Is your Christmas a house of strict rules, or a space for crative freedom?

So, the House of Fraser Christmas ad is a tad pretentious and feels a bit like an awkward leap into the world of cool from wherever they were before. Yet I prefer that 1 minute and 36 seconds of contemporary dance to all 13 series of 'Strictly's' competitive dancing by numbers approach to what ought to be a beautiful and original art form. I particularly liked the way the ad turned a festive dinner into a piece of dramatic choreography.

Ironically the philosophy of the House of Fraser ad; "Your Christmas, Your Rules"  is more in keeping with Baz Luhrmann's original film, 'Strictly Ballroom' than 'Strictly Come Dancing' (which owes part of its name to the movie). 'Strictly Ballroom' champions passion for dance & 'new steps' over winning & the rules of competition. It does it with humour and irony, but at the heart of the movie is a passion for creativity for its own sake and a deep critique of when creativity becomes ransomed to competition, narrow thinking and the rules that come with such thinking. Yet Luhrmann's sense of creativity is not without rules, nor is it simply 'your rules'. Strictly Ballroom

 shows respect for deeper, richer traditions of dance. I suspect that his is because their rules are rooted in a passion for the art and how it interacts with story and culture rather than power struggles and competition. Strictly Ballroom roots much of its humour and its drama in the contrast between the rich Spanish culture of the Paso Doble with the 2D pantomime world of competition ballroom dancing.

I have to confess that sometimes Church life seems to take on that 2D Pantomime feel. We follow the rules of tradition in that same blinkered way instead of allowing the rich tapestry of our many traditions to tell our story. We also become wrapped up in our own internal power struggles and create rules that are more about keeping control than encouraging the development of people.

 So, this Christmas, stop trying to win and dance your steps your way! Let the fun of creativity, whether it be music, dance or tree decorating, be rooted in the joy of creativity itself and the story it has to tell, not in the power struggles or the winning and the losing. 

This fertile soil on which we stand

An advent hymn;

This fertile soil on which we stand
This dream we grasp within our hand
This hope of something out of reach
This gospel we are called to preach

This future truth we now declare
This coming Christ we long to share
This journey each of us begin
With nothing but our faith in him

So we prepare the ground Like John
Like Christians did in ages gone
We sow the seeds and watch them grow
The final word we never know

This declaration of the Son
This God who is the three in one
This new arrival here on earth
This sign of what a person's worth

This love that can transform the soul
This plan is the creator’s goal
This story barely at its start
And yet we're asked to play our part

So we declare the truth like John
Like Christians did in ages gone
We call out in the silent street
In Jesus earth and heaven meet

©Pete Brazier 2012

-it's long metre so it will fit to many tunes, but I will probably use Herongate.

Communion Service - Breaking and pouring: Version 3

Here is a communion liturgy I have been working on for a while. I have attempted to integrate the telling of the story with the thanksgiving, the calling upon the Holy Spirit and the sharing of the bread and wine. By contrast, I have separated the bread from the wine so that we can focus on the specific symbolism of each; the continual re-breaking of the Church or the body of Christ and the pouring out of God's spirit to all people.

 

This is the 3rd Version of this communion liturgy I have produced. In this version I iron out some of the practical problems of distribution in a larger congregation with elderly folk and pews in straight lines. I have also added some singing and improved on the rephrasing of the 'words of institution.' This rephrasing is intended to emphasise the sense of this being the re-enactment of a meal that occurred before the crucifixion, and much of the text is intended to help us hear some of the unspoken Jewish theology and tradition that would have been familiar to Jesus and the disciples. 

A Communion Service...

The presiding minister says;

Jesus and his disciples had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of the Passover.

The Passover was a weeklong celebration in the capital city, where they remembered the time when, through God's guidance, Moses brought them out of captivity in Egypt, the sacrificial lambs were brought to the temple, because, in the time of the Exodus, the blood of lambs was used as a marker on the doors so that the angel of death would pass over those houses. 

