The woman conceived and gave birth to a son at the same time the following year, as Elisha had promised her.
The child grew and one day went out to his father and the harvesters. Suddenly he complained to his father, “My head! My head!” His father told his servant, “Carry him to his mother.” So he picked him up and took him to his mother. The child sat on her lap until noon and then died. (2Kings 4:17–21 HCSB)

The devastatingly short biography of a promise.
Look at how the ancient story-teller constructs the tale. The first phrase is a repetition of the words of Elisha. The prophet’s words in the narrator’s voice. This is how we know the prophet speaks for God: the ‘what will be’ of a man describing what is not, becomes the ‘And it came to pass that…’ of the narrator who always says what is.

But what a desperately short life.
The boy who grew so fast in verse 18, so fast that it takes him merely one sentence to spring from conception to joining his father at the reaping, declines just as steeply. He withers and passes, like the summer grasses. Two sentences and he is dead.

The speed at which this happens shocks us: suddenly he grabs his head. He is rushed to his mother, already unable to walk.
Wait though, it is the next phrase that breaks your heart. The ancient story-teller, not given to spending unnecessary words, burns us with an image of the mother. Voyeuristic, embarrassed, helpless, I sit there all morning, mourning, as the child dies in her lap.

That little detail is the genius of this mini story. Disciplined to be concise by the nature of the available resources, the story-teller can’t give us unlimited description. He chooses his words carefully. This discipline creates a spare, taunt, tightly sprung imaginative world. And all that force recoils through the elected detail.

The story is itself a detail within the the tightly sprung narrative of Yahweh’s redemption of his people. The death of this promise child echoes with generations of questions asked: about Yahweh’s faithfulness, about the security of the future, about the holy discontentment which loving Yahweh provokes and alone can satisfy.
These are my questions because the Shunammite mother is one of my people. Any reader who doesn’t read like this, doesn’t really read. This is a story about how I got to be here, why I hope for the things I hope, about other people’s decisions which have charted my course. So, when I meet the detail within this detail of this (our) story, it unloads upon me with not just narrative, but affective force.

Does this story need to be made relevant to me? She is one of my people! My Auntie. What kind of pathologically insensitive person would need to be taught how to feel about this, this death in the family? Even if I know more about the reasons and the answers, how can I not feel the darkness opening beneath her, the precariousness of her faith, and want to hold on to her and tell her its going to be ok?
But then I discover that she’s comforting me, my auntie in the faith. She steps out from among the great crowd of witnesses, the family tree, sits with her child on her lap, invites me to put my head down there for a while too, and tells me her story.

image by yazeed

If spatiality is a logical deduction from the concept of being, then it is a property shared equally by all beings, whether God or the cosmos. Greeks had no problem with this, their concept of God as ‘Perfect Being’, meant that the being of God was both the foundation and totality of all other beings: in a sense, God was co-extensive with the cosmos, and embraced the cosmos as part of his own being. For the Greeks, God was perfectly spatial.

The Christian God would have no truck with this. We approach our God, not from the understanding that he is Supreme Being, but as the Author of Being – The Creator. God is not the foundation or pinnacle of a chain of being that leads from greatest to least. God is not part of the chain. Of course, we believe that God is, and therefore is a Being, but his Being and our being cannot be related by forms of logical deduction or degrees of quality/quantity. This leads Christians claim two things about God that Greek philosophy has a real problem with: he is transcendent, and he is infinite. At their root, these are claims that features of created being do not apply unproblematically to God, we speak of him analogically.

This means that, in an intellectual world shaped by knowledge of the Christian God, we cannot rest the necessity of space on a necessity of being qua being. The non-negotiable nature of spatiality for our explanations of experience must rest upon features of created being, the created order. Space is necessary in that it is a fixed property of the created order spoken into existence by God. But Christians do not believe that this universal order is itself a fixed, logical, eternal property of being. Rather, in its fundamental aspect as created, it is radically contingent (i.e., it could have been otherwise or not at all). God created spatiality in freedom, just as he freely called all the other aspects of created being into existence.

