Today's PAYG is designed to confound your average Proddy, quoting as it does from Ecclessiasticus (or Sirach, or The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach) a deutero canonical book that sits between the Old and New Testaments in some Bibles, notably those used by Catholics.  The status of these books is viewed differently by various Christian traditions, and lots of Bappies freak at the thought of it - which makes me smile given how many Victorian Bappy Chapels cite parts of it (now praise we great and faithful men....) on war memorials etc.

Anyway, here's today's protion from Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 4:11 - 19

Wisdom teaches her children
and gives help to those who seek her.
Whoever loves her loves life,
and those who seek her from early morning are filled with joy.
Whoever holds her fast inherits glory,
and the Lord blesses the place she enters.
Those who serve her minister to the Holy One;
the Lord loves those who love her.
Those who obey her will judge the nations,
and all who listen to her will live secure.
If they remain faithful, they will inherit her;
their descendants will also obtain her.
For at first she will walk with them on tortuous paths;
she will bring fear and dread upon them,
and will torment them by her discipline
until she trusts them,
and she will test them with her ordinances.
Then she will come straight back to them again and gladden them,
and will reveal her secrets to them.
If they go astray she will forsake them,
and hand them over to their ruin.

Lots you could do with that passage, for sure.  One option is the oft used personification of wisdom as Sophia, the third person of the Trinity, aka Holy Spirit.  You could substitute Holy Spirit throughout and that would make a challenging reading!

The passage shows that wisdom does not arrive neatly packages and ready to go, it is bourne of experience - some of which is pretty rough '... at first she will walk with them on tortuous paths; she will bring fear and dread upon them, and will torment them by her discipline...'  This is the bit that spoke to me as I listened this morning.  Sometimes my path at present feels not only tortuous but torturous, especially in the wee small hours when I can't get comfortable enough to sleep and the drug induced mega hot flushes leave me drenched in sweat (OK TMI probably), sometimes fear and dread are my companions in the dark, but through this I am learning something and - which is vitally important - 'she will walk with' me.  God's Spirit shares the journey to wisdom and is Wisdom within it.

The passage ends with a note of caution though - if you don't stick with it, wisdom (lowercase w) will leave you to face the consequences of your choices.  Or should that be Wisdom?  Scary stuff!  Sometimes I wish it would all go away; sometimes I don't really feel much like learning in and through it, but mostly I trust that through it and in it and beyond it God is helping me grow in grace and wisdom (very small w!).

I wonder what this passage says to you?

BUGB e-news sweep has this link to an article on Biblical literalism, or maybe more accurately Bilbiolatry.  Worth a quick look see.

Various Baptist bloggers refer to the publication of a collection of essays honouring Brian Haymes (here, here, and here) it sounds a fascinating collection.  And of course I can add in my usual annoying way "I've preached in the church where the photo was taken."  I look forward to reading this at some future date - when my brain cells are working properly!

One of the things that has taken me by surprise since my surgery is how utterly rubbish my concentration has been.  Trying to read anything longer than a page or so or to take in a TV porogramme over 30 minutes long is a disaster, so I have a big pile of books and DVDs waiting for me to recover the wherewithall to appreciate their loan.

I was also lent two jigsaws and the one I'm working on seems to be doing the work of rebuilding my ability to focus and concentrate (phew!  I didn't want to be dozy and distracted for the rest of my life).  I find I can sit, backache notwithstanding, for a couple of hours at a time and work at a section of the picture.  Maybe a 1000 piece puzzle is a bit adventurous for the first one in 40 years, but I'm getting there!

After about 12 hours I've got this far...

I just discovered, via PAYG, that today is the Feast of the Chair of St Peter.  Wondering just what on earth this was, I resorted to that fount of all all dodgy information, Wikepedia, which assures me that there are relics venerated as chairs (cathedra) upon which the Apostle Peter sat.  It also tells me that by synecdoche (no I didn't know what it meant either) it becomes essentially a celebration of the papal office.  Not a feast a good dissenting Bappy is going to mark!  But it did put me in mind of another possibility, born of my expereince as a member of a House Group in the late 1990s. 

