Tag: Paul Beasley-Murray

The Sign of Water Into Wine, John 2:1-11 (Second Sunday in Ordinary Time)

I’m still not completely shot of the sinusitis, so this is another repeated sermon. In this case, it’s from six years ago, and hasn’t previously appeared on the blog.

John 2:1-11

I have long wanted to write a book, and perhaps the easiest to write would be the ministry equivalent of the old James Herriot ‘All Creatures Great And Small’ vet tales. Over a long course of time in the ministry, you can gather all sorts of tales, and few areas are more fruitful than what are formally called ‘rites of passage’, or more informally ‘hatch, match, and despatch’ – baptisms, weddings, and funerals.

Having had Sarah Steele’s wedding here yesterday, my mind would easily go to several stories:

  • My first ever wedding, where my nerves affected my preparation, and just as I was catching up the bride arrived early
  • The fourteen bridesmaids who arrived on a bus
  • The Catholic wedding I was asked to register, which was so calamitous in so many ways that I became convinced Father Ted was a real person
  • The wedding where my address was interrupted by a drunk guest, who was promptly told by the bridegroom, ‘Shut up, I’m listening!’
  • The Star Wars actress whose wedding I conducted last March at Weybridge. OK, she only had a minor part in the last Star Wars film, but don’t ruin a good story for me!

And more, of course, that were memorable for a host of reasons.

Maybe the wedding at Cana was the most memorable one in history, though. This is more than a miracle story. All the miracles in John’s Gospel are more than miracles. As this account concludes:

11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

It’s not just a miracle, it’s a sign. A sign of Jesus and his glory. But in what ways?

Firstly, it’s a sign of resurrection:

2 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, ‘They have no more wine.’

Those opening words ‘On the third day’ should be a hint. For even though in this part of his Gospel John is apparently narrating a week in the life of Jesus, the words ‘on the third day’ have additional suggested meaning for Christians, especially since that came at the end of the narration of another week, Holy Week. If you think I’m stretching a point, then note this passage from Isaiah:

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
    a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine –
    the best of meats and the finest of wines.
7 On this mountain he will destroy
    the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
8     he will swallow up death for ever.
(Isaiah 25:6-8a)

In the words of Professor Richard Bauckham (and yes, I’m biased, because he was my research supervisor),

Here the provision of the finest wine is linked with the abolition of death.[1]

Here in the second chapter of John is a sign of what we shall see in the second to last chapter: the resurrection of Jesus. John is hinting at what is to come. Jesus will reveal his glory in his resurrection, and his disciples will believe in him because of it. Peter and John will believe. Doubting Thomas will believe. Before any of the men believe, Mary and the women will believe.

If you want to see the glory of Jesus, see the One who in vacating his tomb conquered death. This is glory: he has defeated the last enemy for himself, and this points to the time when he will abolish death for all.

Dr Paul Beasley-Murray, a retired Baptist minister friend of mine, wrote an article the other day in which he reflected on four books he had recently read about death and dying. He included some quotes from some of the books, which happen to illustrate how the glory of resurrection hope transforms the way Christians look at death. All the people I am about to quote are themselves Christians (including the vicar!).  

From John Wyatt, Emeritus Professor of Neonatal Paediatrics at University College London:

If our hope is in the power of medical technology to overcome every obstacle, we are doomed to ultimate disappointment. What is worse, this kind of hope may stand in the way of godly acceptance of God’s will for the last phase of our life, impeding the possibility of strengthening or ‘completing’ our relationships in a healthy and faithful way.

From retired Anglican vicar Martin Down:

I know of no real remedy for fear of any sort other than faith… It is God alone who can both say to us ‘Fear not’ and give us good reason not to fear.

And finally from retired oncologist Elaine Sugden:

Rather than think about loss of hope, think instead of purpose and opportunity.

Because of the resurrection, we are people of hope. And that brings glory to Jesus.

Secondly, this story is a sign of intimacy between Jesus and his people:

3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, ‘They have no more wine.’

4 ‘Woman, why do you involve me?’ Jesus replied. ‘My hour has not yet come.’