Contingency opens up the question of meaning. Necessary Beings are fundamentally uninteresting from the perspective of meaning because they are impervious to the question ‘why?’ When you ask a necessary Being, ‘why?’, it just stares back at you, ’til you either blink and go away or your head explodes. But if spatiality is a created necessity, resting upon an act of freedom, then we can legitimately investigate the possibility that God created spatiality with a purpose: that in its fundamental enactment as a law of created being, space carries an intention. So here’s a thesis: Space is meaningful all the way down, it shares in the basic rationality of all creation as a work of the Spirit. Space communicates just by being the being it is. It endlessly echoes with the words that called it out of nothing. Because:

all things have been created through Him and for Him. (Colossians 1:16 HCSB)

This is a tangent, but isn’t it interesting that it is precisely this excess of signal, the sheer overwhelming amount of communication that occurs in, through, by space that makes it necessary for our brains to have sophisticated filters which constantly screen away irrelevant communication and allow us to focus on matters of interest. It’s one of my favourite non-conscious features of my brain (It’s nice to just sit back and enjoy your brain occasionally). I’m enjoying it right now while I write this in the busy atmosphere of a cafe. However, in a world whose order is distorted by the wrenching entropy of sin, our feverish minds not only filter out the particular communications occurring in space around us, we harden ourselves against the meaning of space itself.

He demonstrated |this power| in the Messiah by raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens— far above every ruler and authority, power and dominion, and every title given, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put everything under His feet and appointed Him as head over everything for the church, which is His body, the fullness of the One who fills all things in every way. (Ephesians 1:20–23 HCSB)

image by kevindooley

I have a bit of a thing for wandering around old country graveyards, the kind of place that consists of a tiny stone church, a name on a map, a clutch of elm trees, and nothing else but rolling hills. The Australian countryside is washed with such places, witness to the failed dream of a genuine Australian engagement with living in our place, high-water marks of the human tide that has now retreated to our coastal cities. In such places, it can seem as though everyone who ever lived there was buried there as well. I’m attracted to the stillness and solemnity, they have both a rootedness and a wistfulness that reinforces my sense of being a traveller. All this paragraph is a bit of a digression…

One of the more uncomfortable problems of old graveyards is the fact that often age has removed the clear boundaries between grave plots. Sometimes you don’t realise until too late that you’ve just trampled upon someone’s dear departed. When I do realise, I actually get a sensation in my feet, a podiatrical blush, and I quickly tiptoe to the safe piece of grass that runs between the headstones. Weird, isn’t it? In a small country graveyard, where even the living have passed on, and the dead are probably grateful for the attention, I’m conscious that I must not place my feet in an invisible 6×2 rectangle in an otherwise indistinguishable paddock.

Here’s a step toward a thesis: my moment of recognition in the graveyard should be taken seriously in constructing a theory of space.

What is it? why is it? why should I care?
For most people, the third question is the hardest to answer. I get it. Life doesn’t need to be pulled apart and examined in order to be lived well, with joy and thankfulness. The Kingdom of heaven belongs to children, not philosophers. To those who have ears to hear, not those who have penetrating sight and highly developed critical faculties.
Perhaps all you need to know is this:
“For He is our peace, who made both groups one and tore down the dividing wall of hostility.” (Ephesians 2:14 HCSB)
Whatever else we might discover about the space between us, we are confident of this: Jesus has transformed it.

Strange as it may seem, the healing work of God’s Spirit, renovating our humanity into the image of Christ, does not remove our individual differences but redeems them. And for a redeemed philosopher, this means being cured of his pride, the aspiration to be a philosopher-king, and being restored to his true vocation: to be a curator of that part of God’s garden in which ideas grow; to care for thoughts.

The space between you and me is a thought that needs care. The nature of that space is changing. I don’t know where you are reading this, but my (somewhat) unguarded thoughts are available to you whether you are in a prison or in the next room, around the corner or on the other side of the globe, sympathetic or hostile. We have a form of proximity that was completely unavailable to the vast majority of humans 20 years ago. How are we to think about and act within the new possibilities that this form of proximity enables? What sort of human communities will grow up in response to this transformation of space?

These sorts of questions have been with us for a long time. In the 1950′s, when the middle class moved out of the cities into suburbia, enabled by new roads, cars, cheap fossil fuels, this transformation of spatial relations generated a new form of community: the suburb; the ‘next-door’ neighbour; work colleagues who were not also members of the same home neighbourhood. New kinds of barriers and new kinds of proximity.

