If you have ears, then, listen to what the Spirit says to the churches! ” To those who win the victory I will give some of the hidden manna. I will also give each of them a white stone on which is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it”. (Good News) Revelation 2:17

This simple verse has a profound truth at its core that has been an encouragement to me. It is a message about a simple, seemingly insignificant object, a small white stone. The writer of the book of Revelation is a mystical writer, he is difficult to understand, his images are best left as images and allowed to affect us emotionally rather than over analysed and stripped of their art. Here in this simple verse John presents us with a picture, a picture of what happens to those who win the victory, who pass by the grace of God into the presence of their creator.

I will give each of them a white stone on which is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.

Here amongst a myriad of other pictures of beasts and seas and horns and eyes, John’s eye picks out a special moment for all of us. He sees the Almighty reach out to each of his children in turn and press something into their hands. As he looks he sees that it is a small white pebble, a small bright stone. Each stone is different, each stone that is given in this image is uniquely given to each of his children. He tells us that on the stone is written a new name, a name that no one knows except the one who receives it. In other words a name that is between me and God, between you and God. A unique name designed, chosen by God to represent you, to sum you up, to present your destiny to you and to describe the unique relationship that you and you alone share with God. In the light of this little picture of God’s opening ceremony of the new creation, what importance is any other fame?

It is of no relevance what name we have achieved in the eyes of this world and its history. For some we achieve a brief fame, for others it feels as though we were never known at all. It does not matter. If our names slip out of the history books, no longer appear in the pages of Google or are mentioned only for a few brief last moments in the family notices of the local newspaper it does not matter. For our lives that seem too short to count, it does not matter. For God presents us with the only name we will ever need.

Our true names are made permanent in the only place that matters, in the only history book that is eternal, in the only medium that cannot be erased. The white stones, gleaming and polished with secret, true names known only between each of us and our God are given to us never to be removed. When that name is given to us it will say everything about us, it is all that God wanted us to become, it is the flourishing of a seed that he sowed in the world and brought to the flowering he uniquely chose for us. None of us are copies, none of us are clones. We are not hidden in the mass with God, we are not lost in the crowd. To God each of us is peculiar (isn’t that true) so to each of us is given a peculiar name.

Many of us carry our names not with pride but with a burden. For some of us we have a ridiculous middle name, a humorous name that embarrassed us when read aloud in school or at formal occasions. We remember people sniggering at our unusual surnames. Perhaps some of us have names that link us to people we’d rather not be associated with, our names are tainted, their ancestry brings shame rather than pride. As I was looking my name up on the internet I got excited once in a while when I thought it really was me i was reading about. Its like those moments when you thinking someone is talking to you and they really are not. My place of work is by a sea shore and people often walk past and wave in the window… one man in particular used to wave enthusiastically at us and I would wave enthusiastically back… it was only a few weeks ago when I was standing outside that I realised he was waving all along to the people in the flat above us! It wasn’t me he was interested and enthused about after all!

Not so with this name written on the white stone. This name that is to be given to each of God’s children is of the purest ancestry, it comes from the hereditary of God himself, it comes freshly articulated from his own mouth, it was not thrust upon us by our families, it is a name that is not out of fashion nor a name that brings shame. It is not shared with anyone else, it shares no one’s limelight and cannot be mistaken for anybody else. When God waves he is waving at us, when he calls our name it is not someone else he intends. He gives us our proper true name that expresses all that he hoped for in us and all that he loves about us and the unique relationship that only him and us can have with him.

