Saturday 26 May at 7.30pm
Laurelhill Community College,
22 Laurelhill Road,
Lisburn
BT28 2UH

Tickets £10 available from the Maxwells 92670310 or Melanie Johnston.

‘Lord of life, send my roots rain’. This line of the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins has become a frequent prayer on my lips. So much faith today is rootless. There are Christians who think everything started with the incarnation. There are Protestants who think that the history of Ireland started with the Battle of the Boyne. Predating both are the rich heritages of both the Hebraic and Celtic worlds which share so much in common and have so much to teach the willing learner. Strikingly the deeper we dig into the past the more we glean that is of use in the present. Though far apart, spatially, ancient Israel and Ireland share common ground spiritually. There are vital truths that bind the Hebraic and the Celtic minds. More than intellectual monuments these are vital building blocks in the rebuilding of broken lives today.

The bigness of God
In both ancient Israel and Celtic Christianity we find the sense of an awesome God. Unfortunately in modern speech ‘awesome’ has suffered from verbal inflation and, like the money in our pocket, it does goes as far it used to! However in the days when words had value as currency we find an early Irish litany addresses ‘God, the Father Almighty, God of hosts, High God, Lord of the world, ineffable God, Creator of the elements, invisible, eternal, perfect, merciful, wondrous, dreadful.’ It is such a God whose very name is to be ‘blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled, mighty, upraised and lauded’ according to The Kaddish, a longstanding Jewish prayer. Both Hebrew and Celt were truly impressed by the ‘worth’-ship of The Almighty.

The wonder of creation
Built into the fabric of the Celtic worldview was the marvel of creation. The God of all Gods was the creator of the peoples, the high heavens, the skies above and the oceans below. Life, love, material and spiritual worlds were all his handiwork. Such a profound and perpetual awareness of the sheer wonder of the surrounding world was part of the consciousness of both the Celt and the Jew. Today we are being inundated with information. Facts are just a click away. Google seems as omniscient as God. However as society is being inundated with information it is being apparently robbed of a sense of awe and wonder. For many the virtual is more exciting than the actual. We are in danger of losing the sheer wonder of just ‘being’.

There’s nothing ordinary!
Hebrew and Celt alike shared Gerard Manley Hopkin’s perception that ‘the world is charged is with the grandeur of God’. While both worldviews would hold tenaciously to the utter transcendence and holiness of God, neither isolated him for the affairs of everyday life. In Irish life BC (Before Central-heating) even the setting of the fire provided an occasion to pray that in both the hearth and heart of the householder God would ignite a flame. The safety of the very cows lay within the scope of God’s protection and was not considered irreverent or irrelevant when praying. Indeed we find a wonderfully refreshing awareness that nothing in life lay outside the domain of God’s power or concern. It was an awareness of this fact that the Pharisaic tradition sought to heighten when Jews were encouraged to say at least one hundred blessings in the course of a day. Though hundreds of blessings covered the full range of life, every one of them began in precisely the same way, ‘Blessed are You the Lord our God, King of the universe…’ In other words no matter what the situation the person was responding to, whether traumatic or ecstatic, good or bad news provided an occasion to affirm the Lord is king. Humanly the circumstances may be mysterious to us but in everything God is at work. As the old rabbi said in ‘Fiddler on the roof’ in response to the question about whether there was a blessing for the new sewing machine, “Of course, my son, there is a blessing for everything.” The fragrance of flower and fruit, the beauty of scenery, the taste of food, the sight of rainbow, the rain or dew drop, the wind, the study of God’s word, the sip of water or even the proper functioning of the body in the bathroom. Such prayers in the course of the daily keep the insights of wonder and the sense of gratitude alive. Once announced to the world and accepted, a scientific theory does not need to be repeated a dozen times every day but as one great Jewish thinker, Abraham Joshua Heschel, observes, ‘the insights of wonder must be kept alive and since there is a need for daily wonder, there is a need for daily worship.’

Work and worship
Desi Maxwell

Topic for 2012 WE’VE GOT MAIL!

Register as you pay:

Summer School with Desi Maxwell

The House of Vicryn | Moira Road | Lisburn.
August 06-10,2012. 10.00am-12.30 (Mon-Fri)

FILLING IN THE BLANK PAGE
* £100 registration fee covers
* 10 lectures covering the Paul’s life.
*Set of notes.
* Morning coffee and Vicryn scone in the Café Vicryn

Pre-registration is essential as places are limited.

Please make cheque payable to Xplorations Ltd and send to
24 Thistlemount Park,Lisburn,BT28 2UN.

Further info:

1. AS PHAR-AS-I-SEE –Paul the Pharisee
2. THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE – the story of how the persecutor became the persecuted
3. TAKING JESUS ABROAD – a man on a mission
4. E-pistles from an Apostle
5. THE BEGINNING OF THE END – the dawn of the age to come
6. THE SCREAM-From Paul to Munch
7. A GREAT ‘WE’ MAN – ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’
8. WHAT’S A BODY TO HOPE FOR? – resurrection, past and future
9. GOD’S GROANERS – the Spirit within
10. LET’S GOOGLE-an image search on the church.