As part of the celebration Jesus and his disciples joined together in a traditional meal in an upper room that they had hired for the occasion; a meal of thanksgiving for their freedom.

Raising the cup the minister says;

Let us raise the cup of freedom;

We proclaim good news to the poor;

Freedom for prisoners

A vision for those who have not seen,

And a lifting of the burdens of the oppressed

And so today we raise our thanks to the father of creation;
Thanks be to God, amen.

The communion stewards begin moving towards the table and prepare to receive the bread.

But their freedom was not complete; it was temporary and rooted in earthly promises.

A new promise was to be made there in that room by Jesus. Moses, great though he was, was only a man, speaking the words of God. But Jesus was God in human form;

And here in this place, just as Jesus did there in that upper room on the night before he died, we take the bread and we break it and share it amongst his disciples...

(At this moment the communion stewards receive the bread and begin distributing it, one chunk to each row)

...and he asked them as he asks us today to take this bread and eat it, and to imagine that this is his body which is being broken for you.

Sing (to the tune Hanover);

Minister: Are we now the Church, The body of Christ

The body, the bread, all gathered at once?

Will we let God break us, and take us apart

Remake our true image, reform us in love?

All: Yes we are the Church, The body of Christ

The body the bread, all gathered at once

We come to be broken, and taken apart

Remade in God's image, reformed in God's love

In the breaking of this bread; we are broken;

Like the body of Christ; we are broken

As we share in his self sacrifice; So we are remade in the image of God

We all eat the bread together

The communion stewards return to the table ready to receive the cups which are in dishes - one for each row

In the days of Leviticus when the priests made animal sacrifices, the priests would say that no one should drink the blood, because it contained the spirit of the animal. The spirit of the animal was poured out for the sins of the people. When Jesus offered himself as sacrifice on the cross, he declared an end to the sacrifice because his spirit was poured out for the forgiveness of all sins for all time. For this was not the spirit of one of God's creatures, but the spirit of God himself being poured out for all people...

The wine is poured from the central cup into a Kiddush cup

...And there in that upper room he poured out the wine as his spirit would be poured out to all people.

The communion stewards take the dishes of communion cups to the end of each row.

Sing (to the tune Hanover);

Minister: The spirit of God poured out to the world

An unending gift, the cup that we share

The cleansing and healing, forgiveness and life

Abundantly poured out beyond these four walls

All: The spirit of God we gladly receive

An unending gift, this cup is for all

The cleansing and healing, forgiveness and life

We share in outpouring God's love to the world

Knowing what was about to happen, at the end of the meal he took the cup gave thanks and gave it to his disciples, asking them to drink from it, as he asks us to drink from it today - and as you do, imagine that this is his blood which was about to be poured out for you, to seal the new promise which God is making with all people.

This is God's spirit poured out for all.
It is freely poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Amen

We all drink from the cups.

And Jesus told them to do this whenever they met to remember him. Do what, I wonder?

Well John tells us that after the meal Jesus washed their feet, and insisted that they washed each other's feet, a humble act of service. It is above all things our call to serve each other as Christ has served us and to serve those who have not yet known Christ, just as once we did not know Christ.

We serve each other and the world in the breaking and in the pouring.

We do this in remembrance of Jesus

We do this in remembrance of Jesus who awaits the opportunity to share this meal with us in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Hymn

Blessing

Jesus, our strength, our hope,

I've been working on this rewrite of a Charles Wesley hymn;

 It was an oddly complicated, but interesting creative process to try to give this a slightly more modern feel.