Many of us know what we mean by a unique relationship. For some of us we have friendships or relationships with family or others that bring out an aspect of our personality that only that other person could truly bring out. We notice it in others – when two people get together they resonate with one another, the humour they have between each other is rarely seen between anyone else. Perhaps when we witness something unusual in nature or with our children there is one person we think to ourselves, “they would really appreciate this story”. Perhaps someone that gets a joke in just a certain way, perhaps they share your taste in food that no other does, perhaps they just share your appreciation of quietness or the stillness of a landscape. We have a certain sense of those relationships. Here in this strange and powerful text we are told that God and each of us have such a relationship. There is something in our personalities that only we bring to God. There is a way of worshipping him that only we bring to him, something in the way we understand him that only we understand. The text says “a name known only to him who receives it”… God calls us something that is known only between him and me. In this little picture we are presented with the profound thought that none of us are bland in God’s eyes, each of us stands out, each of us shares a unique relationship with God.

In giving us this name that is not the end of the tale, it is only the beginning of the new tale. Just as a ruler on his coronation is given a new name, just as an ordinary citizen in the days of chivalry was given a new name on his knighthood so to we are given our true name in a ceremony that marks the end of our apprenticeship and the beginnings of our true service . God gives each of us a “knowing look”. All that we might fear about ourselves that he knows has been taken care of, there is nothing in this gaze to be ashamed of, nothing in this name to hide. No need to cough loudly when the teacher reads out our middle name anymore. This is who we have been created to be, purified, white, ready for an eternity of service in ways we cannot imagine.

As each of us stands before the Great white throne we seem insignificant, lost in the mass of humanity as the single Great white throne stretches above and before us and all around us the crowd of people. But in that place of seeming insignificance when we think ourselves lost in the crowd, just another faceless person who looks the same as so many others, same problems, same name as hundreds of others around us we are given a small white stone. And that tiny white pebble has the name that God has chosen only for us written on it. A name no one else sees, something between only us and God and suddenly we are no longer lost in the crowd, suddenly that tiny gift lifts us out of insignificance, lifts us up to the Great White Throne, face to face with our God, with the one who knows us, who shaped our lives, who reveals to us why he made me, why he made you. In that moment a tiny gift lifts us to the greatness of being uniquely made for God, uniquely known by God, uniquely loved by God. Jesus, our older brother, beloved by his Father has been given the Name above all names so that we might be given our own name and place in God’s heart. No other fame matters, no other name we could make for ourselves matters, God has been the one we’ve wanted to share the joke with all along, God has been the one we’ve wanted to tell our stories to all along, God is the one who knows and loves the secret us, the real us that we barely know ourselves. He gives us the name we need never be ashamed of, he gives us the knowing look that only we share with him, he asks us to arise with our new names and enter an eternity of dignity, service, worship and joy.

I will give each of them a white stone on which is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.

——-

I preached this sermon in church this morning or at least a version of the text above. As I stood at the door a woman whose husband I had visited on his death bed squeezed my hand and I could feel an object in our handshake… she smiled and I looked down to see a white pebble in her hand – “What about that then?” she smiled at me.

Vox O’Malley

Real Live Preacher is in pain. Spare a thought for him.

The blurb for this book caught my eye :

When Marian Taylor takes a post as governess at Gaze Castle, a remote house upon a beautiful but desolate coast, she finds herself confronted with a number of weird mysteries and involved in a drama she only partly understands.
Some crime or catastrophe in the past still keeps the house, like the castle of the Sleeping Beauty, under a spell, whose magic also touches the neighbouring house of Riders, inhabited by a scholarly recluse.
Marian’s employer, Hannah, and her retainers, seem to be acting out some tragic pattern: but it is not clear whether Hannah herself, the central figure, the Unicorn, is innocent victim or violent author, saint or witch …

In a novel that has all the beauty of a fairy story and the melodrama of a Gothic tale, Murdoch explores the fantasies and ambiguities which beset those who are condemned to be passionately abandoned and yet hopelessly imperfect in their search for God.