A vital part of the curriculum is vocabulary. It was on the anvil of Israel that God hammered out most of the words that Christians take for granted. Words like, redemption, sacrifice, love, mercy, grace, blood, covenant and faith are all rooted in the ancient text. Too often Christians suffer from verbal inflation, which means that the word in the mouth, like the pound in the pocket, no longer goes as far it used to. However, when we begin to explore the matrix of our faith, in the language and history of Israel, we find words regain their original worth and take on a whole new freshness.

Furthermore, one of the great paradoxes of studying the past is the discovery that the further back you go into the world of the Jews, the more intelligent and practical are your responses to the issues being raised in our ‘post-modern’ society. As we explore the ancient text we find the ultimate in reality writing. The story of God with his people is peppered with real people in real situations. Yet in the midst of the messiest situations there is always hope, and tracing the purposes and promises of God through the ups and downs of history encourages us as we strive to interpret our own times. There is such robust realism about the Hebraic worldview that it allows God to be God but always permits the human to be fully human. Thoroughly holistic, this understanding of life challenges all attempts to compartmentalize existence into material or spiritual, professional or personal, secular or sacred. The creator of all wants to be Lord of all. Such thinking launches a full frontal attack on the dualistic thinking that now dominates western thought patterns. Traced back through the Enlightenment and Renaissance such dualism is rooted in the world of Aristotle and Plato rather than the mind of Moses and Jesus.

In this Jewish context Jesus becomes three dimensional. Taking him out of the stained-glass window, and setting him into the context of a Torah-observant family in a vibrant Galilean village, he becomes a real person. We have been told so often that we must have faith in Jesus that we have been quite negligent about asking what was the faith of Jesus. The intimacy between this man and the ancient Jewish Scripture and world of Jewish prayer is a fruitful field for reflection. So often, Gentile Jesus, meek and mild, has been locked up in creeds so neat, he’s lost all touch with the man in the Jewish village street as well as the man and woman on our modern streets. Appreciating the man and his matrix opens up a whole new perspective on this Lord of the cosmos who was also a Torah observant, synagogue-attending Jewish villager.

Going back to school with Israel may even take us on field trip to the Middle East where we discover the value of the land, sometimes called ‘the fifth gospel’. An encounter with geography can prove extremely illuminating when we come to the text and help us appreciate that God’s revelation took place in both space and time. Archaeologists continue to dig up the past but, in so doing, create an awareness that so many of the big issues of the past continue to face us in the present.

Returning to the roots of our faith helps us renew and restore vitality and authenticity to our faith. Like Hilaire Belloc, we may ponder ‘how odd of God to choose the Jew’ but in that particular choice he had a universal audience in mind. So to this day as we, in the modern community of believers in the Jewish Messiah, seek to go forward, it will reward us richly to go back to school with Israel and rediscover our roots.

Desi Maxwell

See the Scriptures from a whole new angle – set Jesus in context – get new tools for opening the text – fresh pastoral and practical insights.

Desi Maxwell would love to share some of the insights from the Jewish context that have excited and enriched his ministry. This is an invitation to all clergy and anyone involved in Christian service to join in a series of six sessions ‘xploring’ some traditional roots which have contemporary relevance.

There will be six introductory lectures spread over three mornings.

Tues. May 15 10.00am It’s all Greek to me

11.30am Holy Wholly Holy

Tues. May 22 10.00am Windows on the Word – a user friendly programme relating both testaments.

11.30am What’s really NEW about the New Testament?

Tues. May29 10.00am Praying at all times without going mad-lessons from the Pharisees

11.30am Learning to live with tensions – thinking with both hands.

Venue- Conference room in The House of Vic-Ryn, Moira Road, Lisburn, BT28 2RF

(located close to main arterial routes, easily accessible by all major transport modes)

£60 fee includes 6 lectures, notes, coffee (of your choice) and Café Vic-Ryn scone.

Registration is essential and may be done by cheque (payable to Xplorations, 24 Thistlemount Park, Lisburn,BT28 2UN) or online at www.xplorations.org

Topic for 2012 WE’VE GOT MAIL!

Register as you pay:

Summer School with Desi Maxwell

The House of Vicryn | Moira Road | Lisburn.
August 06-10,2012. 10.00am-12.30 (Mon-Fri)

FILLING IN THE BLANK PAGE
* £100 registration fee covers
* 10 lectures covering the period between Malachi and Matthew.
*Set of notes.
* Morning coffee and Vicryn scone in the Café Vicryn

Pre-registration is essential as places are limited.

Please make cheque payable to Xplorations Ltd and send to
24 Thistlemount Park,Lisburn,BT28 2UN.

