A THOUGHT FROM WIMBLEDON

Many of the prophetic pictures or visions which the prophets of the Old Testament received were very simple. Amos saw a bowl of ripe fruit and was simply told Israel was ripe for judgement; he also saw a plumb line against a wall and was told God would spare the nation no longer. It’s actually the very simplicity of the images that makes them very pointed. It’s the same with prophetic actions: Jeremiah was told to buy a clay pot and then to break it in front of the elders of Jerusalem to tell them what God would do to their city. Jesus himself uses the simplest of images for the most important of truths.


I was not, then, really surprised by what seemed a rather simple episode from the Wimbledon tennis. One afternoon, during a ladies match, there was an outburst of thunder and some torrential rain. The only match playable was on the Centre Court where the glass roof had been closed. The rain pounded the roof and seemed desperate to get inside. Only a few drops managed to get through. Apparently the players were unable to hear the ball hit their rackets (a great distraction according to the experts). Very disconcerting!


As I watched this I immediately thought, “This is a picture of God trying to get a hearing, trying to say something to a very engrossed people. He’s desperate to get a hearing, but he’s kept out by a protective glass roof. The people are hearing but not listening”. The crowd seemed to typify people everywhere in the nation, for the rich, the great and the good were there and vast numbers of people across the nation were of course watching on their screens. It was quite a strong thought, but perhaps I might have given it no further attention except that a few seconds later one of the commentators remarking on the storm said, “Somebody somewhere is not very happy about something!", and he was quite clearly alluding to the author of the weather! The commentator had also significantly discerned a note of anger in the storm. My response was very quick, “Too right he’s not!”


A further thought, however, had also been going through my mind before this incident, namely that I felt so grateful to God that he had given us physical bodies and also sorts of thing to do with them (like games) that gave great human pleasure to so many. So there was nothing fundamentally wrong at all with tennis. The tennis was OK, then, but the problem lay in what was happening to the humanity at large that was watching it. The problem was, of course, that it had switched off from God, supposed him to be in a sense irrelevant to life and was not ready to grasp things that were essential to real well-being in life. Tennis and so many other pleasures had become the absolute centre of life; pleasure was the goal and the god.


It was the “glass roof” that really laid bare the problem; this elaborate and expensive protection against anything that might interfere with the game, with the pleasure. It was so hard to penetrate. It was as though the nation had an elaborate, hard, glass roof over it – a roof of indifference, built out of sophisticated thinking and sophisticated pleasure. No way in for God! He would have to smash the roof, and even then there was no certainty that the people would listen.


Oh, well, just a simple thought? I wish that was all it was, but sadly it rang too deep a bell.




Bob




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THE OUTSIDER

Early on in his prophetic ministry Jeremiah gave vent to the following words, “To whom can I speak and give warning? Who will listen to me? Their ears are closed so that they cannot hear. The word of the Lord is offensive to them; they find no pleasure in it. But I am full of the wrath of the Lord and I cannot hold it in.” (Jer. 6:10). He was still a very young man when he said this, and had expected to be heard and thanked for his timely warning about the state of his nation and the danger it faced of judgement. He received precisely the opposite. Apart from a few companions, he was rejected, persecuted and remained so for the rest of his life. He was always an outsider to his nation.


The prophetic burden for his nation, however, burned strong and deep within, and he could never escape from it. The sin was all too plainly there in the nation, laid bare before his eyes – “From the least to the greatest, all are greedy for gain; prophets and priests alike (all those leaders who should have known better), all practice deceit. They dress the wounds of my people as though it were not serious”. (6:11) But still he could find no audience ready to listen to his warning. He suffered a great deal of hurt and despair, and increasingly so as the years passed.


Much later on in his ministry he remonstrated with the people with these words, “For twenty three years the word of the Lord has come to me and I have spoken to you again and again, but you have not listened.” (Jer. 25:3)He had persisted with warnings of judgement, his ministry reflecting the enormous patience of the Lord much more perhaps than his own. But his word to the nation had not really penetrated. Indeed the resistance had grown harder, and now his word, prompted by God, was to become much more severe until judgement and disaster actually fell on Judah and the surrounding nations. He lived to see it happen all round him, still the outsider.


Some fifty two long chapters of the book of Jeremiah record this daunting ministry and this daunting episode of history. These were not given to us simply for historical interest, but as a record of God’s awesome dealings with nations – as important today as they ever were. Tragically the response to them is very much the same as it was in Jeremiah’s day. Even our “priests and prophets”, let alone our national leaders, treat the clear message of judgement in these chapters as outside the pale of modern acceptable thinking. They are branded as “fundamentalist” or “immoral”. For me that very fact makes them all the more relevant and incisive. It utterly verifies what this prophetic book has to say, and makes hugely relevant Jeremiah’s cry of, “Who will listen?”


God himself knows the “outsiders”, and walks with them, for that is where the nation has sought to place even him.



Bob




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CHRISTIANITY AND WORLD PEACE

It will never be possible for Christians for the sake of peace to compromise their proclamation of a resurrected Lord Jesus who was crucified for the forgiveness of sin. Neither can they compromise their commitment to a godly life lived in the power of the Holy Spirit and walking in the commandments of God. Indeed Jesus spoke plainly of the strife that such faith would bring and the need to face persecution.

However, one thing stands out very clearly in the teaching of Jesus; whilst we may be persecuted and suffer violence from others, whether political or religious, our calling can never be one of violence. It is totally contrary to the spirit of genuine Christianity to advance its cause in that manner. Wherever that may have been done in the past it has always been an offence to the gospel. It will have happened usually because some political force or person has hijacked and used Christianity for its own worldly ends, or because Christians have sold out to political powers rather than curb them.

Three statements of Jesus in particular make this position of non-violence very evident. First, there was an occasion when Jesus went through a Samaritan village and was shunned by the villagers. The disciples wanted to call down fire on them (expressive of their own untutored and bitter religious hatred). Jesus rebuked them with the words, “You do not know what spirit you are of.” (Lk 9:51). Second, he taught, “Bless those who persecute you” (Matt 5:28). Third, he told Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world. If it were my servants would fight to prevent my arrest” (Jn. 18:36). With these statements Jesus flatly turned his back on violence and coercion.

Thus, whilst Jesus never compromised in what he preached nor mollified the warnings he gave to those who refused his offer of salvation, he also never threatened violence. There was nothing in his message that sought to dominate, no words or threats of physical violence for those who would not toe the line. That was not his “spirit”. He was proclaiming a Kingdom of love, and that demanded a totally voluntary response of heart, not a slavish response of fear. He required no savage punishment for anyone blaspheming him; on the contrary he died a criminal’s death on a cross for sinners.

This represents an absolutely fundamental principle that, as far as true Christianity is concerned, “religious” differences are not to be settled by the sword (or the gun). Jesus left people free to choose, even if they chose the false. They were then left with the consequences of their own choice. That is the way of the Kingdom. It is this principle that has to find its way into the world of religious differences in the modern world if we are to know peace. It is this principle that the disciples of Jesus must not only teach, but live out. This is the principle upon which alone true tolerance can be found. We are to live and let live, and allow God to be the judge.


The modern process of trying to blur the distinctives of religions is not a viable way forward to peace; adopting a position of tolerance such as is at the heart of the Christian faith is the only viable way, though one may question the ability of the human heart and of human religion to walk it!




Bob




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