What does it mean to belong to a ‘Kingdom’, to have a share in a space that transects all these others? Is our thinking about what it means to belong to this Kingdom affected at all by these other transformations in our thinking about social space? More importantly, is there a basic line of thought, generated by the dawning of this kingdom, which teaches us how to think about our spaces and places? That gives us something to say about barriers, barbed wire, clasped hands, the world wide web, crossing over, and shared passage?

Image from National Library of Scotland

I don’t know how many times my mother read the Pilgrim’s Progress to me when I was young. It was certainly enough that the story has become part of how I process my experience of the Christian life. And that is precisely what it is meant to do! Because of Bunyan, I think of the Christian life as a particular kind of journey, I have fallen into sloughs, been ensnared by Flattery, imprisoned by Despair.

The ‘normal’ fiction that we regularly read engages our interest by opening a window through which we can indwell another person’s world. That experience is often powerfully transformative: we learn to see our shared world from angles that weren’t previously available. Fiction is our ethical workshop. Between the pages of books (or between advertising breaks) we develop shared views of ‘the good life’, we construct characters who embody our ideas of virtue, and then we watch them try to solve our ethical dilemmas. Without this kind of imagining, we would not have society. People who refuse to read novels or watch TV are free-loaders in the world of communal deliberation.
[Fortunately, they are often good at fixing stuff and paying taxes, otherwise the Philosophers of the Future would be forced to enslave them for their own good]

But an allegory isn’t fiction. At least, not in the ‘normal’ sense. Rather than being a window onto someone else’s world, it is a mirror, a looking-glass, through which we indwell our own experience in a new way. John Bunyan doesn’t tell us someone else’s story and invite us to watch and learn, he tells us our own story with a form and completeness which had previously been hidden. The character ‘Christian’ isn’t a figure who is more or less like myself, engaged in activities that are more or less like my own. If I am a christian, he is me. Actually, he is a ‘hyper-me’. He is more real than I am. Christian is me, viewed from a God’s-eye perspective, viewed with the truthful gaze of an ultimate knower. The narrator knows Christian in a way that I wish I knew myself. As I read, Bunyan expects me to interrogate my own experiences rather than Christian’s, and to consider how I am more or less like Christian, and whether my own activities are more or less like his. In reading The Pilgrim’s Progress, I am learning the narrator’s knowledge of myself.

In a ‘normal’ work of fiction, I observe and judge the characters, that’s how I engage in the ethical workshop. But in an allegory, the characters judge me. They teach me the form in which I am to interpret my story, and the norms by which I am to engage in it.

It’s interesting to note that Bunyan’s allegory only works if there is some sense in which every christian’s story, is Christian’s story. It’s an idea that challenges us right at the heart of our ethical and ontological pluralism. For Bunyan, as for the early Church Fathers who engaged in allegorical interpretation of the Bible, we don’t live fundamentally individual existences, given a superficial commonality by the pressures of convenience or environmental and cultural necessity. We are not solitary knowers, we are the unified known.
There is one basic story, the true truth about each one of us, which is refracted and tinted according to our personal, natural, and social topography. That story is the gospel, its character is Christ.

One of my favourite scenes in The Pilgrim’s Progress is the final stage of the journey. Christian and his companion Hopeful are heading up to the Celestial city and are confronted by a final obstacle: a deep and fast flowing river which they must pass through to reach their destination. The image conjures up the Israelites passing through the Red Sea in the Exodus, overlaid with the crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land. It is the river where Jesus commenced his ministry, walking at the head of his people into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the river where the Negro slaves in America’s deep South stood and prayed that Elijah’s chariot would swing low and carry them home. It is the river of death that leads to life. For them, and probably for us, there is no chariot. We must pass through it.
What I love about this scene, however, is the support which Hopeful gives to Christian as his faith threatens to give way. How many times I have needed a friend like Hopeful! Someone to say to me when I can’t believe, “Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good.” How little did Christian realise that with the hand of a friend, his Father held him tight.

Lord, give us grace to follow.
God, give us the grace to walk home with our friends, rather than ride home with Elijah.

They then addressed themselves to the water and, entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head, all his waves go over me! Selah.

Then said the other, Be of good cheer, my brother, I feel the bottom, and it is good.

