APEST and Psalm 68

Ephesians 4:¹ I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ² with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³ making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. ⁴ There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, ⁵ one Lord, one faith, one baptism, ⁶ one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.

⁷ But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. ⁸ Therefore it is said,

‘When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive;
    he gave gifts to his people.’

⁹ (When it says, ‘He ascended’, what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth? ¹⁰ He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.) ¹¹ The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹² to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³ until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴ We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵ But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶ from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

Writing to the Christians in Ephesus, from where many churches had been planted across the cities of Asia Minor, about the gifts of Christ—apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, and teachers—Paul refers to Psalm 68, citing (in Ephesians 4:8) verse 18.

I have argued for the best part of twenty years that this is not a tangential thought, but that it anchors Paul’s thesis. Psalm 68 describes God descending on Mount Sinai in order to liberate his people from slavery in Egypt; journeying with them in the wilderness in order to shape a new community; before ascending on Mount Zion. For Paul, this prefigures the incarnation, ministry, and ascension of Jesus. The ascended Jesus liberates women and men who have been held captive to death by taking them captive by and for Life; and gives these newly-liberated human beings as gifts to his people, his ‘body’ the Church.

But when Jesus, or Paul, or any of the other writers of the New Testament, cite a verse from what we now call the Old Testament, they are expecting their hearers to do some work, to call to mind the full context being referred to. And twelve verses before the one Paul explicitly cites, Psalm 68 declares:

‘God gives the desolate a home to live in;

he leads out the prisoners to prosperity,

but the rebellious live in a parched land.’

(Psalm 68:6)

In recent weeks it has struck me with fresh force that the outworking of Jesus’ gift-giving, Ephesians 4:12-16, is also anchored in Psalm 68: that we find the fullest fulfilment of our personal calling within the context of the body of Christ, the Church, a community in which we are given a home and, together, do the hard but worthwhile work of knitting-together for mutual prospering. The picture painted in Psalm 68, taken as a whole, is of the transformation of the whole world, physical landscape and human society. The purposes of Christ, in laying claim to the redeeming of all, of each, of captive apostle and prophet and evangelist and shepherd and teacher is no smaller vision.

(By the way, ‘children’ in Ephesians 4:14—we must no longer be children—is better translated ‘childish’—we must no longer be childish.)

Seeing APEST across scripture

One of the questions that gets asked concerning APEST is, if this is so key a paradigm, where do we see it in play across scripture as a whole?

My answer would be, it is everywhere, hidden in plain sight.

Are there apostles and apostolic intelligence? Yes. Both Abraham in the Old Testament—the father of those who live by faith—and Paul in the New Testament would be examples of apostles, sent out into the world by God.

Are there prophets and prophetic intelligence? Of course! There are great giants of prophetic ministry, the Isaiahs of the canon, alongside the twelve shorter prophetic witnesses that run from Hosea to Malachi, not to mention Elijah and Elisha, and a host of other more local voices.

Are there evangelists and evangelistic intelligence? Four, for a start: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Are there shepherds and pastoral intelligence? Certainly. Consider Moses, the shepherd who led a wilful, wandering people through the wilderness for a lifetime, and who told them the stories that form the Pentateuch.

Are there teachers and teaching intelligence? Indeed. What else is the Wisdom literature of Job, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon if not a diverse collection of instruction for life?

But APEST is not one-dimensional. While we have a primary gifting, this interacts with our secondary and tertiary giftings—and we’re called to grow in them all. So how about examples of where we see someone in the Bible demonstrating all five intelligences? Let’s consider Joseph, whose story is told over Genesis chapters 37-50.

Joseph is the classic case-study in life-long prophetic intelligence, starting out from a place of immaturity that is damaging to his relationships, and being formed for maturity by circumstances of hardship. Joseph is someone who converses with God in the night. He is prophetic to his very bones. Indeed, his bones are the fulfilment of his prophetic vocation, waiting for the day—long after Egypt has forgotten their deliverer—when the family of Jacob will go out and return home, carrying Joseph with them.

Joseph is a prophet. But we see in him the development of an apostolic intelligence, the establishing of environments in which others can flourish. First, in the household of Potiphar. Then, in prison. And, ultimately, in the management of Egypt through the crisis of famine, and the provision of the land of Goshen for his father’s family. Joseph’s handling of the famine years is controversial. As the famine cuts deeper and deeper, all the money, livestock, land, and people of Egypt come into the possession of the Pharaoh. In his determined stand, Joseph demonstrates classic apostolic behaviour.

