Last Sunday's Thought: on patient waiting in Advent

‘As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah…’ (Luke 3:15). Advent is a period of expectation, of waiting. Yet waiting goes against everything we stand for in contemporary society. The internet gives us the power to find out an enormous amount of information almost in a second. The television gives us the power to watch the news as it is breaking worldwide – or at least, the particular channel’s version of what constitutes the news. One doctor who advocates patience for the healing of the body, states that if impatience were a germ we would talk of a modern pandemic of impatience: ‘we have become so used to fast food, fast internet, fast cars and busy schedules that we don’t even blink when we are told that we can have a quick fix for our health’. 

Well, we can perhaps all agree that quick fixes don’t usually work, and particularly quick fixes for our health when the body needs time to heal itself. But it seems to fly against the spirit of the age to wait patiently. You may not think of yourself as impatient; I know I am. All those old chestnuts such as ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ don’t do much for me. I want to see progress, action, projects launched and projects completed. The command ‘just wait’ seems to me to reek of passivity. I want the kingdom of God to move forward, here and now in my lifetime.

         All this is the ‘me’ before reading Henri Nouwen’s words for Advent. ‘Waiting as we see it in the first pages’ of Luke’s gospel, ‘is waiting with a sense of promise. “Zecharaiah, your wife Elizabeth is to bear you a son” (Luke 1:13, 31). People who wait have received a promise that allows them to wait. They have received something that is at work in them, like a seed that has started to grow. This is very important. We can only really wait if what we are waiting for has already begun for us. So waiting is never a movement from nothing to something. It is always a movement from something to something more. Zechariah, Mary and Elizabeth were living with a promise that nurtured them… Waiting is active… There is [no] passivity in scripture. Those who are waiting are waiting very actively. They know that whatthey are waiting for is growing from the ground on which they are standing’ (Nouwen, Seeds of Hope, 157-8). A waiting person, Nouwen tells us, is a patient person. Waiting is also open-ended: Zechariah, Elizabeth and Mary were filled with hope. ‘Hope is trusting that something will be fulfilled, but fulfilled according to the promises [of God] and not just according to our wishes’ (ibid. 159-160).

         ‘To wait open-endedly’, Nouwen argues, ‘is an enormously radical attitude toward life. So is to trust that something will happen to us that is far beyond our own imaginings. So, too, is giving up control over our future and letting God define our life, trusting that God moulds us according to God’s love and not according to our fear. The spiritual life is a life in which we wait, actively present to the moment, trusting that new things will happen to us, new things that are far beyond our own imagination, fantasy or prediction. That, indeed, is a very radical stance towards life in a world preoccupied with control’ (ibid. 160).

Waiting together, as did Mary and Elizabeth, is the model for the Christian community. ‘It is a community of support, celebration and affirmation in which we can lift up what has already begun in us… That is what prayer is all about. It is coming together around the promise. That is what celebration is all about. It is about lifting up what is already there. That is what Eucharist is about. It is saying “Thanks” for the seed that has been planted. It is saying: “We are waiting for the Lord, who has already come”’ (ibid. 161-2). It is also why the Bible is always in the midst of those who gather. ‘We need to wait together, to keep each other at home spiritually, so that when the word comes it can become flesh in us… We read the word so that the word can become flesh and have a whole new life in us (ibid. 162).

         Nouwen contends that ‘the life of Jesus tells us that not to be in control is part of the human condition. His vocation was fulfilled not just in action but also in passion, in waiting… If it is true that God in Jesus Christ is waiting for our response to divine love, then we can discover a whole new perspective on how to wait in life. We can learn to be obedient people who do not always try to go back to the action but who recognize the fulfilment of our deepest humanity in passion, in waiting… The spirituality of waiting is not simply our waiting for God. It is also participating in God’s own waiting for us and in that way coming to share in the deepest purity of love, which is God’s love’ (Nouwen, Seeds of Hope, 203).

There are two aspects of waiting. One is our waiting for God, and the other is the waiting of God for us. We are waiting. God is waiting. This is the season of Advent, when both processes are at work. Amen, Come Lord Jesus!