Then said Christian, Ah! my friend, the sorrows of death hath compassed me about; I shall not see the land that flows with milk and honey; and with that a great darkness and horror fell upon Christian, so that he could not see before him. Also here he in great measure lost his senses, so that he could neither remember nor orderly talk of any of those sweet refreshments that he had met with in the way of his pilgrimage. But all the words that he spake still tended to discover that he had horror of mind, and heart fears that he should die in that river, and never obtain entrance in at the gate. Here also, as they that stood by perceived, he was much in the troublesome thoughts of the sins that he had committed, both since and before he began to be a pilgrim. It was also observed that he was troubled with apparitions of hobgoblins and evil spirits, for ever and anon he would intimate so much by words.

Hopeful, therefore, here had much ado to keep his brother’s head above water; yea, sometimes he would be quite gone down, and then, ere a while, he would rise up again half dead. Hopeful also would endeavour to comfort him, saying, Brother, I see the gate, and men standing by to receive us: but Christian would answer, It is you, it is you they wait for; you have been Hopeful ever since I knew you.

And so have you, said he to Christian.

Ah! brother! said he, surely if I was right he would now arise to help me; but for my sins he hath brought me into the snare, and hath left me.

Then said Hopeful, My brother, you have quite forgot the text, where it is said of the wicked, “There are no bands in their death, but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. [Ps. 73:4,5] These troubles and distresses that you go through in these waters are no sign that God hath forsaken you; but are sent to try you, whether you will call to mind that which heretofore you have received of his goodness, and live upon him in your distresses.

Then I saw in my dream, that Christian was as in a muse a while. To whom also Hopeful added this word, Be of good cheer, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole; and with that Christian brake out with a loud voice, Oh, I see him again! and he tells me, “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.” [Isa. 43:2] Then they both took courage, and the enemy was after that as still as a stone, until they were gone over. Christian therefore presently found ground to stand upon, and so it followed that the rest of the river was but shallow.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
(Shakespeare, Sonnet CXVI)

The young love to fall in love in spring. It’s not hard to understand why. One hundred million tons of sap leap into the air, erupting into leaves and flowers. Pulses quicken, sleepers awake. There is an ozone in the atmosphere, like the afterburn of lightning, the smell of resurrections. The intoxicating madness of it all masks the madness of falling in love. It is a seasonal form of Dutch courage, a pull from the whiskey flask before barrelling out of the trenches and into the discriminating exposure of bullets. Spring is when Kings march out to War. Spring is when the froth in his blood just might make a young man risk a blushing rebuff to hear himself say the words, “So…
…”
Or reach across the acres of armrest in a darkend theatre, the outstretched finger of faith, to discover a hand that says ‘yes’. And in that touch, in that minutest square millimetre of epidermis, to discover one hundred million tons of sap rushing, leaves and flowers leaping, suns dying and rising, a hail of bullets and a surgeons knife. And he sits there in the dark with his barest fingerhold on love, and shakes and shakes and forgets to breathe.

Summer is for camping out, for savouring love, watching its colours turn to deep and green, while the land and air rock and uphold you. Summer is full of the self-forgetfulness upon which love thrives.

Later, when the air is hard-edged and the truth is plain, in Winter, we put the games away because we have less need for fun, and more joy of each other. We carry each other’s love around with us: your smell in my scarf, your embrace in the heaviness of my coat, your hand in my pocket. I grow old every winter. We bed the fire down in its hearth and sit by and doze.

But how do we love in Autumn?
It’s my favourite, but the most difficult of seasons. It’s the season least conducive to love. With a great sigh, the leaves relinquish their last hold and fall. Their breath swirls through the streets, early with darkness. Those who can hear surprise themselves weeping. And a man’s thoughts turn to doubting. It’s an acquired taste I suppose.
How do we love in Autumn?
With constancy. In the season of swirling, lovers hold themselves steady. Constancy is a form of attention that resists the autumnal impulse toward introspection by turning our gaze outward onto another. In a loving constancy, we pledge ourselves to a fundamental steadiness in this relationship: to constancy in pursuit (not trying to win a woman’s heart one week and being cold to her the next); to constancy in forgiveness (when a bloke blows hot and cold to you); to constancy of seeking good (not conditional on how you’re feeling or how it is received); to constancy of receiving good (not placing conditions on how we respond to each other, weighing past rights and wrongs before delighting in a renewed attention).

What is the first positive assertion Paul ventures about love in 1 Cor 13?
“Love is patient.”
And what is the last?
“Love never ends.”

