was not disappointed. The story goes that two loose women turned up one day to ask Solomon for judgment regarding a baby. One came with a tale about them both having a baby within three days of each other. The second woman accidentally overlaid her baby one night and it suffocated to death. She surreptitiously swapped this baby for the other woman’s living one. The first woman saw the dead baby in the morning and knew that it was not hers. The other woman, of course, said this was a lie.

Solomon calmly ordered that the living child should be carved in two and shared out between the women. The true mother of the living child exclaimed,

“Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death” (1 Kings 3:26 ESV)

The other, though, was content for the gruesome solution to be put into effect. Solomon recognised that the genuine mother would yearn for her child come what may. He gave his judgment:

“Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother.”

However clever the story, we would normally think of Solomon’s strategy as hugely irresponsible and therefore unwise in our terms.

My researches turned up some other surprising facts about wisdom in the Bible.

• It is not always moral. It seems that a special class of wise men or women developed during the period of the kings. See Jeremiah 18:18. This verse seems to reveal that the “wisdom of the wise” can be manipulated and used against God’s true servants.
• It is sometimes shown in skills and gifts that we would normally think of simply as natural abilities. It is manifested in the skill of those who performed the art and craft work involved in the making of the priests’ robes and the construction of the Tabernacle (Exodus 31:1-11). Professions as diverse as mourning at funerals (Jeremiah 9:17) and work with ships (Ezekiel 27:8-9) required wisdom.
• Though an abstract quality, it takes on personality, Proverbs 8. This description could be pointing forward to Jesus or it may simply be the Hebrew trait of visualizing abstract ideas in a very physical way. Certainly wisdom’s pre-Creation existence makes us think of God’s infinitely wise plan, made before we ever came on the scene, to redeem us and give us eternal life in His Son.

At root, wisdom is down-to-earth. Somebody attempted a working definition of wisdom like this:

“Wisdom is intensely practical, not theoretical. Basically, wisdom is the art of being successful, of forming the correct plan to gain the desired results. Its seat is the heart, the centre of moral and intellectual decision.”

The NIV Thematic Study Bible defines human wisdom thus:

“The human quality which enables the planning and successful achievement of a desired goal. It may be expressed as technical skill, practical instruction and astuteness in political affairs. True wisdom includes spiritual discernment and, above all, the reverence and knowledge of God.”

The death of Jesus on the cross to save sinners is described as wisdom. Blasphemy as far as the Jews are concerned, sheer folly to the Greeks, to those who believe it is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). In the 18^th century, Charles Wesley wrote a beautiful hymn about wisdom. The last verse goes like this:

Happy the man who wisdom gains,

Thrice happy who his guest retains;

He owns, and shall forever own,

Wisdom, and Christ, and heaven are one.

We Belong to the World

So the UK General Election is over, the result is what it is – a hung Parliament – and there are many people around feeling very jaded. “Why did we have to have this unnecessary and damaging election?” they demand to know. “Does Brexit now have to change, or even be abandoned altogether?”

My hope for the future has only limited connection with the arguments about whether Britain stays in the single market or in the customs union. Whatever we do about such things, I feel we need to move on and be open to the world.

Some 40% of the UK’s trade is currently done with the European Union. Yet, historically, we belong to the world. For four centuries our country had a truly global reach. Our ships sailed far and wide, opening up new trade routes and markets, putting us in touch with a huge variety of peoples and their cultures. Our missionaries, too, took the message of Jesus to the remote corners of the earth.

Our relations with Europe have, of course, been intense over many centuries. We have repeatedly been involved in European strifes and struggles. On the plus side, have benefited hugely and in many ways from contact with the Continent. It continues to be seen as a place of opportunity for many of our young people.

It is also true that we can’t be said to have turned our backs on the wider world since joining the EU. But the time comes when a certain amount of re-balancing is needed.

I feel that time is now. The world is stirring. In countries long neglected and under-developed, the peoples begin to lift up their heads. Enterprise and initiative at last come to the fore. It is an exciting time. True, many of these states are unstable and unpredictable trading partners. Their democratic status is often weak and tenuous. But trade and enterprise have always thrived on adventure and risk.

Have I forgotten that I am blogging as a Christian? Have I begun to write purely political entries? No, because this world we belong to is God’s world. King David declares in Psalm 24,

“The earth is the LORD'S and the fulness thereof,
the world and those who dwell therein,
for he has founded it ...”

And He hasn’t just made the earth and walked away. He remains actively involved. In Genesis 18:25 the patriarch Abraham pleads with God,

“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?”

Many pagan nations thought that their gods specialised in one stretch of land (usually their own country). But the God of the Bible keeps breaking out of these barriers and showing His power throughout all the earth. In the Old Testament of our Bibles there are persistent indications that non-Jews, belonging to the nations outside the chosen people, would come to know this God and acknowledge His lordship. Jesus accepted this and prepared His followers to reach out beyond the boundaries of Israel. That is why, in His resurrected form, He announced to the disciples at the very beginning of the Book of Acts:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

In the 18th century, an age when no clergyman was normally expected to function outside his own parish, John Wesley famously announced,

“I look on all the world as my parish; thus far I mean, that, in whatever part of it I am, I judge it meet, right, and my bounden duty, to declare unto all that are willing to hear, the glad tidings of salvation.”