N.B. I quite like this to the tune Diademata (Crown him with many crowns) However, I think my own tune may help bring out some of the meaning in the lyrics;

You can hear a version of this here; 

https://petebrazier.bandcamp.com/track/jesus-our-strength-our-hope

Jesus, our strength, our hope, - Pete Brazier & Charles Wesley 2015 & 1742

Jesus, my Strength, my Hope, - Charles Wesley Hymns and Sacred Poems, 1742

Jesus, our strength, our hope, On you we lay our care, With humble confidence look up, And know you hear our prayer. Let us on you await Till all things can we do; On you, the one who does create, And shall make all things new. We want a clearer mind, A self-renouncing will, That takes apart and leaves behind Temptation's fleeting thrill; A soul not scared of pain, Of hardship, grief, and loss, Bold to take up, firm to sustain That consecrated cross. We want a careful ear, A quick discerning eye That looks to you when sin is near And hears the tempter fly; A soul ever prepared And armed with conscious care, Forever standing on its guard And keeping watch in prayer. We want a heart to pray, To pray and never cease, Not mutter words about your way, Or wish our sufferings less. This blessing, above all, Always to cry to you, Out of the deep on you we call, Until this life is through. We want a true regard, A single, steady aim, Unmoved by threat'ning or reward To you and your great Name. A clear and just concern For your immortal praise; A pure desire that all may learn And glorify your grace. We rest upon your Word; Its promise ever true; Our comfort and salvation, Lord, Shall surely come from you. But let us still abide, Nor from our hope remove, Till you, our longing spirits, guide Into your perfect groove. We want with every heart Your pleasure to fulfil, To know ourselves, and thus to start, To know your perfect will. We want, we know not yet, We want our wants to see We want what sadly we forget When God is not in me

Jesus, my Strength, my Hope, On Thee I cast my care, With humble confidence look up, And know Thou hear’st my prayer. Give me on Thee to wait Till I can all things do; On Thee, almighty to create, Almighty to renew. I want a sober mind, A self-renouncing will, That tramples down and casts behind The baits of pleasing ill; A soul inured to pain, To hardship, grief, and loss, Bold to take up, firm to sustain The consecrated cross. I want a godly fear, A quick discerning eye That looks to Thee when sin is near And sees the tempter fly; A spirit still prepared And armed with jealous care, Forever standing on its guard And watching unto prayer. I want a heart to pray, To pray and never cease, Never to murmur at Thy stay, Or wish my sufferings less. This blessing, above all, Always to pray, I want, Out of the deep on Thee to call, And never, never faint. I want a true regard, A single, steady aim, Unmoved by threat’ning or reward To Thee and Thy great Name. A jealous, just concern For Thine immortal praise; A pure desire that all may learn And glorify Thy grace. I rest upon Thy Word; The promise is for me; My comfort and salvation, Lord, Shall surely come from Thee. But let me still abide, Nor from my hope remove, Till Thou my patient spirit guide Into Thy perfect love. I want with all my heart Thy pleasure to fulfil, To know myself, and what Thou art, And what Thy perfect will. I want I know not what, I want my wants to see, I want—alas! what want I not, When Thou art not in me?

Genesis 1:1 - 2:3

I recently put together a worship that focussed on human interaction with God through technology; all kinds of technology, not just the modern stuff. As part of this worship, I decided to take on a task I had been wanting to do for a while; to produce my own translation of Genesis 1:1-2:3, the first of the two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis.

I am no expert in Hebrew so I relied a lot on technology to help me do this and some of my translation choices may well be questioned by those in the know, but I have a specific agenda for my translation (as all translations do) and for the most part, the controversial choices were deliberate, rather than a result of my naivety in the field.

The specific intention of this translation is to give the reader a feel for some of the peculiarities of the Hebrew language, to hear some of the grammar and sentence construction as it is delivered in the original, to retain some of the peculiar poetry of the text and perhaps most importantly to get a sense of the creation story as a fluid torrent of action rather than the stilted and coldly segmented list of actions that it often becomes in English translations.

