All who have departed – William Saumarez Smith
THE PREACHER’S PRAYER
LORD, when my heart is slow to feel,
And when my lips are slow to speak,
And yet my heart still Thee doth seek,
And yet my lips would Thee reveal;
Then send Thy gracious Spirit, Lord,
That He may my dull heart inspire,
And touch my lips with heavenly fire,
So shall I hear and speak Thy word.
And other hearts with love will glow,
And other lips Thy word proclaim,
So shall we glorify Thy Name,
And Heaven’s light shine on Earth below.– William Saumarez Smith
I randomly started reading a book of poems today by William Saumarez Smith (1836 – 1909), published and edited 100 years ago (1911) by his sisters. The book has only ever had that one edition. As far as I can tell, Saumarez isn’t a particularly well known figure (even in Sydney), and the poetry isn’t spectacular, but as I read his poems and the short account of his life at the beginning of the book, I got a little teary.
William Saumarez Smith was Bishop (later Archbishop) of Sydney from 1890-1913. He died of a brain haemorrhage in his office – died with his boots on, as they say – the first Archbishop of Sydney to be buried in Australia. His poems are a little window into the world of a man who walked humbly and simply with his God. He loved God.
He also clearly loved the people around him. Most of these poems were written as little notes to friends, family, and acquaintances. There are many about saying ‘farewell’ to family in England; a few for his daughter; two for his grandson. His life wasn’t easy. He spent time as a missionary in India, had eight children, and his wife passed away shortly before they were to leave England for Australia in 1890. He came anyway.
As I said, it isn’t all great poetry, but it is the affective life of a godly man. I was humbled and encouraged. It touched me that his little notes have made their way down the generations and are still quietly glorifying God.
Actually, I was twice blessed today. Reading the poems of William Saumarez Smith was the second time I shared communion with the everyday saints, got to watch – just a little awestruck – at the resurrection life peaking out like the fingernail of a sunrise at Easter.
And we also bless thy holy Name for all thy servants departed this life in thy faith and fear; beseeching thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of thy heavenly kingdom. Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.
William Saumarez Smith, Capernaum and Other Poems, London: Elliot Stock, 1911.
Extract from the ‘Memoir’
As to his private life, “he lived much in his Bible,” said one who knew him, ” no one could go into his study and see the ‘stand up’ desk covered with his Bibles, authorized, revised, Hebrew, etc., without perceiving his life-long devotion to the written word.” Many will recall how beautifully he read the Lessons in the Cathedral and other churches.
In the strenuous life of a Bishop, times of relaxation were rare, but now and then he would take part of a day off to watch some important cricket match, with keen enjoyment.
His love for reading was intense, and it was wonderful how in his crowded life he managed to devour some of the books and writings of the day. How reading tempted him may be gleaned from his joke about himself that he was not to be trusted in a bookshop for fear of ” the indulgence of buying.” Languages also interested him greatly, and he could read eight or nine. On one occasion at the Baptism of some Chinese converts at the Cathedral, having specially learnt the words, he was able to baptize them in their own language.
Those who were able to see him in his happy home at Bishopscourt, delighted to see him throw aside his work for an hour or two, and enjoy like a boy the simplest pleasures. And away in the country when visiting his clergy, any children that he met would find in the Archbishop a ready playmate.
In Holy Week of 1909 there were as usual Musical Services in the Cathedral, the Archbishop also giving a short address. Some who were present on the Wednesday, will never forget the earnestness of his closing words on the love of Christ, which proved to be the last that he spoke in his Cathedral pulpit. He ended by quoting the verse:
And there, with all the blood-bought throng
From sin and sorrow free,
I’ll sing the new Eternal Song
Of Jesu’s love to me.
The next morning, apparently well, he did his usual work, but that afternoon in his office at the Diocesan Registry he was found unconscious, and the letter he was writing was never finished. It was thought that during the next ten days he never regained consciousness, and on Sunday evening, April 18th, 1909, he “crossed the bar.”