5 His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

Now at first this exchange might just sound like an almost amusing account of a mother – and a Jewish mother at that – who knows how to get her son to do what she wants him to do. (Although did Mary know Jesus would turn water into wine? I don’t think so. I’m sure she was surprised, too.)

But it’s much more than that. Who was responsible for supplying the wine at a Jewish wedding two thousand years ago? The answer is, the bridegroom. So by giving Jesus the problem that the wine has run out, Mary gives Jesus the rôle of the bridegroom. That is probably why he replies, ‘My hour has not yet come.’ His own great wedding feast – the wedding feast of the Lamb and his bride, the Church – has not yet taken place. It is to happen at the end of all things as we currently know them.

What we have here, then, is another part of the great image that runs through Scripture in which God’s love for his people is depicted in marital terms. In the Old Testament God woos his people with love, but she is unfaithful, and divorce language is used. But Jesus, the Bridegroom Messiah, washes his bride clean with his blood at the Cross, and will marry her to be with her for ever in the new heavens and new earth.

It’s not surprising, then, that in the rest of his Gospel John records Jesus using the intimate language of mutual abiding to describe the relationship between him and the believer. Jesus abides in the believer, and the believer abides in him. Jesus goes so far as to say this is what his own relationship with the Father is like[2].

The glory of Jesus here, then, is in the closeness of the relationship that he wants to have with his disciples. It’s a great deal more than celestial chumminess. Rather, having come and lived among people in the Incarnation, as John describes in his first chapter, Jesus wants not only to live among us but to share life with us: the joy and the mess, the simple and the profound.

The glory of Jesus is this: however majestic the Second Person of the Trinity is, he wants to share life in relationship with his church and with each of his disciples. Is it not remarkable – no, astonishing – and wonderful that this is what he wants for you and for me and for us?

Do not be afraid, but by all means be amazed. Be thrilled and be grateful!

Thirdly, this story shows the glory of Jesus in his abundance:

6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from eighty to a hundred and twenty litres.

7 Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water’; so they filled them to the brim.

8 Then he told them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.’

Stone jars were not subject to the Jewish purity laws. Unlike clay jars, they could not become impure and therefore have to be smashed. A priestly family, or at any rate a household concerned with ritual purity, would use them as working jars. They were also large, and expensive to make, because they had to be carved out of one large stone. But in the long run they were cheaper, because they could be reused, unlike clay jars. That meant that probably only the better-off families could afford them.

But the main thing here for our immediate purpose is that they were large. Connect this with these observations about wine (bearing in mind how much wine was made in the miracle) by a theologian called Andrew Wilson:

In the scriptural imagination, however, and particularly in the prophetic tradition, wine represents abundance, shalom, hope and new creation. It embodies blessing: “May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine” (Genesis 27:28, ESV); and happiness: “wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine, and bread to strengthen man’s heart” (Psalm 104:15). It speaks of love: “we will extol your love more than wine” (Song of Songs 1:4); and bounty: “then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine” (Proverbs 3:10).

Jesus makes so much wine in the six large stone jars. And he doesn’t make supermarket plonk, he makes fine wine:

‘Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.’ (Verse 10)

Undoubtedly, we have a picture of the glory Jesus will reveal at the end of all time, in the new creation, when blessing and abundance will flow to his people and all will have plenty and be satisfied. This isn’t the so-called ‘prosperity gospel’, where if you truly have faith you will be healthy and wealthy now, but a promise of the End that Jesus will sometimes show glimpses of now when he blesses us in this life. And when he does bless us in this life, we respond with thanksgiving rather than hoarding, and with offering what he has blessed us with for the good of others.

We look forward, then, to the glory of Jesus when he puts all things right in creation, makes everything new, and blesses abundantly, not grudgingly.

But we also respond now, so when we witness those whose lives are not characterised by abundant living, we know as Christians we must pray, speak out, act, and give. It may be poverty. It may be famine. It may be injustice. It may be disease. Our call is to witness to the coming abundance of blessing, and to show that the present way of things is not the will of God.

All of which draws us to the conclusion where we note what the passage says about our response and how that may enable the glory of Jesus to be seen.