I have attempted to leave in ambiguities or even push towards seemingly incongruent interpretations of phrases or words, which on their own work poorly in English, but in the context of the whole story begin to paint an exciting and dynamic picture - "And God saw, that's good"

In addition I have skewed the emphasis of gender, but not without rules. In Hebrew everything has a gender, whether it is a person, species or inanimate object. Our historical tendency has been to translate objects and animals as neutral (it), God as masculine (he) and ignore any references to the feminine except in humans. This is not wrong, but it misses the way that the Hebrew language often pairs masculine and feminine in a way that helps create movement, drama and tension within the very grammar of the text. For example Adam the person from chapter 2-3 is also the name for the human race in chapter 1. Adam is masculine and singular, and yet God is heard to make 'them' male and female, this is in part because adam, the species is male in reflection of the female earth, adamah. Yet in verse Gen:1:26 we hear God making adam - in God's likeness, here God is the masculine and the image is feminine. My translation seeks to draw the feminine to our attention wherever possible and allow the masculine to go unnoticed except when it has a specific purpose to play. In particular, I have tried to avoid calling God 'he' as God is not human and therefore to translate as he is inconsistent with the traditional treatment of other non human nouns. This is intended partly as a counterbalance to other translations but also as a way of drawing out those hidden gender relationships within the grammar.

Genesis 1:1-2:3

1:1      In beginning, God created the skywaters and the earth

1:2      And the earth she was shapeless, empty and dark over the face of the deep

            And the breath of God, she fluttered over the face of the waters

1:3      And God said - be light, and light be

1:4      And God saw because the light was good

            And God separated between the light and the dark

1:5      And God called day towards the light and night towards the darkness

            And it was evening, and it was morning: Day one

1:6      And God said - be an open space between the waters

            And be separated choosing waters from waters

1:7      And God made the open space

            And chose the waters which were from beneath to the open space

            And chose the waters which were from above to the open space

            And it’s so.

1:8      And God called skywaters to the open space

            And it was evening, and it was morning: Second day

1:9      And God said - gather the waters from beneath the skywaters to one place

            And the dry land she will be seen

            And it's so.

1:10    And God called the earth to the dry land

            And to the gathered waters, called sea

1:11    And God said - sprout she the earth,

            Grass, seed sowing plants, produce trees bearing produce of their kind

            Which carry their seed on the earth

            And it’s so

1:12    And the earth she send out grass,

            Plants sowing seed of their kind and trees making produce

            Which carry the seed of their kind

            And God saw, that’s good

1:13    And it was evening, and it was morning: Third Day

1:14    And God said - be lights in the open space of the skywaters

            To separate between the day and the night

            And they were a sign for occasions, days and years

1:15    And the lights be in the open space of the skywaters

            To be light upon the earth

            And it’s so

1:16    And God made two great lights;

            The greater light for representing the day

            The lesser light for representing the night

            And the stars

1:17    And God gave them to the open space of the skywaters

            To cause light upon the earth

1:18    And to represent day and night

            And to separate between light and darkness

            And God saw, that’s good

1:19    And it was evening and it was morning: Fourth Day

1:20    And God said - the waters swarm with swarming things

            Living life forces

            And a flock fly over the earth

            Over the face of the open space of the skywaters

1:21    And God created the great sea monsters

            And each of she living, moving, life forces of their kind which swarm the waters

            And each winged flock of its kind

            And God saw, that’s good

1:22    And God welcomed them

            And said - produce and be many

            And fill the waters in the seas

            And the flocks were many above the earth

1:23    And it was evening, and it was morning: Fifth day

1:24    And God said - the earth send out living life forces of her kind,

            Beasts and crawlies and life on earth of each kind

            And it’s so

1:25    And God made life on earth of each kind

            And animals of each kind

            And crawlies of the womanearth of each kind

            And God saw, that’s good.