Constancy is the very essence of bravery, it makes soldiers into heroes, sinners into martyrs, and ordinary self-absorbed, crummy men and women into lovers.

But I think you can only really be constant in love when you know at the core of your being that what matters most about you is safe. You can’t be constant in love when you are constantly worried about protecting yourself from being hurt by lovers. However, the answer isn’t reckless self-disregard: martyrs aren’t suicides. Rather, they confess to us, along with the Apostle Paul, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3:3 NIV). The real you, the one part you can’t afford to lose, is permanently and constantly safe. Whatever you might risk in love, you are not risking that. Whatever regard, or lack thereof, in which you are held; whatever heart-wrenching part of you might be broken when she loves you for a while but turns away; even if it breaks you so completely that it touches all your ability to ever love again – and that could happen – you are safe.

Christians are like most people in the world in that we aren’t really sure Who We Are (in the biggest sense of that question). But Christians are completely unlike other people in trusting that someone else does. Even if I become completely demented and my sense of self is utterly lost to me and others, I believe in Jesus. I believe that he remembers me, that he knows my true name. And when he speaks my name, I will remember myself. Perfect love drives out fear. “We love because He first loved us.” (1John 4:19 HCSB)

One more thing: constancy always needs honesty. Honesty gives constancy its value. Love without truth is always morally questionable. It’s the difference between forgiveness and indulgence. The constancy of God’s love for us is not that he ignored our sins, but that he forgave them. Forgiveness combines constancy-in-love with clear eyed honesty. Without the honesty, God’s love for us would always be morally questionable, or open to the suspicion that one day he might get sick of the lies and stop loving.
I think its the same for us. If constancy in love isn’t accompanied by truthfulness about our pains and delights, we will always be under suspicion that our love is just a sophisticated tolerance, or masochism, or an abuse of the other by preventing their change and growth toward the good. Constancy without honesty always leaves us doubting: if the truth were spoken would we still love the same?
And if we are to be good lovers in an Autumn season, there must be no room for doubts.

For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.
Now I know in part, but then I will know fully,
as I am fully known.
Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.
But the greatest of these is love.
(1Corinthians 13:12–13 HCSB)

Image by geraldbrazeil

James Fraser is an interesting character though. He was part of the Covenanter Movement in Scotland – a group that led opposition to the King’s desire to make the Church of Scotland resemble the Church of England in its government and theology. This particularly focussed on introducing a Prayer Book that resembled the Book of Common Prayer, and of course, forcing the Scots to accept Bishops. The result was a long period of wars, rebellions, and people perpetrating atrocities against each other. The Scottish struggle played a major part in the outcome of the English Civil War in the 1640-50s. After the Restoration of the Monarchy, the 1670′s became known as ‘The Killing Time’ due to the number of field executions by Royal forces of those who could not accept anything less than a Reformed and Presbyterian Church of Scotland. James Fraser was among a group of Covenanter leaders who were imprisoned in the Castle on Bass Rock, a ‘desolate rock of the sea’. During this imprisonment he wrote the Treatise. For large sections of the work he had no reference books or conversation with friends, he relied solely on his Bible. It’s a high cost strategy, but getting yourself thrown in gaol is a very effective way to avoid the pain of having to reference your work.

The section of the Treatise which I’ve read and am supposed to be ‘appreciating’ addresses the extent of Christ’s atonement. It’s entitled, “Appendix: Concerning the Object of Christ’s Death”. Fraser seeks to shed some light on the difficult question of whether Christ died for all people or just for the elect whom he actually redeems. The question is particularly pertinent for Moore Theological College Students. The College has a reputation from defecting from the full Reformed position at precisely this point (we are known as “4 1/2 point” Calvinists because a number of distinguished faculty have not been entirely comfortable with the classic statements of Limited Atonement). I suppose that’s a discussion for another day.

What does James Fraser think? Well, if you wanted to find out by reading the Appendix to his Treatise, you’d be in trouble. There are very few copies of his work in print. The nearest library holdings according to WorldCat are in Ireland and Quebec (it’d make a nice present to the College Library if you ever see one in a 2nd-hand bookshop). Fortunately the National Library of Australia has access to a digital reproduction which you can access through the NLA website if you’re a member of the Library.
What’s that, you’re not a member of the NATIONAL LIBRARY!! Shame on you. (Neither was I until last week). The good news is that you can become a member for FREE and they’ll even mail out your library card so you can show off to your friends. Go here.