There are a couple of threads about response in the passage. One is about obedience to Jesus:

5 His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from eighty to a hundred and twenty litres.

7 Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water’; so they filled them to the brim.

The co-operation of the servants in obedience to his command enables Jesus to show his glory.

The other is about faith, and it’s back to where we began:

11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Put these two threads together and you have ‘Trust and obey’. If I’d known exactly where my studies of the passage were going to lead me this week when I picked the hymns, then ‘Trust and obey’ would almost certainly have been the next hymn. But it isn’t, because I didn’t realise that at the time.

However, ‘trust and obey’ are the ways we respond to the glory of Jesus and co-operate with his ways so that others may see his glory. When we encounter the glory of Jesus, as the disciples did at Cana, then the right response is to believe in him.

And when we do believe in him, the appropriate way of showing that is to obey him, so that others too may see his glory in the promise of resurrection, a relationship of intimacy, and and the gift of abundance.

Indeed – let us trust and obey.

[1] Richard Bauckham, Gospel Of Glory, p182.

[2] Ibid., pp9-13.

0

Sermon: Your Labour Is Not In Vain

1 Corinthians 15:50-58

The last time I was invited to preach in a Baptist church was in the mid-1990s. I was ministering in Hertford and the then senior pastor of Hertford Baptist Church and I worked a pulpit exchange. The day before it was due to happen, I went down with flu and the inexperienced assistant pastor had to put together a sermon from scratch and preach in my place.

So I’d like to thank Paul for the invitation to preach here tonight. We first worked together on re:fresh08, and he then invited me to join the board of Ministry Today. It’s very kind of him to give me this opportunity, just six months before my family and I leave Chelmsford for pastures new.

To our Bible passage, then. You might think this is a strange choice for this time of year. We’ve just about got Christmas done and dusted, and here are some verses about the Resurrection! It is the climax of the apostle Paul’s teaching on the Resurrection. Some say it contains the text that should be placed over every church crèche: ‘We will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed’ (verse 51b).

But, no, I’m not going to preach on that tonight, despite being the father of young children and the changing of nappies being a memory from only five years ago. Instead, I want to preach on a verse that has meant a lot to me. It has kept me going in bad times, even when I haven’t understood it. Not long ago, when I was going through a rough period, I was thinking about this verse. Someone who knew life was difficult for me prayed with me, and without knowing I was thinking about it, she prayed this Bible verse with me. It is very special to me. Because it has sustained me, my prayer is that it will encourage you if you are sailing through choppy waters in your life.

What’s the verse? It’s the very last one of the passage, verse 58:

‘Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.’

I want to explore it with three questions: what, why and how? What is the problem? Why does this verse help? How can I live it out?

Firstly, then, what is the problem? Let me tell you some of my own story. From the age of five, teachers expected me to go to university. My favourite subject at school – this will put you off me! – was Maths. Accordingly, when it came to choosing my A-Levels, I selected Maths, Physics and Chemistry. I decided I wanted to study Computer Science at university, and received a very good offer from Imperial College, London.

One month before the A-Levels, it all went wrong. I suddenly began to suffer excruciating neck pain. I never sat the exams. I tried to repeat my final year at school, but although I would have been physically fit enough to take the exams twelve months later, I would never have done myself justice. I decided to leave school, take a job and review my future long term.

That job proved to be a clerical one in the Civil Service, working in social security. I worked for what was then called the Department of Health and Social Security – or, as our critics called us, the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity. Much of it comes under the Department of Work and Pensions these days, or even HM Revenue and Customs.

I can tell you the odd funny story about that time. Not least when I had a job making sure that self-employed people paid the right National Insurance contributions. One day in the post came a letter from a woman who was returning her self-employed papers. She was winding up her business due, she said, to ‘unforeseen circumstances’. I looked up her records: she was a clairvoyant.

But mostly, those were chinks of light in a dismal and depressing job. What on earth was I doing there? Why had God allowed the neck problem? My career didn’t advance and the work didn’t normally use my abilities.