1:26    And God said - let us make man in our image, as our feminine reflection

            And they control, with fish, the sea

            And with flock, the skywaters

            And with the animals and with all the earth

            And with all the crawling crawlies on the earth

1:27    And God made the man in the image;

            In the image of God, created him;

            Male and female, created them

1:28    And God welcomed them

            And God said to them - produce and be many and fill the earth

            And bind and control with fish, the sea

            And with flock, the skywaters

            And with all the living crawlies on the earth

1:29    And God said - hey! I give to yous all plantlife to sow seed

            Which is on the face of all the earth

            And all the treelife which contains tree produce to sow seed,

            For yous it is for eating

1:30    And for all life of the earth

            And for all the flock of the skywaters

            And for all the crawlies on the earth

            Which contain the living life force;

            all green plantlife for eating

            And it’s so

1:31    And God saw all that was made.

            And hey, it’s very good

            And it was evening and it was morning: Sixth day

2:1      And the skywaters and the earth

            And all their gathered multitudes were complete.

2:2      And in the seventh day God completed the work that was done

            And in the seventh day, rested from all the work that was done

2:3      And God welcomed the seventh day and set it apart

            Because in it was rest from all the work of creating

            Which God had done

Deuteronomy 8:3 Part II: The Lonely Bread

כִּי֠ לֹ֣א עַל־הַלֶּ֤חֶם לְבַדּוֹ֙ יִחְיֶ֣ה הָֽאָדָ֔ם כִּ֛י עַל־כָּל־מוֹצָ֥א פִֽי־יְהוָ֖ה יִחְיֶ֥ה הָאָדָֽם׃

The second part of Deuteronomy 8:3 says

'Man shall not live by bread alone but on every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord.' Or in my translation; 'it is not on the bread in its loneliness that the human will live, because on all emissions from the mouth of Yahweh will the human live'

This line, later quoted by Jesus (Mt 4:4/Lk 4:4), is often used to infer two things;

1.     That we cannot simply rely on earthly, physical food; we must also rely on spiritual food.

2.     That that we should listen to and be fed by the verbal word of God, through the scriptures.

Neither of these is entirely wrong, but both have slight problems.

1 We cannot simply rely on earthly, physical food; we must also rely on spiritual food.

If you read Deuteronomy 8:3 on its own you might indeed conclude that God is saying symbolically through the manna; 'you can't simply live on your own earthly resources, you need to rely also on me; supplement your earthly bread with heavenly manna and all will be well.' Except we hear from Numbers 11:7-8 that they baked the manna into bread, which in Exodus 16:4, Nehemiah 9:15, Psalm 78:24-25 and John 6:31 it is referred to as the 'bread of heaven'. Neither Deuteronomy nor Matthew's Gospel say; 'Man shall not live by earthly bread alone, but also by the heavenly bread.'

We might ask if manna is the bread that we cannot survive on, or does it represent that all nourishing word of God? In Numbers 11 we hear a request from the Israelites for some meat with their manna as they are fed up with the same diet. But that request is met with a resounding 'no', as if to say 'you shall live by this bread alone.' This seems to be a contradiction of Deuteronomy 8:3 where the manna is the unknown food, but we'll come back to that.

2 We should listen to and be fed by the verbal word of God, through the scriptures.

There is a translation issue here; whilst the Greek in the New Testament inserts the word rhema (ῥῆμα), 'word',[1] the Hebrew from Deuteronomy gives us the phrase col motsa (כָּל־מוֹצָ֥א) which loosely means all the 'emissions' or the 'going forths'. Motsa is a noun that captures the action of going forth as much as the thing or the word that is being sent. Hence some translations use phrases like 'everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord'. Like logos, rhema also carries within it a sense of not just meaning word, but also meaning the idea, the matter, the thing or the concept. So even if we insert 'word' there it needs to be thought of as a far wider and more conceptual meaning than simply words, whether written or spoken.

This is not simply a placing of spiritual food above physical food, biblical texts above other texts or the word of God above earthly common sense, it is about acknowledging an interconnectedness about all that comes from God even after it has been processed by human thought and action.