Our hosts had two settees.  The one on which I sat became known as the 'silly settee' because we would make flippant remarks (I recall us all saying 'yeah, right' when an elderly King David needed a beautiful young virgin simply to keep him warm at night; 1 Kings 1:1-2 (v 4 assures us of his chastity, so clearly ancient readers thought likewise!)), we would see the funny side of either the passage or the questions in the leader's 'Big Book of Questions' (it was called something like 'Search Ye the Scriptures' and consisted of loads of questions on every book of the Bible - and no answers!), and sometimes we would push the envelope on topics like predestination or religiously sanctioned genocide.  The 'Silly Settee' was an important part of my growth in disicpleship and a place I recall fondly for those who shared it and the fun we had in the studies.

So I hereby declare today the 'Celebration of the Sofa of Silliness' a liturgical commemoration of the role of group discussion in the ongoing formation of disicples of Christ.

Today PAYG centred on Mark 9:14 - 29, the account of Jesus healing a young man who his disciples had been unable to heal.  It is a bewildering passage at best, and one that can lead to an awful lot of unnecessary angst about our own lack of faith or inability to pray aright.

In summary, the father explains the story of his son's life to Jesus ending with the words 'if you are able, have pity on us and help us.'  The NRSV has Jesus reply 'If you are able!' as if this is the most preposterous thing the poor father - who has just had a whole gamut of failed attempts to heal his son - could say to him.  Jesus then says 'All things can be done for the one who believes.'

So it happens - our prayers don't get the answers we want so we must have faulty faith. These aren't selfish prayers, these are good prayers for world peace or an end to child poverty, or for the physical healing of a good person.  Perhaps it is sometimes true, especially with the 'general intercessions' that our faith is wanting, at least in so far as our prayers and our actions have a mismatch.  I have vague recollections of someone in Manchester concerned about gun culture who prayed, very earnestly, that God would 'raise up Christian policemen' (sic) to tackle the issue, completely missing the point that issues of poverty, injustice and racism actually fuelled the gun culture and that it was in their gift to do something, however small, to address that.

Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that the faith bit has to be linked with action, especially given my love of James' 'faith without deeds is dead' but I think sometimes we reduce our praying to words alone.

The father's reply to Jesus is oft quoted: I believe, help my unbelief.  We do believe, intellectually, that God can answer any prayer consistent with God's character and in ways that concord with God's will (thus a prayer for healing may result in what I have sometimes termed 'ultimate healing' - the transition through death to life eternal).  The trouble is, I think, that we have experienced earnest prayer seeming to go unanswered (or getting a 'no') which makes our believing more tentative, our prayers more general (which may be no bad thing sometimes) and our expectations lower.  We believe but we are also plagued by unbelief.  

Many years ago I was leading a chidlren's holiday club and asked the children if they had any prayer requests.  A little boy of seven asked us to pray that he'd have gained sufficient weight to be discharged from hospital.  My heart sank - what if we prayed and it didn't happen... his faith out-faithed my unbelief and he was discharged.  It isn't always so.  Sometimes we get the answers we long for, sometimes we don't.  It's a mystery and we need to beware measuring our own, or others' faith, by 'visible answers.'

PAYG posed three questions arising from this passage - which may seem to have nothing to do with what I've written:

• Do I believe a person can be changed?
• Do I believe I can be changed?
• Do I believe my nation or the world can be changed?

My instinctive answer to each of these was 'yes' but it was the last one that got me thinking... yes, the world can be changed but only one person at a time.  And the changing isn't just some supernatural alakazam moment, it is a process and it demands me to engage with people.  The six degrees of separation idea or the 'pay it forward' or the 'random acts of kindness' ideas all depend on this tiny scale belief in change being possible.

So, I believe that poverty can be overcome - I don't know how or when, which confuses and sometimes dampens my belief - which means I have to do something to make a difference.

I believe that one day all types of cancer will be curable or even avoidable - not in my lifetime and not to my personal gain - which means I have to do something to further that belief

I believe in the Revelation vision of a new heaven and earth where race, status, education, gender and the like have no power to divide - which means I have to work towards that now.

I believe... Lord help my unbelief.