The MTC mission to Leipzig is all done and dusted. We had our final farewell event last night: a gathering with LEC members to give thanks and pray together followed by dinner and drinks at the local arthouse cinema (and cafe). There was a lot of emotion in our goodbyes. I don’t think I’ve ever been so thoroughly loved and welcomed into a community in such a short space of time as I have been with the LEC and particularly the Uni students with whom I’ve been staying. I’m now sitting in my hostel in Berlin, on a one night stop-over before flying out from Frankfurt tomorrow, and I miss them. I miss our gemeinde.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be heading back to Australia. I miss home. I really miss my wife. And I’ve learned a lot about the good gifts God has blessed us with in Australia. I’ve got a new appreciation for the biblical fellowship we often take for granted in our churches. But we’ve had a special time with the brothers and sisters in Leipzig.

One of our team members said that she had never experienced the Lord’s Supper in such a personal way as she did in our evening service Good Friday. Pastor Martin called us up to receive communion in small groups. We stood in a circle, received the bread and wine, and remembered again the body that was broken for us so that we could be one whole, united body. Standing in a circle meant we could look into each other’s faces. Behold, your brother for whom Christ died!

On Easter Sunday morning we held a Sunrise service on the Fockeberg (the highest hill in Leipzig). It was freezing cold with a wind that made my ears ache, but it was precious to stand there together, to sing, to wait for the sun to rise (we miscalculated and came too early). It was the beginning of what was basically a whole day spent together as a church family. We went from Sunrise service to Morning Service at the Philippuskirche on to a progressive lunch (walking from house to house of church members), and by the time the lunch had finished it was nearly time for evening church, which was then followed by dinner together at a cafe. It was exhausting (to be honest, I missed a big chunk because I went home and fell asleep – the students kept me awake til after 2am most nights and the sunrise service tipped me over the edge). >But it was beautiful to see the power of the resurrection in this rolling celebration: to see 50 people crammed into a tiny flat, perched on every available surface, and living out the fact that Jesus has made us one family from all the hostile tribes of the world.

Human finitude means that there are always more good things to love in the world than we have capacity to love them. God’s strange superabundance of grace toward us means that eventually we have to say goodbye, at least for a time. We now move from being a face-to-face fellowship into a fellowship of prayer. But no less a real gemeinde. For it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and in you, and in them. And so wherever we live, we live together.

Here’s a random fact: in Australia we refer to the game of table-soccer (little plastic men on rotating sticks) as ‘Foosball’ which is actually a German name (‘fuß/foos’ = foot). But in Germany they refer to the same game as ‘Kicker’ which is an English name. Weird.

Monday night found a few of the guys from the team in the bowels of a Leipzig Foosball Club called ‘Kickers’. It’s around the corner from where I’m staying, in the student quarter of the city. We went along to attend the weekly pub night of the International Students society at the Uni of Leipzig.

Mental picture: a converted cellar in an old European Apartment block; low ceiling, red light; DJ; insanely good German foosball players. A recipe for unmitigated cool. But the coolest bit of all was joining in with a large group of international students who had all just met each other on an orientation course at the Uni. Theology courses are quite common in the Universities here, so when I explained that I was a theology student from Australia in Germany on a practical, they immediately accepted that I belonged in their crew. The biggest barrier was not speaking German but I got into a conversation with an exchange student from Moscow. It didn’t seem to matter that he was speaking simple German and I was speaking simple English, between us we could work out enough words in each sentence to get by reasonably well. And when nothing else worked, there’s always charades! Fortunately, I was with a girl from the Christian students club at the Campus and she was much more effective in inviting people to our Easter Outreach party.

For a number of people on the team (including me), this trip to Germany is our first experience of travelling in a country where we don’t speak the language. At times the language barrier can make you feel pretty useless. I feel that in every conversation I’m trading on the generosity and hardwork of the other person. For the first few days I was so anxious about my lack of language skill that every time I would begin to pronounce the word ‘sorry’, as in ‘Sorry, I can’t speak German’, I would completely fluff it and mix up the syllables. I’m pretty sure I convinced a few people that I’m not merely ignorant but possibly mentally ill.