And Paul says in our verse, ‘in the Lord your labour is not in vain.’ I suggest that my experience of working life – and it can be the same in the ministry sometimes – is that we wonder what on earth we’re doing here. Our job doesn’t seem to achieve anything. Our studies at school or college seem to be going nowhere. Our experience of family or friends isn’t anything to write home about, however much effort we put into relationships. Has that been your experience? Perhaps it is right now.

And Paul says, ‘in the Lord your labour is not in vain.’ What we are doing sometimes does feel like it’s in vain. However hard we work, we aren’t achieving anything for the kingdom of God or our own personal fulfilment.

But you know what? Paul himself knew this experience. He refers elsewhere in this chapter, this letter and other letters to not labouring for the Lord in vain (15:10; 9:26; Galatians 2:2; Philippians 2:16). Not only that, he recognises it is a possibility for the readers of this letter. If you go back to the beginning of chapter 15, you find a clue as to why he dictated this chapter:

‘Now I would remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you – unless you have come to believe in vain.’ (Verses 1-2, italics mine.)

So if you feel like your efforts are in vain, let this give you good heart. You are not alone. Your experience was familiar to the great apostle and the early church. Don’t feel condemned. God understands you, and his word has encouragement for you.

It may be enough just to know that, but I’m going to move on to my second question, why does this verse help? Because if you’re anything like me, you want to know the whys and wherefores of an issue. Now I’m a parent of a six-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son, that comes back to haunt me. “Why, Dad?”

But ‘why’ is important. Why can Paul tell the Corinthians to ‘be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord’? What is it that means the know that ‘in the Lord’ their ‘labour is not in vain’?

There is an obvious answer. As we’ve said, this whole chapter is about the Resurrection. If you want to know why to keep on keeping on, the answer is the Resurrection. The Resurrection is what makes everything we do for the Lord worthwhile.

How does the Resurrection make our labour worthwhile? Let me pick out one thing Paul says about it from earlier in the chapter. He says in verse 20, ‘Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died’ (italics mine).

It’s this notion of first fruits. In New Testament times, you got to celebrate the harvest twice in the year. Not only was there the equivalent of our harvest festival in late summer or early autumn, there was a festival of first fruits in late spring. It happened at Pentecost. People celebrated the fact that the first fruits to be picked were the sign that the full and final harvest would come later in the year.

When Paul calls the Resurrection of Jesus the ‘first fruits’ he says it’s the promise of the full harvest, in other words, when all will be raised from the dead. It’s the promise that just as God the Father restored Jesus to bodily life, so he will physically resurrect all people.

It’s part of the great New Testament vision for the future, God’s new creation. The new heavens and the new earth. Whatever God destroys at the end of all things, he will make all things new. Our future is not to be disembodied spirits floating on clouds and playing harps, it is to be bodily resurrected people living, working and worshipping in God’s new creation.

And that vision is why the Resurrection helps us when we feel our labour is in vain. It’s because everything we do in the Lord’s service now is a sign of the new creation. We don’t know how God will incorporate or transform all our work for him now into the new heavens and the new earth – it will be ‘in ways at which we can presently only guess’[1].

Something Martin Luther once said about the Second Coming helps me envision what this means. He said that if he knew Jesus were returning tomorrow, he would plant a tree today. In other words, the new creation with the resurrection of the dead makes all those little deeds of goodness today worthwhile. Tom Wright puts it this way:

‘You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that’s about to fall over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that’s shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that’s about to be dug up for a building site. You are – strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself – accomplishing something which will become, in due course, part of God’s new world.’[2]

I think we best approach this as visionaries and dreamers. The other day I took a school assembly as part of a series about heroes of the faith. My topic was Martin Luther King. I downloaded from YouTube a video of the famous ‘I have a dream’ speech from 1963, and edited it down. During the assembly I showed a couple of minutes from the speech, beginning with the ‘I have a dream’ refrain, which doesn’t come until about twelve minutes in. So the children just saw the clips where King said he had a dream that his four children would one day be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character, and where he said he had a dream that one day black and white children would sit down and play with each other as sisters and brothers.

At the end of the assembly, I asked them to shut their eyes and imagine their dream of what God’s new world would look like, then to pray they would be brave enough to work for it.