We should note that both heavenly providence and earthly process are involved in the production of manna. It is provided by God but needs to be prepared by human hands in order for it to be ready for human consumption. Our mistake in our interpretation of 'man shall not live by bread alone' is one of subtle emphasis. It is not about separating out the earthly from the heavenly, nor is it about adding God's word to human endeavour, but rather about God's actions baked into the bread, God's living involvement and interaction with the world becoming the first ingredient of what we seek to create. God becoming the first thought not the afterthought. Man shall not live by bread in its 'loneliness' but in its interconnectedness with God; by everything that comes from God and by realising that everything created comes from the very breath of God - 'In the beginning was the word and the word was God.'

The food is the same food; the bread is the same bread. We don't replace earthly bread with heavenly bread. We transform our experience of the bread by acknowledging the presence of God in the creating of this bread; by realising the presence of God's divine nature within the food. Suddenly we find ourselves back in the realms of communion theology. Considering the statement 'it is not on the bread in its loneliness that the human will live' in terms of communion theology helps us to understand what it is all about and simultaneously enriches our understanding of Communion.

We might say; 'man shall not live by bread a lone, but also by the wine'. Man shall not live just by the physical body of Christ, thinking perhaps of the Church as the body of Christ but also by the spirit of God poured out for all people represented in the wine.

I have spoken in another blog about the symbolism of the breaking of the bread and the pouring out of the spirit in the cup; that there is a model of how to be church in the pattern of Holy Communion, in the constant re-breaking of the structure of the church in order to allow God's spirit to flow. We can also think of this in more abstracted terms of structure and flow.

Tradition is perhaps the structure that, important though it is, needs to be constantly re-broken and redefined and the flow of the spirit of God is that which keeps everything new. And we only know how to do this if we are constantly listening to God, constantly looking for God's actions in the world and God's hand upon our lives. The structure and flow or the breaking and pouring out both echo that bringing down and lifting up from the first part of Deuteronomy 8:3; the hunger that is created by that bringing down and our subsequent openness to being filled with the holy spirit that is poured out for all.

"And he brings you down and it makes you hungry and it makes you eat the unknown food that you do not know and your fathers did not know, in order to cause your knowing, that it is not on the bread in its loneliness that the human will live, because, on all emissions from the mouth of Yahweh will the human live."

Deuteronomy 8:3 Part I: God brings us down in order to lift us up

---

[1] Some traditions suggest a difference between 'rhema' as the spoken and 'logos' as the written word of God, but studies of the Greek language don't seem to support this.

Deuteronomy 8:3 Part I: God Brings us down In order to lift us up

וַֽיְעַנְּךָ֮ וַיַּרְעִבֶךָ֒ וַיַּֽאֲכִֽלְךָ֤ אֶת הַמָּן֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר לֹא־יָדַ֔עְתָּ וְלֹ֥א יָדְע֖וּן אֲבֹתֶ֑יךָ לְמַ֣עַן הוֹדִֽעֲךָ֗

Recently I decided to retranslate Deuteronomy 8:3 from Hebrew to English, partly out of curiosity and partly because I thought it might help me with some of my studies into the theology of Holy Communion.

Most Translations will do their best to be faithful to the original, but will have a strong emphasis on making sense in the language into which it is being translated. By contrast I attempt to retain as much of the raw Hebrew style as I can, but where there are peculiarities of grammar or words that just won't translate in a linear way, I like to play with them in a poetic way; to tease out some bridge of meaning between the original language and my own. This is my translation set next to a couple of more standard translations;

  I used a little poetic licence in the opening phrase 'and he brings you down.' Most translations begin with and he humbled you, which is right, but is perhaps too gentle; too polite. The verb anah (ענה) can be translated as 'to oppress' or 'to humiliate'; 'brings you down' seemed to do the trick in the context.

NRSV	NIV	My translation
He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.	He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.	And he brings you down and it makes you hungry and it makes you eat the unknown food that you do not know and your fathers did not know, in order to cause your knowing, that it is not on the bread in its loneliness that the human will live, because, on all emissions from the mouth of Yahweh will the human live.