His sudden death in the midst of his work produced a wonderful effect in Sydney. The people recognized that he had devoted his life to his adopted country, and there were many who gave touching proofs of how much they loved and honoured their Primate. The Cathedral was filled to overflowing for the first part of the Burial Service by a representative and sympathetic congregation. No signs of mourning were there. The lovely white flowers and impressive and beautiful music gave a note of Easter Victory and Peace.
Large numbers of people lined the long route of five miles to the beautiful Waverley Cemetery, which reaches down to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. The description of the scene given by one of the Sydney papers may fitly conclude this brief sketch: “A soft but clear air hung over the Cemetery, and there was a lazy beat of rolling water against the rocks below. To sea only a solitary tug was distinguishable, and further out a column of smoke denoted a steamer against the horizon. The elemental calmness, and the absence of distracting incident served to hush and further impress the very large crowd.” After the last hymn— “For all the saints who from their labour rest “—was sung, ” the people gradually withdrew, and left only the rollers of the Pacific beating against an empty headland, and the fresh breeze of the ocean stirring the grass about a new-turned grave.”
What it means to preach.
I walked around in a daze yesterday. Felt like I’d spent the night going rounds in an underground Fight Club. My tender bits ached. There was this sort of slosh of spent adrenaline, an acid bath, chewing on the strings of my muscles. I couldn’t write words, I kept misspelling or leaving out prefixes and suffixes.
It was from preaching.
Preaching, like all communication, is a psycho-somatic exercise. I have to be reminded of this because it’s easy to think that what’s going on is purely intellectual: the distillation and presentation of cognitive content. Even if we are committed to the idea that preaching should have an affective element and include a call to affective response, the physicality entailed by this commitment slips from view.
But the reality is, ‘Having a feeling’, just like ‘having an idea’ is a physical process. It means the flushing of hormones, secretion of tears, glands swelling and expelling, neurons spasming electrically. Blood-flow courses along the trail of the idea, careers around the brain to bathe its birth in chemical soup.
This internal alchemy combines with an external process. An ‘idea’ is also the harmonic resonance between people, mediated by language and memory and touch, posture, smell. No one ever thinks alone. Consciousness is a collective act.
And at the end of the process you can be left utterly physically exhausted.
Preaching is:
Scrabbling to grab hold of what a truth feels like.
Believing things for others.
Being what you say is out there.
Stretching out your arms so far you think your heart will break.
Losing your voice for joy at being the only one who gets to shout the beauty of the truth.
Sobbing uncontrollably.
Framed with words
And when you’ve done your best, when you’ve bled out on the pulpit, you’ve only done what was expected. No one should expect praise for this, much less anything short of this.
But maybe the Spirit will capture those puffs of breath and make them Words. And you and everyone there will thrill with the power of them. And at the end you will collapse into each others arms and worship God, full of gratitude that he spoke. Vibrating cellularly, organically, corporately, with his truth. And the Word of God will dwell richly among you (Col 3:16).
Comment and ShareWilliam Perkins
I’m currently up to my eyeballs in reading for the Reformed Greats intensive unit at College. I was doing some research on William Perkins when I came across this little gem describing Perkins’ preaching:
“He used to apply the terrors of the law so directly to the consciences of his hearers, that their hearts would often sink under their convictions; and he used to pronounce the word “damn” with so peculiar an emphasis, that it left a doleful echo in their ears a long time after.”
After reading his description of God damning infants, it’s not hard to understand why his preaching left such an impression. 
But lest you think that Perkins was a man consumed by visions of hellfire without a consciousness of God’s comfort in Christ, it’s worth knowing that he was renowned for his pastoral work. He began his ministry preaching to prisoners in Cambridge goal, without pay, simply because he cared for them. He famously led a young condemned man to the comfort of faith by kneeling beside him and crying with him to ‘”show what the grace of God can do to strengthen thee.”