If you like theological/philosophical novels or books which attempt to explore some religious or metaphysical idea within a story then you’ll find aspects of Existentialism, moral quandaries, Platonism, repressed and expressed sexuality of all persuasions and vague Christianity within this tiny Gothic “romp”. I was glad that these aspects where covered as they interest me a great deal but I did feel that like the “Matrix” trilogy the ideas were there but unsatisfactorily explored. This, could have been my fault in missing great nuances within the book which I readily accept. One character I appreciated in the book is an old lecturer in the Classics, Max LeJour, who attempts to explain the calamity of the tragic “Unicorn” in Platonic terms. He watches from afar and attempts to interpret and explain her tragedy to the second main protagonist, a former student of his who is dotingly in love with the tragic heroine.

The Gothic landscape was well constructed, based around some areas of Western Ireland, including the Cliffs of Moher; the constant need for bringing gas lamps around the house drew an extremely visual image in my mind of what living in the main isolated house would have been like. There was a lot of whiskey drinking, never mind the start with ale, move to wine then whiskey to finish malarkey, these folk started and finished with the stuff!

The book didn’t keep the intensity it had in the first section as it switches perspective to a different character which, for me, lost its momentum. I can understand that Iris was more interested in what she could explore from the other character’s perspective but I think this exploration detracted from the “thriller” intensity. I’ll not knock her for it but it did nearly cost her a half read book.

I liked the book, I give it 7 out of 10 but I think I liked more what it could have been more than what it was. It caused my grey cells to ponder various ideas but only as a spark rather than as a well rounded argument. It is my first Iris Murdoch read (probably my wife’s favourite author) and I would venture to read more of her, perhaps then I can rethink the theo-philosophical wonderings of the Unicorn and see more than is visible to me now.

I am currently reading  Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy - and it has solidified something in my mind that I have often thought and never discussed much: 

The miles of difference between sitting at a stadium rock gig and being in the mosh pit at the front.

They are two distinct experiences.  I can recall two particular gigs, U2 Zooropa gig at the RDS Dublin year 19xx and Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love tour at the same location probably 1995 ish. Stop laughing about Springsteen.

On both occasions we, as a group of friends wouldn’t rest unless we could push and squeeze and beg our way as close to the front of the stage as possible. The crammed bodies, sweat and excitement was physically imminent. When the respective bands played a song that someone particularly loved that person would leap up and down recklessly beside you, their armpit of excitement close to your nose. You didn’t mind because you couldn’t help be part of their joy. When the music was good you were with them, you were happy for them. A night of singing your guts out through the rising euphoria of each rock gig brought you instantly closer as a crowd. If you slipped in the midst of the mosh, they would reach down and pick you up as if saving you from sharks. By the end of the night, we were hanging on each other’s shoulders, lost for a moment, swaying and singing, self consciously aware we were having a good time, and a good time together. It was a form of intoxication and it was good. The experience was intense enough to blur our own different versions of the experience, we were all having the same experience, hearing the same music, jumping and punching the air at the same time and singing the same words; for a while, we were each other.

The music would fade, we’d move out of the stadium, buying a T-shirt to remind us of the gig but the memory that was of most value could not be worn. The musicians had facilitated a time for us to be together. They had brought us community we hardly knew on the outside. Only in very rare circumstances do such things happen, maybe in the tolls for thee experience of funerals or the darkness of a tent do the differences melt and we allow ourselves to share each other in a way we are unable to do at any other time.

Hey, sitting at a gig is still good but the last few for me have been much more polite. The music was fabulous, the bands inspiring but I was experiencing it only as an individual though I stood beside great friends. I felt we were missing a spiritual experience, I knew there could be more.We shared enjoyment those nights but we could have shared everything.

Real Live Preacher manages everytime to touch my innermost soul.