What about evangelistic intelligence? This is revealed in the names Joseph gives to his sons. Manasseh, for ‘God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house’. And Ephraim, for ‘God has made my fruitful in the land of my misfortune’. Joseph has known both hardship and misfortune, but his focus has become the good news stories. In the names he chooses for his sons, it is good news that he is wanting to communicate, to his peers and to the next generation.

Though he comes from a family of shepherds, pastoral intelligence does not come naturally to Joseph. Even so, we see God at work to grow this gift within him, melting his heart with compassion for his brothers, and being moved to respond to their need, albeit cautiously to begin with. Joseph may have chosen to put his past behind him, but at the right time God brought it back.

It is also in relation to his brothers that we see Joseph exercising teaching intelligence. When he makes himself known to them, he is at pains for them to learn that, despite their own evil intention, God meant what had happened to Joseph for good. And Joseph must revisit this lesson with them after their father’s death, in order for his brothers to really come to know it for themselves.

So, Joseph was a prophet, but all five of the gifts of Christ were at play in his life. Now, over to you. Where else do you see this in the characters that populate our scriptures? Bear in mind that we have selected accounts, not access to their whole lives. We might not be able to point to all five gifts in each case. But make a start, and you’ll be surprised at what you discover, hidden in plain sight.

Parliament

It must be horrific to be an MP at present.

For two-and-a-half years, the Prime Minister has refused to listen to her own party, to the opposition parties, to elected representatives—elected by the 52% and the 48%—of all our communities, there by the will of the people to work for the common good, to investigate and propose and amend and improve legislation that impacts all our lives.

In addition, they are daily accused of betraying democracy by an ultra-right-wing press, accountable to no-one, offering no solutions to any of the challenges we face as a society, who exist to stir up hate (there is money to be made there). They are daily derided by the electorate. They receive hate mail and death threats, as they go about their work under utterly unreasonable pressure. It should come as no surprise that many of them are ill as a result of all this.

Who would be an MP right now?

It has long been the practice of the Church of England to pray daily for our Members of Parliament. I can't think of a time when they have been more in need of our prayers.

Lord, have mercy.

Father, forgive.

Mothers' Day & Mothering Sunday

This Sunday is both Mothers’ Day (in the UK) and Mothering Sunday, and these are not different names for the same thing. Mothers’ Day relates to our mothers, biological or otherwise. Mothering Sunday is the annual thanksgiving for our mother church, the local church where we were baptised, the community of faith that nurtured our faith.

My mother church is St Mary’s Broadwater, far distant on the south coast. I was baptised there when my parents were on furlough from the Philippines. I have never attended that church; but every day of my life, members of that congregation have prayed for me—just as my mother has prayed for me every day of my life. Some of them only met me as a baby; some remember me from summer visits as a small boy; some have left this life to enter the nearer presence of God, joining the great cloud of witnesses who cheer me on. Some have never met me, but have had the baton passed on to them by those who did.

The primary work of love—before and beyond all other forms of nurture, however essential—is prayer. The primary work of a mother and a mother church is to pray for her children, from before they are born and long after they have grown up and left home; even to her dying breath. Even mothers who do not believe in God carry their children in their thoughts, at once within and somehow mysteriously beyond themselves; and that is prayer.

This Sunday I cannot be with either my mother or my mother church. But I will give thanks for both. Their prayers have sustained me, and, in ways we will never know, shaped me towards who I am, and am becoming.

Presence

Yesterday, for the third year running, members of Sunderland Minster spent the day at a stall in the neighbouring shopping mall. Ahead of Mothers’ Day this coming weekend, we were there to hold out the invitation to mark the occasion by writing a message of appreciation or a prayer, and placing it, along with a tealight, in a basket. The messages would then be displayed at the Minster for a whole week, while the tealights will be lit at our morning service on Mothers’ Day itself.

I find engaging people I don’t know in conversation particularly hard (and instead of approaching people, I quietly pray, asking God to send people to me). Yet each time we do this, it seems to meet a need. For me, the highlight is the many often deeply personal and moving conversations I get to have over the course of several hours simply being purposely present to those neighbours Jesus calls us to love as we love ourselves.