Further info:

1. AS PHAR-AS-I-SEE –Paul the Pharisee
2. THE THIRTEENTH APOSTLE – the story of how the persecutor became the persecuted
3. TAKING JESUS ABROAD – a man on a mission
4. E-pistles from an Apostle
5. THE BEGINNING OF THE END – the dawn of the age to come
6. THE SCREAM-From Paul to Munch
7. A GREAT ‘WE’ MAN – ‘in Adam’ or ‘in Christ’
8. WHAT’S A BODY TO HOPE FOR? – resurrection, past and future
9. GOD’S GROANERS – the Spirit within
10. LET’S GOOGLE-an image search on the churchAll lectures will be illustrated and handouts provided.

Thank you for registering for Summer School. We hope that you will find this event both informative and enjoyable.

Should you have any questions, please contact us through the website.

If you have not done so already, please proceed with your payment now

If you are not able to pay online, feel free to send us a cheque to:
Xplorations Ltd and send to 24 Thistlemount Park, Lisburn, BT28 2UN.

Desi Maxwell,
Xplorations.org

If we take the time to explore what Jesus, a Torah-observant, synagogue-attending Jew, would have been wearing then we shall be able to appreciate this incident, with much greater insight. Jesus did not wear a suit when he went to synagogue. On Sabbath, and indeed on every other day, this man, who never broke a single commandment given by God in the Torah, would have been wearing tassels sewn onto the corners of his long ankle length garment. In all probability Jesus would have memorized the opening five books of the Scripture and he dressed in observance of God’s command to Israel in Numbers 15. There the LORD said to Moses, 38 “Speak to the people of Israel, and bid them to make tassels on the corners of their garments throughout their generations, and to put upon the tassel of each corner a cord of blue; 39 and it shall be to you a tassel to look upon and remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to go after wantonly. 40 So you shall remember and do all my commandments, and be holy to your God.

These tassels were called ‘tzitzits’ in Hebrew and, as the illustration shows, they hung from the corners of the garment. Today they are attached to the four corners of the ‘tallit’ or prayer shawl worn by Jewish men. In fact such tassels have a long history and pre-date the Bible. Fringed garments were also found in non-Hebrew cultures such as the Midianite, Egyptian and Mesopotamian. Among these people, fringes may have served to indicate the authority, status and identity of the wearer. So when God commanded his people to wear ‘tzitzits’ at the corners of garments he was using something familiar to them from the surrounding culture. He was a master teacher and used the very clothes that people wore every day as object lessons. The ‘tzitzits’ had a didactic purpose – people were to ‘look’, ‘remember’ the Torah (instruction) and then ‘do’. Moreover when someone had a request to make they would often reach out to grasp the fringes worn by the one from whom they wanted something. Such a request would have been granted. It is against such a backdrop that we can begin to understand the action of this desperate woman who laid hold on the symbol of Jesus’ authority and personal identity.
Just a simple study of clothing in the first-century Jewish world casts light on this woman’s gesture, the meaning of which often eludes us in the western world.

We read the Bible through European lens which obscure texts readily understood by the middle-eastern reader. For instance we puzzle over Jesus asking such an apparently absurd question as why does a person light a lamp. We all think that the answer is surely obvious. To see, of course! Actually there may be much more to Jesus’ question than meets the eye for it may have been that he was referring to a very specific lamp, the Hanukkah lamp, which Jewish families had been lighting for nearly two centuries by the time he asked his question. This lamp was lit to commemorate a very famous incident in Jewish history – the rededication of the Jerusalem Temple after its desecration at the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Tradition records that those reclaiming the temple found just enough oil to burn in the sanctuary for one day, but miraculously it lasted for eight. Every year thereafter a nine-branched candelabrum was lit, known as a Hanukkah lamp. During the festival the light could not be extinguished but its light was never to be used to work by. The light was never to be used for personal gain and certain activities were prohibited while it burned. Obviously the lamp brought a degree of difficulty and self-denial into the lives of ordinary people and so the Pharisees said that, while it could not be put out, it could be put under a bushel or hidden behind a partition. So, against this background, when Jesus asked his question he was asking about the ‘intention’ of the lamp-lighter. Why do you light this lamp, he asks, if you have the intention of hiding it behind something when it proves personally inconvenient? Behind the simple question lies a profound challenge about intentions which is missed by our western eyes.

The people of the Bible did not live out their lives in a vacuum. When we, as readers, visit their world it is like travelling abroad, where we discover people speak another language and do things differently from us. As we visit this world the onus is on us to develop a cultural sensitivity. We need to spend some time exploring their language, clothing, food, hospitality, family life and values. The reward will be great. As we learn to feel more at home their world then our understanding will grow and we shall be better equipped to apply the truths of the ancient text to our modern world.

Desi Maxwell August 2011

Thursday mornings at 11.15.