EU or no EU, may we in Britain once again become God’s people reaching out to God’s earth with the message of the Saviour whom He sent.

The minute’s silence

As we prepared for our Challenge Walk at Pusey in Wiltshire, we were asked to stand for a minute of silence to remember the victims of the Manchester bombing of 22 May. The talking stopped. The drinking of coffee stopped. People stood with heads bowed, almost motionless. Only after a word from the organiser of the walk did the hall, which was our venue and starting point for the walk, come to life again.

It was a significant moment for me because it brought home what a crime victim had said in an interview some weeks before. I can remember nothing about the interview other than the person’s description of how they felt afterwards. It gave me a very clear impression of what such an experience must be like. “It’s as though you are frozen in time. Life stops from that moment on” (or words to that effect).

Frozen in time. Life stops. It is not so much as though you were caught in a photographic freeze frame. You still go through the routine of the day, each and every day. But that part of your life which was invested in the person that died has come to a halt. You will not wave them off to school or to their place of work the next working day. You will not watch them develop as people and personalities. You will not see how they are shaped by the various landmarks that occur in life. All that is placed on hold, never to resume – not in this life, at any rate.

Those involved in bereavement counselling will tell you that mourning, even though it goes on long after a person’s friends think they should have “got over it by now”, is in fact quite reasonable and natural. It only becomes toxic when the person, as one of my tutors put it, “gets stuck somewhere”. Somehow the person fails to move through the recognised stages of mourning to a point of acceptance. Queen Victoria never stopped being dressed in mourning after the death of Prince Albert. She never allowed any change in the rooms they had shared together – they stayed as monuments to the past. She, and in some ways her family and court and the whole nation and empire, suffered as a result.

But, certainly in the case of a bombing, who can you blame for grieving victims being frozen in time? Surely not them. It is, purely and simply, the bombers and their accomplices.

What can free us from being frozen in time, functioning like that word from the walk organiser which ended the minute’s silence? The Lord of time and eternity – Christ Himself. He came announcing that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Before then, when the angel announced to His mother Mary that she would give birth to Him, these were the angel’s words:

“… you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke 1:31-33 ESV).

Time may or may not have stopped for you. But you can come over to One in whose presence time will no longer matter.

Crown Him the Lord of years,

the potentate of time,

creator of the rolling spheres,

ineffably sublime!

All hail, Redeemer, hail!

For Thou hast died for me:

Thy praise shall never, never fail

throughout eternity.

Matthew Bridges, 1800-94 and Godfrey Thring, 1823-1903

The Curate’s Egg

It is always satisfying to find out exactly where a popular saying comes from. Often we are not sure, but in the case of this one we can be precise: “It’s like the curate’s egg - good in parts”.

Have you come across that expression? It is gradually fading from use, but was much repeated at one time. It came into being with the above cartoon from Punch magazine way back at the tail end of the 19th century.

A bishop has invited a lowly curate from one of the parishes in his diocese to tea. The curate is anxious to please. If he proves himself to be socially well adjusted - a good guest, in other words - the bishop may give him preferment in the future.

Problems arise almost immediately when the curate cuts through the shell of the egg. An objectionable sulphurous smell wafts across the room. The curate’s egg happens to have gone bad! The curate is terrified of doing the wrong thing. “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr Jones,” comments the bishop. “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you!” the flustered junior cleric replies in haste. “Parts of it are excellent!”

Audiences were still chuckling at this comical reply decades after the cartoon was first published. Indeed, the Curate’s Egg became proverbial in English usage. Perhaps we would be less comfortable about it if we realised what it says about our society to this very day.

A conference speaker mentioned the saying and mused, 

“How would the apostle Paul have reacted? He wouldn’t have said the egg was 'good in parts'. He would have exclaimed straight out that it was a rotten one!”

Why did the speaker come to that conclusion? Because Paul was never mealy-mouthed. He called a spade a spade, especially where the ills of the sick and sinful society around him were concerned. In 1 Corinthians chapter 6 he retorts,

“... do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.” (ESV)

Paul did not express himself that way because he enjoyed condemning people. His aim was to warn. It was also to encourage those new Christians who had those things in their background in the pagan society where they lived. For that reason he went on,

“And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

You may agree or disagree about the various groups mentioned above needing to be washed clean spiritually in order to be right with God. But there is no doubting the fact that today’s society does not encourage us to be forthright. It conditions us to avoid making reference to “rotten eggs”. It would instead urge us to call them “good in parts”.

And all the while, the foul smell that envelops the genteel dining table makes its own clear statement.

Oh, no - Not Another Election

The iconic Brenda from Bristol has the entire nation in stitches - and nodding in agreement - with her expression of disgust at the calling of yet another election: “You’re joking? Not another one. ... I can’t stand this. There’s too much politics going on at the moment. Why does she [Prime Minister Theresa May] need to do it?”

