NAMELESS HEROES

Reading the (very) familiar story of Isaac and Rebekah this morning I picked up something I don’t think I’d spotted before – which is the familiar pattern of regular Bible reading.

In this story Abraham sends a servant off to Mesopotamia to find a wife for his son, Isaac. God leads this servant to the household of Laban, Abraham’s great-nephew (or something like that – I always find degrees of relationship in Genesis confusing!) and to Rebekah, who – in one of the high points of scripture – declares, “I will go with this man.”

The big characters in this story are Isaac and Rebekah, and of course Abraham, but the nameless servant who goes to find Isaac’s wife is who caught my eye this morning. He is described as “the oldest of Abraham’s household” (Gen 24:2), which implies the most senior and trusted servant Abraham had. Back in Genesis 15 we read that Abraham complains to God about his (then) childless state, and how this means his inheritance will pass to Eliezer of Damascus. So it seems reasonable to assume that Eliezer was this self-same “oldest of Abraham’s household.”

I wonder whether Eliezer ever felt conflicted in the changes in Abraham’s fortunes? Did he rejoice quite so heartily as others did at the birth of Isaac? After all, no Isaac would have meant Eliezer getting his hands on all Abraham’s loot, and his own descendants laying claim to all that Abraham had been promised. It would be easy to imagine a disgruntled Eliezer – and a significant lack of enthusiasm when it came to finding Isaac a wife, and the way in which that would underline his own missing out on Abraham’s inheritance. But we get no hint of this in the story. Instead, Eliezer rejoiced and worshipped when God led him to Rebekah.

It is easy for us to get disgruntled if we feel others are getting more recognition than we are. Eliezer had obviously dealt with this temptation. He had a bigger vision, because he recognized what God was working out through Abraham and his descendants. Eliezer wasn’t pursuing his own agenda, but the plan of God. He wasn’t so concerned about getting his own name in lights, as the fulfilment of God’s promise that through Abraham’s offspring all the nations of the world would be blessed.

As Augustine put it, "Your best servant is the person who does not attend so much to hearing what he himself wants as to willing what he has heard from you." That's what Eliezer was like.

What an example. What a servant. And what a hero.

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

Recently I had the unanticipated experience of finding myself at a barbeque with a bunch of guys from the special forces. As Poole is a military town, with a Royal Marines base in the harbour (home to the SBS) this experience was not so surprising as it would have been when I was living in Sidcup. Nonetheless, it was an interesting evening.

When I was 17, my burning ambition was to join the Parachute Regiment, and I took the initial selection tests for officer training. By the time I got to university and had spent a few months in the Officer Training Corp that ambition waned, and my life took several different turns. Twenty years later, despite regular lurches towards pacifism, I still feel a measure of regret that I didn’t spend a few years in the military. If I had my time again I think I’d give it a go.

The past few days I have been away at our Together At Westpoint event, which gathers churches from across the south and south west of England, and beyond. It was a truly wonderful time, and I loved every minute of it. About 140 of us were there from Gateway and it was an excellent time of hanging out together and eating lots of cake – as well as superb times worshipping Jesus and hearing great preaching.

It was interesting how often military themes came through at Westpoint. We are a pretty militant lot for Christians! Rather than the church on the back foot this was the church advancing. One of the real highlights of this was our offering at which £101,000 was given, which was pretty impressive as their were less than 2,000 of us at the event. There might be a recession on, but we’re not participating!

One of the truisms about events like Westpoint is the number of unsung heroes – the real foot soldiers – who make the thing happen. All those people who never appear on a platform but labour away making sure the showers work, and the kids are looked after, and the site is tidied. We said goodbye to one such hero today – Joe Nolan, who has been on a year team at Gateway and is now heading off to Exeter University to read theology. Joe has served us so well, in so many areas. I’m going to miss him.

We finished Westpoint with a barbeque. There weren’t any SF soldiers there, but as I looked around there were a whole crowd of men and women who are very special, and a force to be reckoned with. There’s nothing like the local church.

It’s amazing who you can meet at a barbeque.

PRAYER FOR LONDON

SEZ I

In The City of God, Augustine relates a famous story about power:

For it was a witty and a truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’ And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.’

The scenes we have witnessed these past few nights on the streets of British cities are just another working out of the encounter between pirate and emperor. In the end, it is about power.