Last Sunday's Thought: on not letting the sun go down on our anger

            ‘Be angry but do not sin; let not the sun go down on your anger’ (Ephesians 4:26). The two halves of St Paul’s adage seem to be in contradiction with one another. As long as we do not sin, we are entitled to be angry; but on the other hand, forgiveness must be shown before sundown. Now the second maxim, let not the sun go down on your anger, is one of the adages that those involved in marriage preparation advocate, and those who live in a happy marriage try to practise. It’s very easy to get angry with each other; the longer the anger continues without reconciliation the more difficult it becomes to reconcile; conversely, while it requires both parties to step back a little from their extreme position, a prompt reconciliation or at least recognition that that the difference should be settled by an agreement, the easier that process of reconciliation becomes.

         All contentions, whether between private persons, families, churches, or nations, are begun and carried forward by pride. Disputes would be easily prevented or ended, if it were not for pride. On this, however we translate its precise wording (e.g. ‘by pride comes only quarrels’), the text of Proverbs 13:10 is decisive. As one commentator expresses it, ‘pride is not only thinking we are better than others; pride can be thinking we are worse than others or just being self-conscious. It doesn’t matter if self is always exalting itself or if it’s debasing itself. It’s all self-centeredness, which is pride. Like it or not, understand it or not, pride is the source of all of our anger. As we deal with our own self-love, anger toward others will be defused. The only reason we are so easily offended is because we love ourselves so much.’

         ‘Always be ready to give an answer to anyone who asks you about the [Christian] hope you have’, we read in 1 Peter 3:15. ‘Be ready to give the reason for it. But do it gently and with respect.’ In expressing confidence in our faith to others, in other words, we are told not to be angry but to be gentle and respectful; but equally to say nothing, to hold back, is a false pride that leads in effect to a renunciation of our faith. ‘Be ready to give the reason for it.’ Be prepared to speak up about our faith. And be prepared to be angered at the sort of things that Jesus would have been angered at: at injustice, at the inhumanity of man to man, at abuse of power when we encounter it. Be prepared to cross the road for one another, so that – as Henri Nouwen says – we may indeed become neighbours. If we subordinate self, or ‘die to ourselves’ to use the language of St Paul, we will be able to love others in something of the way that Jesus did. To show Godly anger is to be angry at sin while showing compassion to the sinner.

         In Henri Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey. Reflections for every day of the Christian Year, the entries for 8 August and 9 August, on being unconditional witnesses and being living signs of love, are particularly appropriate in this context. ‘Good news becomes bad news’, he teaches us, ‘when it is announced without peace and joy. Anyone who proclaims the forgiving and healing love of Jesus with a bitter heart is a false witness. Jesus is the saviour of the world. We are not. We are called to witness, always with our lives and sometimes with our words, to the great things God has done for us. But this witness must come from a heart that is willing to give without getting anything in return.

         The more we trust in God’s unconditional love for us, the more able we will be to proclaim the love of Jesus without any inner or outer conditions.’

         ‘We, as followers of Jesus’, Henri Nouwen further comments, ‘are sent into this world to be visible signs of God’s unconditional love. Thus we are judged not first of all by what we say but by what we live. When people say of us: “see how they love one another”, they catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and are drawn to it as by a magnet.’

         ‘In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger and hatred’, he concludes, ‘we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.’ Thanks be to God.

Last Sunday's Thought: Our God speaks, but our task is to listen

         Uniquely, for John in his gospel, Jesus is ‘the Word [who] became flesh and lived among us’ (John 1:14). He also tells us that the Word was ‘with God’ and that it was uncreated. ‘No one has ever seen God’, John argues. ‘It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known’ (John 1:18). Without wishing to elaborate further in philosophical and theological speculation about the prologue to John’s gospel, for us the terminology of the Word, logos, is particularly important. Logos can mean much more than speech, but this aspect of ‘the Word’ is worth concentrating on. ‘This speech of God is not only a possibility’, one commentator writes, ‘ – it is an imperative. It lies at the heart of vital faith and fullness of life. God speaking to humans and humans responding to God provides the matrix for life, for meaning and vocation. And, when the individual or the community turns away from the God who speaks, faith, life and mission wane’ (Ben Campbell Johnson, The God who speaks. Learning the Language of God (2004), p. 7). And if we speak to God in fervent prayer, we need to know that on occasion he will speak to us in reply.