Yesterday, conversations ranged from the humorous—

one boy out with his mother decided that he would get her a Mothers’ Day card when he turned 18; I suggested that he practiced every year until then, so he’d get it right—

to the appreciative—

‘what a wonderful idea! You’ve made my day!’—

to the faltering—

‘what is there to say, after she’s been gone all these years; and how to say it?’—

to the poignant—

with those who have lost mothers very recently—

to the timely—

with international students who miss their mothers—

to the spoken/unspoken—

with the woman pushing a reborn doll in a silver cross pram...

I found myself thankful for the opportunity; for the people God sent our way; and for the fabulous team from the Minster who took turns on the stall.

I’m also struck by the number of people who walked by, took in what we were offering, and felt compelled to come back to us—the need for a bit of ‘processing time’ before doing so; and the way the nature of a shopping mall makes that possible...

Is there something we can learn here?

A parable

There was once a shepherd who had a hundred sheep. When one wandered off and lost its way, she left the ninety-nine in the open field and went searching.

On that day, the ninety-nine taught her nothing about being a shepherd—about herself, about her vocation in the world—that she did not already know (that is, that she had already learned through a hundred previous frustrations, failures, and triumphs).

But the one that was lost?

Through that sheep, she discovered just how far she would keep on going without giving up...

She discovered just how attentive she was, to footprints in the soft earth, and wool snagged on thorn bushes, and faint distant bleating...

She discovered just how joyful weary bones and scratched skin could be, and just how many others she could draw into celebration...

Death as exile

The lectionary readings for Holy Communion today are Jeremiah 17:5-10 and Luke 16:19-31.

‘Thus says the LORD: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the LORD. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.

‘Blessed are those whose trust is in the LORD, whose trust is the LORD. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.’

Jeremiah’s meditation on Psalm 1 seems naïve—and all the more so given that Jeremiah himself will later be imprisoned and even thrown into a cistern by the powerful men he spoke against (see chapters 37 and 38). But he has in mind the imminent exile, in which the elite of Jerusalem would be carried off into a far land as a consequence of their collective refusal to return to the LORD. The righteous and unrighteous alike would be swept away into exile; but there, those whose trust was in the LORD would flourish—the likes of Daniel, and his three friends, and Esther—while those whose hearts turned away from the LORD would whither.

Jesus told a parable—a provocative story—about two men, one rich and the other poor, one powerful and the other possessing less agency. The story starts in the world as we know it, and continues beyond death.

Death is the ultimate exile, being carried away from the land of the living. And all are carried away into exile, regardless of how they have lived. But the experience of the two men, both carried away, diverges: the one who had trusted in mere mortals and made mere flesh his strength experienced a parched wilderness wherein there was no relief to be found; the one whose trust was in the LORD experienced reviving, the absence of fear and anxiety.

Death is the ultimate exile. And like the Babylonian exile, exile is not the final destination. The Book of Daniel, itself set within the experience of exile, points to the resurrection of the dead, a physical resurrection within this world: the righteous raised to honour, and the unrighteous raised to shame.

Death is the ultimate exile, not the ultimate destination or state, reality, or end of the story. And the testimony of Jeremiah, of Jesus, of scripture, is that those who trust in the LORD do not need to fear exile, for even there they will be sustained.

But this trusting, and the kind of action that flows out from it—and, indeed, turning away from the LORD, and the kind of actions that flow out of trusting in our own strength and resources—starts here and now, grounded, as indeed the whole story is grounded, in this life in this world, so loved by God.

Jesus and the Iranians

Week 4 of our Iranian baptism preparation class, and the second week of listening to the candidates’ stories of how they met Jesus. Each person’s story is unique; but at the same time, there are certain recurring themes, or common threads. These include:

having a big problem, or problems, in their life, over an extended period of time—a problem they could not resolve in their own power—which may or may not result in anxiety or depression;

being evangelised, one-to-one—often (though not always) by a close friend or family member, someone they had known for a long time, and in whom they had witnessed a transformation in their personality;

having met Jesus, experiencing a noticeable transformation in their own lives, such as being notably less anxious or angry;

[This is not to say that Christians don’t experience anxiety or depression. Anxiety and depression are natural ‘healthy’ bodily dis-eases resulting from how off-kilter society has become, where we treat human beings as machines intended to make or spend money. Nonetheless, it is to say that meeting Jesus is somehow transformative.]

the central, and centering, experience of peace;

an ongoing experience of miracles—by which, in this context, I do not mean dramatic apparent violations of the laws of nature, but rather a world-view that recognises grace to endure the challenges of life that, again, is beyond our own power to produce. (Miracles are in the eye of the beholder.)