“When your children ask you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances that the LORD our God has commanded you?’ then you shall say to your children, ‘We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, but the LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”

Deuteronomy 6:20-21

“Dad, why do we set our slaves free? Why do we not work every day of the week, Mum?”: these are the questions Moses expects will be asked when the people settle in the promised land. Moses’ last sermons in the book of Deuteronomy are full of advice on how to cope with the new opportunity the land offers and the very real problem of how to pass the faith on to the next generation. He envisages a generation growing up who want to know why they are to live as they live, what their faith truly means. The implicit threat is that unanswered, or answered inadequately, the next generation can misunderstand and eventually neglect the faith of their parents. Moses expects questions and in so doing, he makes valid and explicit the role of questioning in the nurture of the next generation.It is true that without the opportunity to discuss, to test and to query, the next generation lose the heart of the faith. An unquizzed faith will simply be a borrowed coat from a previous generation that can be removed when it no longer seems suited to the contemporary climate. We do not want the generations that follow to cast off the faith as we cast off beehive hairdos or tartan jeans. We want them to own the faith, to wear it because it fits them and the world they see around them. Inquiry aids this ownership.”But what would I say?” you ask, as did the parents gathered in front of their leader. Moses’ advice begins not by redirecting the questioner to the religious “experts” but he expects the parents to attempt an answer themselves.More importantly Moses sets the shape and tone of the answer. The response is to be riddled with the Exodus liberation. They are to reply to the questions about the meaning of their religion by starting not with the ought of duty but the wonder of the larger social and theological vision of Exodus.To get a child to understand why their social outlook is noticeably more generous than their neighbours, they must first understand their part in the greater story of release. The first words of response are spoken not with cheap piety or the threat of punishment but with the spirit and story of the grander narrative of the release of the cosmos from bondage. The spirit and tone of the answer should woo the questioner’s imagination into the drama and worldview of Yahweh.In a few simple words Moses manages to give crucial advice to the church as we face the waning of the new generations. To stop the next generation from becoming the “Missing Generation”, Moses encourages an ethos of inquisitiveness in our liturgical life rather than oversimplified sermons. In reply, Moses advises answers which do not feel like a patronizing closure but like the first breath of salty air on the brink of a great voyage.Vox O’Malley – addicted to Exodus

The sermon in church this morning was called “War and Peace” and was based on the famous passage of Jesus where he says that he did not come to bring “peace” but the “sword”. Not the first thing you think of with Jesus but historically accurate nevertheless. Our minister also read the remaining part of Matthew 10 alongside verses 34-39 about the division that Christianity would bring to friendships and families. But the passage doesn’t end there even though this morning’s sermon did. It continues with a strange little passage: Matthew 10:40-42 reads:

“40Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me. And anyone who welcomes me also welcomes the one who sent me. 41Anyone who welcomes a prophet, just because that person is a prophet, will be given the same reward as a prophet. Anyone who welcomes a good person, just because that person is good, will be given the same reward as a good person. 42And anyone who gives one of my most humble followers a cup of cool water, just because that person is my follower, will surely be rewarded.”

Jesus is talking to his disciples and followers, he has just spoken of the conditions of war approaching where family will be torn apart by the allegiance that Christianity would demand. The implication of this passage however is that in these wartime conditions there will be some who will show favour to the various followers of the faith of Jesus. They will not be fully fledged “believers” or initiates but rather simply those who “welcome” in many ways the people of faith. It may be as simple as offering cool water to the followers of Jesus. The result of these actions of welcome is that they will be rewarded. Their actions will not go unnoticed and will be rewarded with, bizarrely, the same reward as the good followers of Jesus that are spoken about.

I find comfort in this passage, to me it fits with my impression of the personality of Jesus I have met in the pages of the Gospels. It goes alongside the previous few verses that talk about division and offers another perspective on what will happen throughout history. There is indeed a wideness in the river of God’s mercy and I am glad to have seen it here. To those who have offered a safe and pleasant harbour to the followers of Jesus yet do not fit into the black and white categories of belief, they in turn are offered a haven of no less quality, the grey havens of Matthew 10:40-42.