And I think something like that is what Paul calls us to do here. What is your dream – based on Scripture – of what God’s new creation looks like? What do you believe is coming with the resurrection of the dead and the new heavens and new earth? How would you ‘build for the kingdom’[3] OF God? Can you be a dreamer for the kingdom with the passion to put your dream into practice by the power of the Spirit?

So to my third and final question: how can I live it out? Well, note that Paul talks about being ‘steadfast’ and ‘immovable’ – that is, steadfast and immovable in the gospel. The foundation for labouring hopefully is to nurture our faith. My Christian tradition has historically referred to certain practices as ‘means of grace’ – special things which God particularly honours as ways in which he builds us up in the faith. These include worship, prayer, taking Holy Communion and sharing in a small group. Today Christians often call these and other similar practices ‘spiritual disciplines’, and my congregations will tell you I am always banging on about them.

We need to renew our commitment to those regular, faithful acts where we deliberately put ourselves in a place where we expect to hear the voice of God. It won’t always be spectacular, but that isn’t the point. It’s more like an ongoing regular healthy diet than an occasional banquet.

And most especially when we use ‘means of grace’ or ‘spiritual disciplines’, the big issue is not simply to go on a head trip because we have understood something afresh or heard God speak. It’s to put it into practice. We can learn all the doctrine we like, but unless it’s a basis for godly action, it’s a waste of time. So let’s be grounded in the faith, taking advantage of opportunities that come our way, and from that foundation let’s spring into action.

But there’s one other emphasis in the ‘how’ that Paul makes and I’d like to stress it. I confess it’s one that challenges me. He talks about ‘always excelling in the work of the Lord’ (italics mine). I know the call to excellence is one thing that Paul your pastor feels very strongly about. Why does it challenge me? It isn’t that I don’t want to be good at what I do for the Lord – far from it. As somebody has put it:

‘If everything comes from God’s overflowing grace, can we measure service to Christ grudgingly?’[4]

There is no way we can hold a good conscience as Christians if we serve grudgingly. The gospel reminds us of God’s overflowing grace, and any response encouraged by the Holy Spirit is going to be a wholehearted one. That of itself encourages us in the direction of excellence, whether it’s something we do in church, whether it’s direct and overt witness to Jesus Christ, or whether it’s going about your studies or your work diligently and conscientiously.

I don’t have a problem with any of that. But where this challenges me is this: I can easily sign up to the ‘excellence’ idea when it’s about something I know I’m gifted in. Excellence becomes uncomfortable for me when I have to confront my weaknesses. To a certain extent I just want to concentrate on my strengths. To some extent that’s fine. I can advocate a creed of ‘do what you do, do well’ and find other people to cover the areas where I’m not strong. That’s a good and proper understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ where we all have our differing gifts and we all need each other.

However, if I’m not careful, it can degenerate into a cop-out. I spent some time last year during a sabbatical from work studying ministry and personality type. Part of this involved going away on a course. The tutor used a well-known tool that analyses the preferences of different personality types. For as long as we were looking at the preferences of different personality types, I was happy. But he then said this: it’s good in the first half of life to concentrate on your strengths. In the second half of life, it’s worth thinking about whether you can improve some of your weaknesses.

I didn’t want to hear that.

Then yesterday, I was reading a book I’m reviewing for Ministry Today and while it is a title aimed at pastors, there was a chapter on ‘excelling’, and a paragraph that related to this point:

‘What are your strengths and your weaknesses? Sharpen your strengths, and develop your weaknesses. Become better where you are good, and become good where you are weak. No matter what leadership gifts you think you lack, God is able to do great work in and through you. Believe in your call, then work and pray.’[5]

If you’re not called to leadership, ignore that reference. But we are all called. Is this something we can do – to become better where we are good and become good where we are weak? By the power of the Holy Spirit it certainly is. What a way to spite the enemy if he has discouraged us to the point of thinking our labour in the Lord is in vain! We can turn it back on him by redoubling our efforts, because we believe in the risen Christ and the coming new creation.