Augustine was acutely alert to this power play, and the tendency of emperors as well as pirates towards villainy. But this did not lead him to call for a renunciation of state power; instead, the power of the state must be tempered by justice. As Augustine expresses it, in introducing the story of Alexander and the pirate,

Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale? What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms?

So, the only significant difference between villainous and righteous power is not its scale, but whether power is exercised in the pursuit of justice.

In the narrative of the Bible this power play has been in operation since the creation of the world. Adam and Eve were entrusted with power, a power that operated in justice, to steward and govern the earth. But justice was abandoned at the moment of rebellion, and human power was surrendered to villainy. Augustine identifies this initial rebellion, this original sin, as pride – the attitude that says, “Sez I.” Self-love, rather than love for God, resulted in the corruption of power, and the tendency for power to corrupt.

On our streets we have seen this “Sez I” attitude writ large. It is the attitude that simply enjoys the exercise of power, without any reference to justice. As one criminologist put it, "powerless people suddenly feel powerful" and that is "very intoxicating."

In contrast to “Sez I” it has been encouraging to see communities (often led by churches) coming together to clean up after the mess; and it was encouraging to see so many London churches gathering to pray last night. These actions are themselves powerful, but they require the submission of power to a greater cause – that of justice. And so there is a great opportunity at this time for the church to demonstrate what submitted power in the pursuit of justice looks like. And there is great need for government that uses its power in the exercise of justice – so all Christians should pray for our Government in this regard.

Twenty years ago I was spending a few weeks working at a research station in the Namib desert – miles from anywhere – when I heard the news of riots on the streets of Britain. Grace (not Mrs Hosier then) was on her own in a flat in Newcastle, one of the worst affected cities, and I remember the sense of concern I felt for her, and shock that such things could happen in the UK. At the same time (and this is a story I often tell) when I was in South Africa, with apartheid in its death throes, it was interesting to observe how white Christians prayed for peace, while black Christians prayed for justice, as it looked like the nation might plunge into bloody carnage.

Those who are used to security and comfort value peace; those who live in insecurity and oppression desire justice. But the reality is that peace and justice are two faces of the same coin.

What South Africa needed in 1991, what Newcastle needed then, what our cities need now, are peace, and justice. Let’s pray, and labour, for both.

LET ENGLAND SHAKE

Honestly, I go away on holiday for a couple of weeks and the country falls apart. Never mind Dave Cameron having to hurry back from Italy, clearly it was my defection to France that led to riots on the streets, double-digit increases in energy bills, and massive turbulence on the financial markets. I can only apologise for taking my hands off the reins. 

Even more depressing was coming home to find the football season had started again.

August has a long established track record of civil unrest, and there is good evidence that this is at least in part due to the temperature. Warm things up to 27C and young men just can’t stop themselves from throwing things at the police – “It wasn’t me gov, it was the heat wot made me do it.”

Looking at some of the footage of the disturbances I can understand something of the mentality behind it. There must be a tremendous sense of power in ruling the streets like that – a hot summers night, the police on the back foot and free shopping options, are all reasons why it is unsurprising that the anarchy is spreading like randomly lobbed Molotov cocktails.

Rather than being shocked by the events of recent nights, a good Calvinist with an appreciation of the doctrine of total depravity will wonder that such things do not happen more often. This isn’t the end of the world, or even of civilisation as we know it, but the expected fruits of those who have been “given up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.” (Rom 1:28)

The natural tendency of sinful man is to do what ought not to be done, and a society that sows the corrupt seed of playing football during the cricket season has only itself to blame for the more corrupt fruit of “unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice, envy, murder, strife, deceit.” (Rom 1:29)

There is nothing profound about this anarchy. There is nothing profound about looting. It is simple covetousness and unrestrained unrighteousness. As well as identifying the problem, the book of Romans also offers a simple solution – that the government “is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” (Rom 13:4) So more power to the police’s elbow, and baton.

And of course (as any good Calvinist will tell you) there is an even more glorious solution than simply the power of civil authority to coerce civilised behaviour. Gloriously, ultimate violence has been enacted against the Son himself, in order that the corrupt hearts of man might be changed. That is, “the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Rom 3:22-25)

Hallelujah!