The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Rod Dreher wrote “to order the world rightly as Christians requires regarding all things as pointing to Christ”
Christ is the One in Whom in all things consist and humanity is not the measure of all things. If a defining characteristic of the modern world is disorder then the most fundamental act of resistance is to discover and life according to the deep, divine order of the heavens and the earth.
In this series we want to look at the big model of the universe that the Bible and Christian history provides.
It is a mind and heart expanding vision of reality.
It is not confined to the limits of our bodily senses - but tries to embrace levels fo reality that are not normally accessible or tangible to our exiled life on earth.
We live on this side of the cosmic curtain - and therefore the highest and greatest dimensions of reality are hidden to us… yet these dimensions exist and are the most fundamental framework for the whole of the heavens and the earth.
Throughout this series we want to pick away at all the threads of reality to see how they all join together - how they all find common meaning and reason in the great divine logic - the One who is the Logos, the LORD Jesus Christ - the greatest that both heaven and earth has to offer.
Colossians 1:15-23
The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation
Episode 59 - Masterful Metaphors: Christ and the Art of Poetic Expression
Have you ever wondered how poetry can reshape your faith and understanding of life? In this episode, Glen Scrivener from Speak Life takes us on a transformative journey through the power of poetic language.
We start by reflecting on George Herbert's evocative poem about prayer, highlighting how its rich imagery transcends mere ritual, inspiring deeper spiritual connections. Poetry, by engaging our emotions and bypassing rational defenses, has the incredible ability to liberate us from the confines of our own imaginations.
Our discussion emphasizes poetry's timeless nature and its unique capability to convey complex truths succinctly. Drawing parallels to Jesus, the masterful storyteller, we explore how poetic language has captivated and transformed listeners throughout history. With metaphors and layered meanings, poetry offers profound wisdom that remains accessible and memorable.
Finally, we touch on the significance of mastering language in preaching.
By contrasting modern preaching with the poetic and impactful sermons of historical preachers, we underscore the necessity of leaving a lasting impression. Using RS Thomas' poetry, we illustrate how it can ground us in the present moment, helping us recognize Christ's presence in our daily lives.
This conversation advocates for a slowing down and paying attention, creating a preaching style that invites listeners into a world illuminated by Christ's light and eternity. Join us for an episode that will ignite your appreciation for the poetic in faith and life.
The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore
It's like it needs a poem.
Speaker 2:No, but I love that, because what happens with that is, if you do just the propositional thing, a person then starts to kind of go. I agree with that, I don't agree with that, I'm arguing. But what this does is say shut up.
Speaker 1:Like, just listen.
Speaker 2:Listen to the story and you're suddenly affected by it, not in a different way, and you're thinking differently before you even know. You are Like it's influenced you and it's sort of bypassed what you think, I know stuff, and it's like, shut up, you don't know stuff, and then it's just kind of making you think and look and feel differently, without you having any say almost, in it.
Speaker 1:Yes, because people are trapped in their imaginations. Yeah, and we think of our imagination as like an IMAX cinema and it's great.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:Paul says it's a bit more like the walls of Jericho and you're a prisoner of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And what does the true word of Christ come to do? Liberate you from your IMAX cinema and show you a more captivating vision with Jesus at the center of it.
Speaker 2:Because that is the reason, isn't it, why there was the global flood?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the imagination.
Speaker 2:So it's as if, like it wasn't the individual bad behaviors that the Lord says, because it's almost like he said, we can do something about those. But if every imagination of the human heart is only trapped in it, he's like actually we need to. Just that is so primal, so deep. Of course that's going to lead to bad behaviours, but the thing that I've got to get rid of is the imaginations thing.
Speaker 1:Yes, Can I read out a poem by George Herbert which I think does this beautifully, and I think it interacts with what we're saying about. So if for the last 300 years we've been thinking about life as a machine, the world is a machine. And what does life in this world look like? It looks like grabbing the levers of power and pulling them with all my might, and if it doesn't work, this time just keep on pulling harder right. So what does prayer become? Prayer is either the sort of incantation that might twist God's arm or it's pageantry and why bother?
Speaker 1:Because the earth is going to grind along the way that it always grinds along according to iron laws of physics, and prayer is probably the first casualty of that imaginative world. Well then, listen to a world that is kind of built for you by George Herbert, as he describes what prayer is Prayer? The church's banquet, angel's age, god's breath in man returning to his birth, the soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage. The Christian plummet, sounding heaven and earth engine against the almighty sinner's towerversed Thunder, christside Piercing Spear, the Six Days World Transposing in an Hour A kind of tune which all things hear and fear Softness and peace and joy and love and bliss. Exalted manner, gladness of the best, heaven in ordinary man, well-dressed, the Milky Way, the bird of paradise, church bells beyond the stars heard. The soul's blood, the land of spices, something understood. The soul's blood, the land of spices, something understood.
Speaker 2:Oh man, that's just, you just want to pray, don't you? That's right, oh man, it's so emotional that one it's just like, oh wow, and it's doing that likening thing.
Speaker 1:Prayer is like think about it, it's like this, it's like the Christ's side-piercing spear, oh my goodness. But it's also like a land of spices and it's, and you just sit with these oh, just something understood when it ends.