Prophetic Dress Code
Some more Foucault soundbites,
“If sex is repressed, that is, condemned to prohibition, non-existence, and silence, then the mere fact that one is speaking about it has the appearance of a deliberate transgression. A person who holds forth in such language places himself to a certain extent outside the reach of power; he upsets established law; he somehow anticipates the coming freedom.â€
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (London, Penguin, 1998), 6
Foucault draws a fascinating line between the person who speaks about sex and denounces sexual repression and the Biblical prophet,
“Something that smacks of revolt, of promised freedom, of the coming age of a different law, slips easily into this discourse on sexual oppression. Some of the ancient features of prophecy are reactivated therein.â€
“… revolution and happiness; or revolution and a different body, one that is newer and more beautiful; or indeed, revolution and pleasure.â€
“… the revelation of truth, the overturning of global laws, the proclamation of a new day to come, and the promise of a certain felicity are linked together. Today it is sex that serves as a support for the ancient form – so familiar and important in the West – of preaching.â€
Michel Foucault, History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge (London, Penguin, 1998), 7
This amounts to a claim that the Sexual Revolution of the 60’s and 70’s was surrounded with an eschatological discourse. Strangely, the similarities don’t end with language. Most of these guys actually looked, dressed, and ate, basically the same as John the Baptist.
Funny|Weird as that is, it has a serious side.
The identity of an eschatological prophet is grounded in rejection of contemporary society, this obviously extends beyond ordinary language and into ‘body language’ (dress, grooming, as well as stance). But the commonality between John the Baptist and Hippie/Beatnik types, is not due to the fact that they are both seeking to be conformed to the Idea of an Eschatological Prophet (somewhere in the heavens). John helped to define a norm into which later prophets dipped in order to properly identify themselves. John himself is clearly modelled on earlier versions, going back at least to Elijah.
What we have then is a ‘prophetic subject’ to which individuals conform.
Even the rejection and denunciation of society requires a dress-code!
Comment and ShareStarting a Declaration
Then Paul stood in the middle of the Areopagus and said: “Men of Athens! I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. For as I was passing through and observing the objects of your worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed:
TO AN UNKNOWN GOD
Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. (Acts 17:22-23 HCSB)
4 Questions:
How would you go about starting a conversation about Jesus?
What about a conversation, not just with a friend but with city?
How would you begin, not a conversation but a declaration about Jesus, to a city?
If we were to translate Paul into Martin Place, how would he begin?
Any thoughts?
Comment and ShareSee Him Coming
It’s been a long time since I updated this blog with a post about what I have been doing.
(Emm’s also been updating her blog)
So here goes…
Last week was probably the busiest and most stressful week of College for me so far.
The normal workload for College has been just manageable for me in the past few weeks. But last week I got a true picture of what it will often be like. I had an essay due in at the end of the week (today) and was preaching on Sunday (yesterday). The reality is that there will be plenty of weeks where essays and preaching collide.
It feels sometimes that if you keep pushing yourself for long enough then eventually your brain just says ‘no more!’
Even though I new I had more work to do than usual, I found that I managed to do even less. Everytime I sat down to study or practice my languages, I’d find some way to distract myself.
I think that I just needed a mental rest, the motivation to keep pushing hard at the work just wasn’t there.
Being conscious of preaching on Sunday, and not having completely finished my sermon preparation, also meant that whenever I sat down to read for class I felt that I should be using the time for sermon prep. Rather than being able to stick to a study programme, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I needed to be doing and when.
But that’s life, it’s not neat and tidy – packaged into manageable time units. I’ve got it much easier than people who are studying with families and young kids.
Life at College can be difficult, struggling to meet competing demands is never easy. And, as students, we add significantly to the pressure because we really want to be there, and we really want to work hard. There aren’t any slackers at College, everyone is conscious of the fact that we are for the sake of other Christians, and for the service of God.
The danger, probably the most common danger in any area of Christian life, is letting the work obscure our objective – which is to know God better.
Looking back at the week I can see God’s grace toward me.
The essay I was working on was for a subject called Congregational Ministry. I had to read a book called A Little Exercise for Young Theologians by Helmut Thielicke. I found this reading to be really spiritually refreshing. It is a helpful and pastoral little book, originally presented as a seminar to beginning students of theology. It is all about the dangers faced by Theological Students – dangers of losing contact with the body of Christ, of intellectual elitism, and of having a learning that outstrips spiritual maturity.