She was never “involved” with Jesus. I use that phrase “involved” to avoid the pantheon of evangelical cliches that describe someone as “saved”. She couldn’t stand the botheration of whatever Gospel gunners turned up at her nursing home to run the Sunday service. She wasn’t always polite about it. That’s not to say she wasn’t a polite person, she was. Who knows who had bothered her with religion in the past to make her quietly indifferent. When in her own home she wasn’t bothered but in the nursing home it seemed they were all over the place. I can’t speak for her, I never knew her enough to really know her thoughts and even then only God knows what even she didn’t understand about herself. She slipped away last year in hospital, a squeeze of the hand was enough to give my Dad hope that things were okay with her and her Maker. That was all that was said and I couldn’t push it, it would have been wrong to open up and cross examine that moment.

Yet it has bothered me, in fact it has gnawed at me. I occasionally see her face from those last few days when all I could do was squeeze her hand and hold a carton of juice to her lips. I was never close to her, but I loved her in an austere way (you have to know how our family operates), I didn’t get involved much but hopefully by some glances and little things we communicated with each other past all the noise.

The minister at the funeral said she was a person of quiet faith. Her daughter almost gagged in front of me when she heard him weave such a rewriting of her history. I know what he was trying to do. He was all heart and he didn’t want to spoil the day with his theology. Maybe too many funerals had spoiled his theology. He had to have nibbles with all these people afterwards at a local hotel. He had a jolly red face and a plate full of cocktail sausages.

Yet aside from whatever mystery goes on in people’s minds as they fall into death and aside from the significance of the hand gesture that helped my father, I have no idea “where” she is now. I know I’m not supposed to guess the mind of God but if those who are sure of an eternal destiny are entitled to be comforted then those of us with ambiguous ends are entitled to feel both ambiguity and concern. I can try and put it all to the back of the mind but that seems to me disrespectful, as if I’m switching channels when starving children are on. Ambiguity implies a swinging from two positions, it is not ignorant of the options. When I have tried to face it it leaves me with the ever problematic theological face drainer of Hell.

I find myself baulking against my own theology – for “all have sinned” , the “wages of sin is death” are all in my mind; but the punishment !!!??? I find myself struggling to be on the same side, I find myself wanting to stand on her side. She wasn’t a warm, glowing, affectionate person. She seemed “nice”. The abstract I could handle, the non personal “sinner” linked to Adam by whatever lineage and responsible for his or her own sins. Somehow I could theologically rationalise that. But suddenly it isn’t an abstraction, it is a woman dying, a woman who was a little girl once, who married into a ready made family, never having children from her own womb. She lived as she lived, I do not know all the details. Thrown into hell?

Whatever she was, she doesn’t deserve hellfire in whatever currently theologically framed and culturally sensitive way we have managed to word it these days. However described it is monstrous to consider that as her fate. Yes, Yes, I know… the theology rushes back into my head to reason why God has to judge. But the abstract has suddenly become personal and I have been numbed. The verses of explanation that I have explained myself in public begin to dance over my head like an over complicated maths lesson

And I am tempted, all too tempted to say something ridiculous.

“Then take me as well”.

There are (at least) two points of view as always on the question of belief.

1. I believe only and simply because I want to believe in a God of Grace who created and sustains the universe, making humanity in his(?) own image and participating in humanity’s reclamation / redemption from whatever predicament we seem to be in re: death / immorality.
2. I believe because I find myself wanting to believe. That wanting could be evidence of the object of my belief. Call this the C S Lewis argument, the argument from desire or thirst. We are thirsty for water because there is such a thing as water, we are hungry for food because there is such a thing as food to satisfy that hunger. We are made / designed in such a way as to have hungers and desires for things which are. God, the supreme personality at the centre of the universe, arbiter of meaning, existence and time past and present is, to me, desirable. I am happy to conclude that just as bread is there on the table at the end of a day of hunger, so too God is there at the end of desiring. Not that I always get what my hungers or thirsts or desires point to, not that I always have them in my grasp, as if God could ever be grasped or accomodated but just that the longing itself is part of the belief. Perhaps even the absence (if it can be called that) of God is a stimulant to hunger which is evidence of his presence. Bizarre indeed but then truth is always strange.