Hebrew grammar can be very ambiguous and most translators presume that this the start of Deuteronomy 8:3 is a sequence of three things that God does, he humbled you and he caused you to be hungry and then he fed you with manna, but if we think of the second and third 'he's as 'it's it transforms the nature of this sequence. The name of the food, manna (ענה) is a kind of play on words, as it means something like 'what is it?' This makes sense, because it was indeed unknown food and the sentence goes on to say 'which you did not know and your Fathers did not know'. Instead of being a list of things that God does directly, we can think of this as a sequence of events set off by God first humbling you; then that humbling causing you to hunger and the hunger causing you to eat the unknown or unfamiliar food.

The pattern of humbling, hunger and openness to the new, seems to be a method that God uses to shift the faithful from times of stagnation and fatigue towards times of renewal and transformation.

A related, but slightly different pattern is noticeable in many biblical passages; the pattern of faith, testing, and reward. It can be seen in Abram and Sarai's waiting for a son, Joseph being sold into slavery and imprisonment, the Israelites enslaved in Egypt, the exodus, the exile, even the crucifixion and resurrection Jesus.

Two examples that relate to Deuteronomy 8:3 can be seen in the stories of Noah in Genesis 6-9 and Jesus being baptized before being tested in the wilderness in Mark 1, where there is an act of faith followed by 40 days of testing. The reward for Noah is survival but with Jesus the reward is more complex as it is ultimately us who seem to receive the reward and not him.

In both stories the faith comes before the trial; before the dark time. As Christians, we often think that when we have faith we will automatically suffer less. Our faith might give us strength to withstand suffering, but it certainly doesn't prevent us from experiencing it. In fact in many biblical stories as in modern life, it is that very faith that places us in the very heart of the suffering. Sometimes the faith that is ultimately drawing us towards the light, first takes us directly into the dark places of life.

People often ask 'If God is good, why does God allow bad things to happen?' I would not want to suggest that all suffering comes under the banner of this pattern of faith, testing and reward, but certainly when we read these stories we can see that suffering is not just an accidental by-product of free will, or something that the Devil has brought into the world against God's intentions. We see in these stories that suffering, the dark places and the wilderness moments in life are an intrinsic part of the human experience; a fundamental part of the universe God created.

The beginning of Deuteronomy 8 echoes the number 40 heard in the stories of Noah and Jesus in the wilderness as it speaks of the 40 years the Israelites spent in the wilderness. It speaks also of this as a time of testing;

Deuteronomy 8:2 (NIV)  ² Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.

However, in verse 3 we are seeing that pattern of faith, trial and reward as if from the inside; from God's viewpoint, the mechanics of the theology that underpins this process. God brings us down in order to create that hunger within us, so that we will be ready to eat unknown food, so that we will be prepared to take on the unfamiliar.

Faith	→	The faith of the individual, though flawed and possibly stagnating, gives an opening for God to bring that person down	↘	Humbling
Trial	↙	The bringing down leads to a time of trial	←
	→	The time of trial creates hunger within the individual	↘	Hunger
Reward	↙	The hunger leads to an openness to receiving from God, the reward	←
	→	This place of reward is a new and unknown situation for which the recipient was not previously prepared.	↘	Unknown Food

 If we look at the Church in Britain today, isn't that exactly where we are? Isn't God bringing us down in order to create that hunger within us? Decline in the Church is often seen as either a failure on the human side of the equation, or as God abandoning that part of the Church in some way.  Whilst the human part in the failure to grow the Church should not be ignored, it seems likely that God was not surprised by the decline that is occurring in the Church and sought to use this as part of the bigger plan.

A triumphant and powerful Church, whilst successful, easily becomes complaisant, reliant on human strength and organisation; it becomes hierarchical in a top-down way and, instead of being a servant to the people, it can quickly become a master and a judge. The need for the Church to be brought down in order to regain that hunger for the humble grace of the cross is apparent when we stand back and look at the bigger picture from the vantage point of Deuteronomy 8:3.

Deuteronomy 8:3 Part II: The Lonely Bread