But mercifully, God uses our weaknesses and strangeness to accomplish his work. People are curious about Australia. I feel like the basic evangelistic technique with the Uni Students has been wheel an Australian into the room and prop it up against the wall. Wait til it draws a crowd, then let the German-speaking Christians do their work. It would probably work better if I was a Koala, but hey, it’s not nothing. It’s good to be humbled by the courage and missionary hearts of the local Christians. As an example, yesterday morning a few of us attended a semi-regular prayer breakfast for students from the Uni. We had 13 people come along, the highest number that had ever attended before was 8. The 13 people included 3 non-Christian friends who I’d met earlier in the week who came along out of curiosity. The Aussies at the breakfast didn’t really do anything (except some cooking), we couldn’t understand 3/4 of the prayers or conversations, but God blessed that time. Our German and our English prayers were all heard because the Eternal Word has been heard and He prays for us. Amen!

The Kids Ministry team has been far more constructive with the language differences. They’ve had several opportunities to go into local schools and run English lessons. Yes, that means all these little German kinder are learning to speak ‘Strine. The classes consist of a basic English lesson and some info about Australia. Cindy Partridge and Jamie Fife have worked hard on the material. I’m sure they’ll be able to explain better what they’ve done. The school visits have included an invitation to the kids to come along to a Easter Holiday Kid’s club that the team is running today (Thurs) through to Saturday. It’s a monster programme: today the kid’s club runs from 8am-4pm, followed by ‘Australia Night’ at the Church tonight, then back to the Kid’s club tomorrow morning followed by an evening Good Friday service at the Church, then kid’s club again on Saturday followed by the LEC Spring Soiree (Bruce is giving a talk on Bach and God’s glory). And then we have all the Easter Sunday services and activities. Some of us who are concentrating on the Uni Ministry are planning to attend an all-night Easter Party on Saturday night followed by a 5:45am Easter Sunday sunrise service (I have to attend because it’s at my house). Just writing out the programme for the next few days is exhausting, please, please pray for us. All that hard work will be undermined if our tiredness leads us to dishonour Jesus and each other.

Pray:

I’m in something of a dilemma about how to write a mission update from MTC Leipzig. I don’t want to you to think that we’re having too much fun, after all, we’re on mission… But hey! We’re in Leipzig!!!! Some days I just ride around on my bicycle with a big sloppy grin at how awesome it is to be in a beautiful European city talking with people about Jesus. I’m probably going to end up plastered on the front of a tram. Oh yeah, the church have provided most of us with bicycles for our two weeks here. Most people get around Leipzig on bikes and the drivers are much nicer to cyclists than in Australia, but we’d value your prayers for safety.

I’m writing this from a cafe in the centre of Leipzig, just around the corner is the Thomaskirche where Johann Sebastian Bach was the music director. It’s a little surreal. Most of the team have been here since Thursday and we’ve officially been on mission since Friday. It’s already been a hectic programme.

The Church:
The Leipzig English Church (LEC) is our partner church here in Leipzig. The LEC is an Anglican church that was planted here in 1995 by Pastor Martin, an Englishman to whom God has given the gifts and the passion for German mission. The church has grown since then predominantly reaching multinational couples (one German-speaking spouse) and English-speaking students. The evening service is largely students while the morning is families. I’d encourage you to visit their website if you’d like more to inform your prayers