I find this interesting because so many people in my own culture live with anxiety and depression, and face overwhelming grief for a thousand different things, caught up, as we are, in ‘the collateral damage of life’ (Pavlovitz).

I find it challenging in regard to the extent to which Christians in this nation do not evangelise; and in regard to the extent to which those who have journeyed within the pilgrim people of the Church have not experienced noticeable transformation, in either the lives of their fellow-pilgrims or their own—and so, in many cases, have walked away.

I am convinced that God has sent these Iranian sisters and brothers to England because we need to learn from them.

I believe that one day it will be safe for them to return home. But not, I believe, until God has done through them the purposes for which he has brought them here in the first place.

Horeb and Zion

I have taken three services of Holy Communion today, sitting with these two texts at each of them:

You have not come to something that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them…Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’ But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

Hebrews 12:18-19, 21-24

He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, ‘Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.’ So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.

Mark 6:7-13

There is a long thread running through the Old Testament: the story of the God who descended from the heavens to Mount Horeb in the Sinai peninsula to rescue a people from slavery in Egypt; who then journeyed with them through the wilderness for a generation and after that as they established themselves as a nation in a land of their own; before ascending on Mount Zion, a hill in Jerusalem where David made a resting place for the tabernacle—symbol of God’s presence—and his son Solomon built the temple.

The writers of the New Testament saw this thread as prefiguring Jesus, who descended from heaven in the incarnation, camped out with us (in the words of the Prologue to John’s Gospel) for a generation, and ascended to the Father. Writing to Christian converts living among the Jewish diaspora, the writer to ‘the Hebrews’ reminds them where they are in this story. They are not at Mount Horeb, but at Mount Zion. They did not encounter Jesus while he walked about among us, but after his ascension. And that is where we are, too.

We have, at it were, entered the story at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus says, ‘All authority on earth and in heaven has been given to me: go, therefore, and disciple nations…’

How do we do that? In the same way as Jesus’ first disciples. He sent them to enter into a village; to live with a family for a season, inviting them into life in its fullness; and then to move on, to repeat the descend-dwell-ascend pattern again and again.

The third of the services I took today was for the Mother’s Union. Across much of the world, the Mothers’ Union is a force to be reckoned with for good, equipping women to go into communities and live alongside families helping them to build patterns of living that promote stability in contexts of poverty, gender-based violence, living with HIV or mental illness; caring for prisoners and befriending the elderly. In this way, communities are caught-up in the ascension, in the life-giving rule of Christ over the nations.

Just before I took the first of the three services, I heard the news that Michael Green had died yesterday. Michael was an Anglican vicar and theological educator, a passionate evangelist who specialised in university missions, the author of over fifty books. He was also my godfather. As a dear friend of my parents, he came into my life before I was born, has encouraged me on my faith journey, and has now gone ahead to be with the ascended Lord Jesus face-to-face. But he was no stranger to that pattern: coming in to peoples’ lives and introducing them to Jesus for the first time in student missions; or investing in generations of women and men in training for ministry, in their time at theological college. Rest in peace, uncle Michael, and rise in glory.

We have come to Mount Zion. We enter, stay, and we leave, called onward, ever onward. This is our story. May we live it, to the full.

Being human

In January, I read both Beartown and its sequel Us Against You. I’d not found Fredrik Backman before—I’m indebted to my friend Sean Gladding for the recommendation—but he is an astonishing writer. More than just well-written novels, Backman really gets under the skin of the human condition. The relevant theological term would be that we are all sinners, in need of grace. Whether intentionally or by miraculous accident, Backman story-tells the heights and depths of this mystery.

Sinner is not a moral designation. A sinner can be righteous, self-righteous, or unrighteous: they can live a morally upstanding life; be wilfully blind to their own faults; or embrace an identity as an outsider to morality. But all are sinners: we all hide from others—to protect ourselves, or to protect them—all put apart, all draw up battle lines. Good people do bad things from good motivations, or simply surrendering to badness. Bad people do good things, sometimes from bad motivations and sometimes simply surrendering to goodness. We hold back when we ought to speak out, and speak out when we would have been wise to exercise restraint. In time, as Backman describes so well, we discover that we are all alike. The realisation comes to us as violent grace, a jolt to restart the heart, a fresh beginning. But how quickly we forget.