Thielicke’s tone of voice is so warm and direct that it feels more like having a Grandfatherly chat. It was a blessing for me to read it, and made me aware of some of the things that I am finding challenging. Particularly the need to keep a real and deep personal relationship with God – reading the Bible and praying – and making sure that my spiritual life doesn’t become merely about teaching other people (what Thielicke calls ‘thinking in the 3rd person).
Without any intention on the part of any of the staff at St Philip’s, the passage that I was preaching on at Church was also the subject of our Old Testament Lectures for the week. (Genesis 4-11). This saved me so much time in preparation and John Woodhouse’s lecture even had quite a few hints towards how this section could be applied in a sermon. This was another great blessing from God.
As I prepared for the sermon, I was struck again by the scope of what God is doing in Christ. The world-wide cataclysm in the days of Noah – by which God wiped the earth clean of all the filth with which humanity had stained it – is nothing compared with the act of new creation and cleansing which he accomplished in Christ.
“Therefore if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.†(2Cor 5:17 HCSB)
I’ve been trying to have a good rest over the weekends. This often comes under pressure when we are busy, and particularly when I have to preach. The reality is that if you are going to work hard, you need to rest well (otherwise you do just sit and stare at the wall when you should be learning Hebrew). I don’t work from Friday night through to Saturday night – a genuine Jewish Sabbath! I should stress that this is not out of some theological belief that Christians shouldn’t work on a Saturday/Sunday. I do have views on that but they are more complex (maybe another post sometime 
)
I need to have a good rest, it is important as a way to love Emma, and it is a practical way to trust God with the future…
especially when you’re preaching on Sunday.
We went to a Friend’s wedding on Saturday with Naomi and Russell (my sister and brother-in-law). The wedding was in Camden (on the southern outskirts of Sydney) and we headed off early and had some lunch together before the ceremony. It was good to spend time with some of the family.
The wedding didn’t run too late and we were back by about 8pm. Emma and I went to bed pretty much straight away – we dragged the mattress out into the loungeroom and slept in front of the air-conditioner. I woke myself up every hour-or-so to listen to the scores in the cricket (Australia vs South Africa in the World Cup). With the extra hour of sleep from the Day-Light Savings change and the early bed time, I had a really good rest. The Cricket only added to my enjoyment.
Church on Sunday went well, I felt that the sermon came together well and was conscious of God’s word speaking. I’m a stuttering mouthpiece but he chooses to speak. This is no claim for my ability (remember Baalam’s Ass?) but I learn even when I’m preaching.
Sunday afternoon Emma and I both were studying – Emma for her Diploma of Biblical Studies exam, me writing my Essay. We went down to Starbucks and studied together there. It was nice to be working together. I finished the essay by the end of the afternoon and decided to go down to St Andrew’s Cathedral to the evening service there (St Philip’s doesn’t have anything in the evening). I have a close friend doing MTS there and it has been a while since we caught up.
One of the highlights of the weekend was singing together at the service. Sometime I get so used to our songs that my brain stops engaging with the words, worse I stop singing the words as prayers to God.
We were singing See Him Coming and it struck me that we were taking part in the great Heavenly Court from Daniel 7. We were among the crowd singing out our praise as “one like a Son of Man” approached the Ancient of Days to receive glory, and honour, and power over all the kingdoms of the earth. That’s the song we were singing – it is the highest expression of that emotion you experience watching your sporting team win. Cheering them on and thinking ‘they’re our boys!’
We were singing: He’s our Man! There he goes, on the clouds of heaven, to receive the crown from the Ancient of Days, and he’s going for us! as our representative! He’s Ours!
God blesses us with those moments, when the stress and frusterations build up and I’ve thoroughly taken my eye of what really matters. (Incidentally, that’s the essence of what Apocalytic Literature is about, I think)
Suddenly you See Him Coming on the Clouds of Glory.
Ah, that’s what reality really looks like…
Comment and Share“I continued watching in the night visions,
and I saw One like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven.
He approached the Ancient of Days and was escorted before Him.
He was given authority to rule, and glory, and a kingdom;
so that those of every people, nation, and language should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away,
and His kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.â€
(Dan 7:13-14 HCSB)
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