The City:
Leipzig is an 800 year old city that grew as a trading point between Eastern and Western Europe. It has about 500,000 inhabitants, of whom about 40,000 are students. Leipzig was one of the chief cities in the formerly communist East Germany (GDR). At the end of 1989, after forty years of atheistic materialism, Leipzig was dirty, fearful, and spiritually destitute. Dirty: because the communists believed in mastery rather than stewardship of the environment the city was black with coal dust (it’s been beautifully repaired over the last 20 years). Fearful: fully 1% of the GDR population (170,000 out of 17 million people) were informal collaborators with the Stasi. This usually meant they were blackmailed into reporting on the activities of their colleagues, friends, and family members. No one knew who was watching and recording every thought and action and so people lived in perpetual fear and suspense. Watch the movie The Lives of Others if you want to get the feel of what it was like. Spiritually destitute: Christians were ‘free’ to continue to worship in East Germany, Churches continued to operate (this is unlike Communist Russia). However, the State-supported Lutheran Church was and is very liberal; the Free Churches tended to be taken over as centres for political resistance to the ruling party and so lost their real source of resistance in the Lordship of Jesus. Even more deadly, the ruling party tended to adopt and adapt the forms of christian community in service of State ideology. There were communist youth groups, communist naming ceremonies (infant baptism), communist confirmations. The whole communist system became a form of atheistic inversion of Christianity with the founding party members as apostles and Karl Marx as the anti-christ. It’s terrifying.
When you factor in that the 40 years of communism followed the evil Nazi regime which also used inverted forms of christian worship as vehicles for State propaganda, you can understand why people are wary of the real thing. Doesn’t it fill you with anger, that Satan could wound and sear the hearts of these people with vicious lies, with borrowed glory from the Messiah, with a form of godless godliness that has no power to save? And here we are a mere 70km from Wittenberg, the birthplace of the reformation. I can see the towers that mark the place where Luther and Johann von Eck debated for 23 days in 1519, and where Luther took his stand for the supremacy of God in salvation and the supremacy of the word of God over all human religion. Great christian heroes contended for the faith right here and Satan has waged unholy war against these people ever since. Lord Jesus, why do you tolerate such outrages against your name? Aaagh! Angry!

But still a remnant remains. The city of God remains entwined with the earthly city of Leipzig. Here are some of the places we’ve seen it so far:
Eating together: At the end of our first day here the LEC put on a fellowship meal to welcome the team, and again after both the services on Sunday. I love seeing Christians sitting down to break bread together. Best of all is hearing the stories of the believers here: a lady who marched in the protests that overthrew the communist regime in ’89; a guy whose Dad kept up the struggle to preach the gospel during the GDR time; so many people who have been led to genuine trust in Jesus through conversations and love shown by LEC folk. Jesus keeps stealing people’s hearts for himself!

Outreach: On Saturday we started with a Men’s breakfast, spent the middle of the day leafletting and running a book table in the city centre, and then went along to a Spring Ball in the evening. Everywhere we went there were opportunities for gospel conversations. A few of us went door-knocking in the university student residences. I was so encouraged to see local LEC people who were basically fearless in approaching and initiating conversations with students. So many people have invited friends to events. One girl told me she brought 15 friends to the Spring Ball. I spent 45mins talking with two self-identified atheists who I think walked in off the street!
On Sunday we took a part in the morning service of the LEC (Klaus preached, Jason shared his testimony); afternoon was team-meeting time; and then we helped to set up for the evening service. The evening service was done in a ‘cafe-style’, i.e., we all sat around tables rather than in rows of seats. David Höhne led us in a seminar about Faith and Reason. I shared a table with a group of teachers from the International School here in Leipzig. Three of these teachers teach a course called ‘theories of knowledge’ at the school. They were fascinated by David’s presentation. Two of them admitted that they couldn’t accept the claims of Christ but we had a fantastic discussion and I think David’s presentation helped to clear away a lot of the ‘defeater beliefs’ that had never been exposed to them before.
Today (Monday) most of the team are involved in a school visit, giving a basic english lesson and a presentation about Australia. It’s a good chance to build relationships at the school and to invite people to our kid’s club later in the week. I’ve got the morning off because my focus is Uni ministry which seems to involve staying up to the wee small hours, drinking German bier, and chatting with people. It’s a hard gig but someone had to do it. In 15mins I’m heading off to have some lunch at the Uni cafeteria with a group of students I met yesterday. We were up ’til 1am last night watching Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist and listening to music. I’m totally reliving my misspent youth. I think they’ve all been sleeping in this morning. Three of the 4 aren’t christians yet. Pray!

The Team: we’ve really been blessed with a diversity of gifts and a sense of unity and love for each other. David Höhne keeps reminding us of the grace of God which has brought us here, and which creates and preserves his church everywhere. Pray that we keep revelling in his grace. A few people have fallen ill at times in the past few days, and recovering from jet-lag has taken its toll. Please keep praying for our health and relationships with each other. Pray particularly for our hosts. German hospitality really puts Aussies to shame, these people have opened their houses for two weeks to us. Please pray that we will have sensitivity and be generous guests in return.

Most of all, pray that we can continue to confess with boldness and joy that:
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

Satan’s days here are numbered.

[P.S. I'm regularly updating Twitter with prayer points and pics - you can follow through searching for the hash tag #mooremission]