In my worst moments I might echo her views. That was especially the case when I examined the voting paper for our local Parish Council elections (I vote by post, as I find polling booths too intimidating) and saw a list of 17 names, most of which I had never heard of, and had to somehow select up to 15. And that is just one of three elections in the space of six weeks.

However, we are extremely fortunate and favoured to live in a democracy. I would hate to have to rub along in a dictatorship where the ruling warlord portrays himself as the “father of the people”, benevolently patronising his little “children”. All the while, you find, he has been inflicting the most brutal oppression on any who dare to dissent.

There is much argument about whether the Bible model for a church is democratic or not. In my Congregational church stream it is important that the members’ meeting is the ultimate decision-making body. Allowance is made, of course, for church leaders to use their discretion in delicate pastoral matters or ones where a swift response is required. The danger is that an assertive meeting may hamper or thwart a pastor who actually has Bible warrant and divine authority for a certain course of action. In that way a church can go counter to God’s will.

In many cases a democratic constitution would have brought disaster in the history of God’s people. Let us say the Exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land was put to the vote. The majority might well have voted to take the people right back to Egypt!

Many Reformed Christians would say that God’s preferred type of government for His people is theocracy. There the church is run, not by committee or by popular mandate, but by God Himself.

Of course, God is unlikely to send down instructions about what colour to paint the walls. Someone has to take decisions on matters where the Bible has nothing to say. But in practice that means that someone on the human side of the organisation needs to wield day to day power. And therein lies the problem. Churches that claim to be organised as “theocracies” can easily spawn leaders who come over as the benevolent dictators I mentioned earlier, patronising their spiritual “children” and displaying alarming levels of abuse in the process.

As Sir Winston Churchill once said,  
“Democracy is the worst system devised by the wit of man, except for all the others.”

Let’s not be cynical about democracy. Those who offer themselves to be voted on by us are likely to have something of a love for people. After all, they must be prepared for rejection by the people if they lose the election, and willing to accept the decision with good grace.

Isn’t there a small echo of our Saviour in that? The Lord Jesus Christ was on a divinely-appointed mission to save humankind. But he was prepared to face utter rejection and scorn from precisely the people He had come to redeem. Did He do it gladly and with grace? Supremely so.

“... Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (Hebrews 12:2-3 ESV).

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him” (Philippians 2:5-9).

Do, please, support our democratic process. It is at least as likely to fulfil God’s purpose as any other type of government.

Bread of the Presence

It is a mysterious story which repeatedly breaks into the flow of the Bible and then disappears again. We find ourselves hearing at least an echo of God’s mind about the life and sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus. Here, then, is the story of Easter from a totally unexpected angle.

It concerns a strange Jewish institution called the Bread of the Presence. The account begins with a command of God through Moses in Leviticus chapter 24. God decrees that there is to be a table of pure gold in the Jewish Tabernacle (the precursor to the Jerusalem Temple) that would always have two piles of six bread cakes on it. The bread would be a food offering, but would stay on the table rather than be offered like an animal sacrifice. Every Sabbath day a new consignment would be neatly placed on the table and the old apparently eaten by the priests, and only the priests, as it was most holy.

We then move on to a curious incident that took place in some desperate days for David, the future King of Israel, and his followers (1 Samuel 21). Persecuted and beleaguered by King Saul in the waning days of Saul’s kingship, David desperately needs food for some of his young men. He asks the priest Ahimelech for whatever he can spare.  All there is is the Bread of the Presence, which the priest calls holy bread. He can only supply it if the young men are ritually clean. David assures him that they are. The priest then gives him the bread. In effect, ordinary soldiers are being treated as though they were privileged like priests.

Jesus uses this story as an effective argument against those who were criticizing the actions of His disciples. On one occasion these disciples were plucking some ears of corn from local cornfields for food. This was acceptable practice except that it was the Sabbath that day, when “work” was forbidden. The Pharisees challenged Jesus. Jesus replied,

“Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and took and ate the bread of the Presence, which is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and also gave it to those with him?” And he said to them, “The Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath” (Luke 6:3-5 ESV).

With this one brief story a number of key points emerges. Here are just some:

    •    God’s Presence is for ever with His people. Jesus is Immanuel, “God with us”.
    •    Jesus says, “I am the Bread”. He is the living Bread from heaven, spiritual food to make us alive and nourish us.
    •    This is holy bread. With the Lord Jesus we are handling holy things.
    •    Jesus is our great High Priest, who makes His followers “a kingdom and priests to our God” (Revelation 5:10).
    •    Jesus is a merciful High Priest. He sets aside the strictness of God’s law to still our pangs of hunger and make us clean before God.
    •    In the Presence of God with us, and our coming to Him in the Lord Jesus, we have an eternal covenant. Holy Communion is now the sign of this.

Thank God for the rich meaning of that far-off piece of ceremony, the Bread of the Presence. May we present ourselves with reverence and Easter hope to our awesome, holy yet merciful God, the Father of Jesus Christ who gave His life as spiritual food for us and rose again.