As I said at the beginning, we are due to leave Chelmsford in six months’ time. One of my goals in that period is not to be ‘demob happy’ but to use it partly to improve some of my weaknesses. For me, that’s a part of aiming to excel ‘in the work of the Lord’.

Could you make a commitment like that? Let’s pray.

[1] Tom Wright, Surprised By Hope, p169.

[2] Op. cit., p219.

[3] Op. cit., p157.

[4] Anthony C Thiselton, 1 Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical and Pastoral Commentary, p290.

[5] Royal Speidel, Evangelism in the Small Membership Church, p114.

8

Reading

It’s half term, and I’m taking this week on leave. Daytime, I shall be having time with the kids, of course. We’ve been exchanging Tesco Clubcard vouchers for money off ten pin bowling and a meal at Café Rouge.

But in the evening, I’m beginning to delve into some newly arrived books. Yes, they are all Theology, and that might seem a strange choice when I’m away from ‘work’, but few things restore me like a dose of good reading. (Yes, I am an introvert, if you hadn’t guessed.) Here is what those nice people at Amazon and The Book Depository have sent me lately:

Eugene Peterson, The Word Made Flesh: Peterson explores the issue of language as a spiritual concern by examining the parables of Jesus in Luke’s so-called ‘Travel Narrative’ and in some of his prayers.

Klyne R Snodgrass, Stories With Intent: I love the parables of Jesus, and this looks like being the standard work for the next several years. A few months ago, Scot McKnight was raving about it. Then Paul Beasley-Murray did the same in Ministry Today. Already, I’m hooked. He has a subtle, multivalent treatment of the parables. For years I’ve loved Craig Blomberg‘s book Interpreting The Parables, because he so thoroughly took to pieces the anti-allegory school and gave a brilliant history of schools of biblical interpretation. However, it was beginning to feel a bit simplistic in some of its expositions. I think Snodgrass will bring the subtlety.

Colin Greene and Martin Robinson, Metavista: What do we do, mission-wise, after postmodernity? Greene and Robinson are sketching a vision. I met Greene five years ago on a Bible Society course at Lee Abbey, but I’ve never previously read his books. I was pondering buying this one when I saw him interviewed by Alan Roxburgh on the Allelon website. That convinced me.

Christopher J H Wright, The Mission Of God: another Scot McKnight rave. Eleven or twelve years ago, I bought Wright’s commentary on Deuteronomy, in which he interprets the book missiologically. Later, I bought his exposition of Ezekiel, which attempts something similar. This is his magnum opus, bringing together his skills as a biblical scholar and his past experience as the Principal of a missionary training college. Wright argues that the whole Bible is a missionary document. I believe this will be required reading for all of us concerned with the ‘missional’ approach. It promises to be the most important work of missiology since the late David Bosch‘s Transforming Mission.

Ben Witherington III, The Letters To Philemon, The Colossians, And The Ephesians – A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Captivity Epistles: I’ve bought several of BW3’s commentaries in the last year or so. I’ve been looking for something to complement and contrast Andrew Lincoln‘s majestic Word Biblical Commentary on Ephesians. Witherington is a prolific, eloquent and brilliant writer. 

Richard Burridge, Imitating Jesus – An Inclusive Approach to New Testament Ethics: For someone whose calling involves helping people with ethical decisions, I don’t read as much as I should on ethics, although I’m indebted to Changing Values by David Attwood and The Moral Quest by the late Stanley Grenz. Burridge is flavour of the month in some circles I know, not least in Chelmsford, where he gave a Holy Week lecture earlier this year. Not long ago I reviewed his commentary on John’s Gospel, which was superb. This too has been well reviewed, again not least by my friend Paul Beasley-Murray. I had a quick dip into his section on Paul and homosexuality, and while not everything Burridge said convinced me, he said enough to shed new light for me on this painful debate.

I won’t read all these books cover to cover. Some will just go straight on the shelf for reference. In the case of others (e.g., Snodgrass) I shall read the introductory chapters before squeezing them into my statutory thirty yards of bookshelving in this study.

Have any of you read any of these titles? What did you think of them?

What are you reading, or have you read recently, that you would recommend?

I would be fascinated to know.

3

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