We can’t help but polarise. And this is where liturgy comes to the rescue. Liturgy, sacred words spoken habitually over and over a lifetime, form us in a particular way. They do not do unto us, but demand hard work of us—liturgy is literally the work of the people—in submitting ourselves to the grace we so desperately need but so fiercely fight against.

When we gather together to share Holy Communion, we begin with the Prayer of Preparation:

Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is not a private prayer. We pray side by side with others, who each have their own God-given desires, just as we do. And we are forced to recognise, to acknowledge, that they, too, desire certain things, many of which are the very things we desire: to be known, to be loved, to be valued, to be safe from fear, to be of significance. Other people, no less than ourselves. There is no ‘Us’ and ‘Them,’ only we. Moreover, we are confronted with the truth that our desires, the ones we keep secret from so many people that they become secret to us, and the ones we wear on our sleeve, can get bent out of shape, become poisoned and poisonous—and need regular cleansing. This is as true for us as for the people standing to our right and our left. Desire is both common to humanity, and good. But—and this is also common to humanity—it needs tending to—and this not left to our own estimation, by turns too harsh and too indulgent, and so often simply tired to the bones.

Having so prepared ourselves, we move into Prayers of Penitence, saying:

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, we have sinned against you and against our neighbour in thought and word and deed, through negligence, through weakness, through our own deliberate fault. We are truly sorry and repent of all our sins. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, who died for us, forgive us all that is past and grant that we may serve you in newness of life to the glory of your name. Amen.

or,

Most merciful God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we confess that we have sinned in thought, word and deed. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbours as ourselves. In your mercy forgive what we have been, help us to amend what we are, and direct what we shall be; that we may do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with you, our God. Amen.

Week by week, we look at our lives, at ourselves and those we live alongside side, and take a stand against all that tears us apart, in which we are all complicit. We do so, knowing that we will never arrive at a point where the lessons are learnt, and we live in a utopia. No, we do so out of deep commitment to a particular place and real people, we can neither live with nor live without.

And then, week by week, we hear these words:

Almighty God, who forgives all who truly repent, have mercy upon you, pardon and deliver you from all your sins, confirm and strengthen you in all goodness, and keep you in life eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

and we are washed clean, held close, somehow empowered to live another day.

In a polarised world, we need writers like Fredrik Backman—and not only for personal reading but for book group discussions. And we need liturgy. Both will help us live as characters in the story we find ourselves in.

Before it's too late

Men:

I know (because you’ve told me) that you don’t feel you can tell your male friends what you’re going through, because you can’t imagine they’d understand, because they’ve never experienced anything comparable;

but (trust me—because they also talk to me) if you did, you might just be surprised...

A day in the life

This morning I took a funeral. The Minster was packed. When 250 people departed, unbeknownst to me one man stayed on until after I had been to the cemetery to conduct the burial and returned to the Minster, because he is living with anxiety and had no-one to talk to.

I travelled to and from the cemetery with the hearse. On the way back, the driver asked, “Are you done for the day, then?” No, but it is hard to describe what my days look like—you’d need to tag along.

I changed out of my robes, and the man who had waited for my return approached me. I sat with him and listened for as long as was needed, and prayed with him.

I don’t have answers to the life-issues he is facing. There aren’t answers—at least, not satisfying ones. What I have are stories, a deep depository of stories of men and women who faced life in all its unanswerable questions—this is wisdom. The Bible, where I find not so much answers to my questions as an invitation deeper into the mystery of life. (Job’s friends offered him spurious answers; God did not. Jesus rarely gave a direct answer to a question, often answering a question with a question.)

But it is hard for someone to draw on the well of stories when they have been cut off from them for a lifetime. So, I tend to listen more than I tell stories. But sooner or later, it’s the stories we need, to immerse our own lives in.

Whereas I find that people are disappointed in the lack of answers—true in church, but also wherever else one might go looking—mystery will not let go. At its heart, that mystery is personal, relational, loving. It is far beyond our comprehension, yet calls us in. And so, I find people making their way to find an open church, a priest, even if they aren’t sure God is there or listening.

Here’s the killer. In a crowd of over 250 people, whose lives are interwoven, it is possible to feel utterly alone. And you won’t be the only one.

We need to be reconnected, to God, to ourselves, to our neighbour. And, no, I’m not done for the day...