         Of course, when we think about it, we know from both the Old and New Testaments that God speaks. He speaks to Abram before he is renamed Abraham, telling him that he is to move from his land to another of God’s choosing and that he will make him the father of a great nation. He speaks to Moses after he brought the people of Israel out of slavery, that they should have no other gods before him. And the Psalmist celebrates the voice of God as ‘powerful’ and full of majesty, able to break the cedars of Lebanon (Psalm 29:4-6). The true God ‘is in the heavens’ and is able to speak, unlike the idols of other nations who ‘have mouths but do not speak… [and who] make no sound in their throats.’ (Ps 115:3-8).

         John the Baptist recalls in John’s gospel that ‘the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, “He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit”’ (John 1:33). The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke affirm in almost identical language that after Jesus was baptized in the river Jordan a voice came from heaven announcing ‘this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased’ (Matthew 3:17); Mark and Luke have ‘thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased’ (Mark 1:11; Luke 3:22). And there are other New Testament examples of the voice of Jesus after his death, resurrection and ascension being heard by Saul/Paul, Ananias, Peter and others, so we can multiply the examples.

         These various biblical testimonies have enormous significance for our faith and our life of prayer. As Leslie Weatherhead reminds us in his A private house of prayer (1958), the first thing we have to do in our prayers is to assert the presence of God. We are not praying in a vacuum or to someone who is not present, but to someone who wants us to turn to him and is ready to listen. Not only to listen, but on occasion, if we are ready to hear, to reply, particularly with guidance in our spiritual life and our personal vocation.

         In his secret spiritual diary of a period of great crisis entitled The Inner Voice of Love, Henri Nouwen writes: ‘it is not going to be easy to listen to God’s call. Your insecurity, your self-doubt, and your great need for affirmation make you lose trust in your inner voice and run away from yourself. But you know that God speaks to you through your inner voice and that you will find joy and peace only if you follow it. Yes, your spirit is willing to follow, but your flesh is weak’ (Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love. A journey through anguish to freedom (1998), p. 89. Johnson, The God who speaks, p. 83).

         Elsewhere in the same diary, Nouwen writes: ‘God says to you, “I love you. I am with you. I want to see you come closer to me and experience the joy and peace of my presence. I want to give you a new heart and a new spirit. I want you to speak with my mouth, see with my eyes, hear with my ears, and touch with my hands. All that is mine is yours. Just trust me and let me be your God.” This is the voice to listen to. And that listening requires a real choice, not just once in while but every moment of each day and night’ (Nouwen, The Inner Voice of Love, p. 113. Johnson, The God who speaks, p. 84).

         ‘Conversion is certainly not something you can bring about yourself’, Nouwen tells us. ‘It is not a question of will power. You have to trust in the inner voice that shows you the way’ (p. 6). God has called us to ‘speak the Word to the world and to speak it fearlessly’. We must then ‘let God speak words of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, words calling to obedience, radical commitment and service’ (p. 99). We can do all this only if we cling to ‘the real, lasting and unambiguous love of Jesus’. Whenever we doubt that love, Nouwen tells us to ‘return to [our] inner spiritual home and listen there to love’s voice’ (p. 93). Our treasure is God’s love (p. 111); all we have to do is to nurture it in a quiet, intimate place. Listening to God, then is the road to the kingdom: ‘it is the journey to the place where [we all] can rest’ (p. 112).

Thought from Trinity Sunday: Contemplation of the Holy Trinity

For the twentieth-century theologian Karl Rahner, the beatific vision is ‘God’s perfect self-communication’, ‘the perfect and ultimately the only absolute fulfilment of the spiritual creature’ (Rahner (ed.), Encyclopedia of Theology, 79). Where on this earth can we begin to feel something of this ‘absolute fulfilment of the spiritual creature’? For more than ten years off and on, I have been contemplating the icon of the Holy Trinity painted by St Andrei Rublev (1370-c.1430), and now I have found expression of my contemplation in the words of Gabriel Bunge’s profound meditation on the subject. ‘The meaning and end of Christian life [is] ... communion with the All-Holy Trinity in and through the Holy Spirit’, he writes. ‘What is experienced when this icon is contemplated is ‘my being, my salvation, as the subject of conversation between the Father, Son, and Spirit’  (Bunge, The Rublev Trinity, trans. Andrew Louth: 2007, 111).

The Rublev icon, or the Old Testament Trinity as it is often called, depicts the hospitality of Abraham to three strangers who turn out to be angels (Genesis 18:2–5). Yet the icon is also a depiction of the Trinity as God’s love towards the world, preeminently so according to a decision of the Russian Orthodox church at a synod in 1551: it’s a vision of unanimity and universal love. The spiritual beauty and timelessness of the scene is an image conceived of by a Christian to whom the Christian understanding of the Trinity has been revealed. The story may be from Genesis 18; but the vision is essentially one from the New Testament, not the Old.

Life in the Trinity–St. Sergius monastery emphasized ‘fraternity, calm, love (toward) God and spiritual self-improvement’. The work was painted in about 1410 for the abbot of the Trinity Monastery, Nikon of Radonezh, a disciple of St. Sergius. Russian icon painters before Rublev subscribed to the view that Abraham was visited by God (in Christ’s image) and two angels. Hence, Christ was represented in icons of the Trinity as the middle angel and was symbolically set apart either by a halo with a cross, by a considerable enlargement of his figure, by widely spread wings or by a scroll in His hand. In Rublev’s icon for the first time all the angels are equally important.


The icon is more than theology in paint. It is prayer in paint. This achievement was only possible because of Rublev’s ascetical discipline. Bunge notes that Rublev and his friend and ‘fellow faster’ Daniil, himself an accomplished icon painter, would sit for hours simply contemplating an icon of the Holy Trinity in St. Sergii’s Trinity Monastery. It was this devotion that nourished his soul and prepared Rublev for his greatest aesthetic achievement (Bunge, p. 109). The texts on Trinity talk about the love which fills the Trinity: ‘Trinity is love’, ‘the Son loves His Father, the Father loves His Son’, ‘the Love of the Heavenly Father is Given to the World through His Son’, and so on. Rublev’s Trinity is not only a representation of the three hypostases of God, the triune God, and the symbol of the Eucharist, but it is also an all-encompassing symbol of unity and an image of divine love. ‘There exists the icon of the Trinity by St. Andrei Rublev; therefore God exists’ (Bunge, p. 107). This remarkable statement by Fr. Pavel Florensky, Russian Orthodox priest, mathematician, art historian and martyr, is not the kind of comment that Christians in the West are used to, but it reveals the intensity of feeling that the icon draws out of those who have contemplated its beauty for a long period of time.


For Henri Nouwen, Rublev’s trinity is ‘a holy place to enter and stay within. As we place ourselves in front of the icon in prayer, we come to experience a gentle invitation to participate in the intimate conversation that is taking place among the three divine angels and to join them around the table. The movement from the Father [on the left] toward the Son [in the centre] and the movement of both Son and Spirit [on the right] toward the Father become a movement in which the one who prays is lifted up and held secure... Rublev’s icon gives us a glimpse of the house of perfect love.’


Contemplation of Rublev’s Holy Trinity can help fill the relative scarcity of peaceful images on which to meditate in our stressful lives. We need images that bring us peace; images that encircle us with love (we can be more than just witnesses, we can be participants, drawn into the circle of love); images that inspire our prayers and lift us up above the maelstrom and stress of life rather than bring us down to the ordinariness of institutional or personal conflict. If not quite the ‘absolute fulfilment of the spiritual creature’, as Karl Rahner envisaged the beatific vision, it is not far short of it. Thanks be to God.

Update: Rublev by Rowan Williams

One day, God walked in, pale from the grey steppe,
slit-eyed against the wind, and stopped,
said, Colour me, breathe your blood into my mouth.

I said, Here is the blood of all our people,
these are their bruises, blue and purple,
gold, brown, and pale green wash of death.

These (god) are the chromatic pains of flesh,
I said, I trust I shall make you blush,
O I shall stain you with the scars of birth.

For ever, I shall root you in the wood,
under the sun shall bake you bread
of beechmast, never let you forth.

To the white desert, to the starving sand.
But we shall sit and speak around
one table, share one food, one earth.