Speaker 2:It's just something that you're like and you're oh yeah, yeah like all and that, just that it can. I want to say it has more of an impact on you to pray than like a whole book.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:Just that, you want to, just like, I want to learn that, I want to go over it, because that is the power of an entire like volume, yes, and maybe more so because of its compactness and power and imagery, and so on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, poetry does that. It compresses things, it names things, it likens things and it helps you to dwell on something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it does kind of reveal things that you cannot get at any other way. I remember, oh, this is like maybe 20 years ago something. No, yeah, maybe. I remember I would in the morning running the children to school. No, it was maybe 15 years ago. And then I remember we had a cassette tape with a reading of is it Soroban Rustam, is it Matthew Arnold? And we set and it take about the whole poem probably took, maybe takes an hour, but it would be a 15-minute journey. So in the morning we heard 15 minutes, on the way back, 15 minutes like that, so over two days. And then on the I think it was on the third day we were going in in the morning. No, no, we came back. That's it.
Speaker 2:And I remember it was so powerful, this story about these ancient, the father, and well, I don't want to say what it is because I don't want to spoil it, because it's a twist, the ending of it, but it was so powerful I had to pull the car over because I was like weeping about the power of it.
Speaker 2:And the kids were like it too, and even little Anna at the time and I don't know, she was about five or six or something, maybe or something, but even she or you know whatever, and we were all just like sat there, utterly like, was there, someone had told the story. There's no way it would have hit us that way and I I still think how can that be? How does it work that way? Something to do with the rhythm, something to do with all the things you've said, and it is something that's like trans, almost like a transcendent thing. It's something. This is why I was saying about this is why I'm sure the members of the trinity speak poetically to one another, because why not? It's the highest way of using words, the most powerful, the most impactful, the most condensed yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:and again going back to what I said at the beginning, like I'm tempted to think okay, those words played a trick on you and you tugged at your heartstrings or made certain synapses fire or that kind of thing, but that doesn't really do it.
Speaker 2:It doesn't do it. It doesn't do it no.
Speaker 1:You're in touch with something primordial.
Speaker 2:It is primordial and I always think with Jesus of Nazareth. If you were hanging around with him, the reason he'd be so ridiculously compelling and people trampling each other to listen to everything he said. I think he'd be almost like a rapper or something, so that everything he said would have been almost poetically and rhythm and melody and weight, and so you know when they're trying to capture it.
Speaker 2:And sometimes people say, oh, but they all, like the synoptics, they all seem to be using exactly the same form of words to describe what happens. I'm like that may be the modern idea that they're coppering off each other. It just may be that they're so compelling the way that he said things that they just said, oh, you got that's. That's what he said and that it must have been. You know when people must have just come and said, oh, like I'm struggling with this in life, and he'd say, like a story or something that would utterly transform yeah, yeah, yeah, do you know?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, Peter J Williams has done some great stuff from Tyndale House on the genius of Jesus and he applies that in particular to the prodigal son story. But he's also got all sorts of teaching about how does Jesus just very naturally spoke poetically in ways that are memorable and again, as a modern person, we think, oh, I know, he was just using mnemonic tricks to get us to remember what's really important. No, he wasn't doing that. But I often think in Matthew 10, he's sending out the disciples and he says you know, you're like sheep among wolves, so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves and modern people were like.
Speaker 2:Oh, you're mixing your metaphors there, jesus, you shouldn't do that.
Speaker 1:You need to have one clear point but actually compact it into one sentence. He's got four animals. Okay, you're a sheep, those guys are the wolves, but you need to be, at times, a serpent-like sheep and at other times you need to be a dove like sheep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And you could at that point say that doesn't make any sense, it's confused. Or you could say that is like the richest kind of symbolism and it will take me a month just to like think through that, you know because the herbert thing was like that.
Speaker 2:It was absolutely just piling one image on another, on another, and you might say stop it, just stick with one thing and explore it properly.
Speaker 2:And he, he's like nah, I'm not going to do that, I'm just going to be with another one, and another one, and another one, and they're not necessarily sequentially related or anything like that. I'm just going to do it and it's much more powerful to do that. So that kind of like. You know, I always think there have been ages when poetry is more appreciated than now or whatever. But now it is sort of appreciated but people don't always know about how much it's impacting them with popular songs and things like that. But it's like there's this feeling that you know how brilliant it is to hear the world described poetically. And then if let's say this, that jesus is the greatest poet there's ever been, I'm gonna say that jesus knows with the greatest poets ever been and that to sit, to be hanging around him would just be monster.
Speaker 2:You know, he'd be like amazing things. He'd be saying with that rhythm, the melody, the richness of words, all of that kind of thing. But it's incredibly accessibly as well, because all the common people loved it, so it wasn't as if it was some esoteric kind of cutting edge james joyce kind of thing that hardly anyone understands what's going on and he's like no, it isn't like that.
Speaker 2:But if that's what he is, what if he's? And that when you said words create things and that, like in his case, his words are so powerful that he can then like the weather is a storm and he can just say, listen, peace. And he speaks to it in such a way that it pays attention to these words. This, this word weaver, can talk to, like Nate, like weather demons, anything, and they do what this one says. So powerful are these words? That's worth thinking about in itself. But now he is, he's ascended and he's still weaving the words. And I wanted to just ask you what, like in Hebrews, chapter one, chapter one, I'll go with the um, uh, I'll go with the. Should I go? I know I was going to say should I go with the authorized version, but it actually says that he has, uh, all things are made by him. And it says in verse three, he is upholding all things by his powerful word or word.
Speaker 1:Some say words, but by the word of his power. The word of his power in the King James version that says that, but some you might say it's his powerful word.
Speaker 2:So that sometimes people imagine what he does is he kind of just has this power. People imagine what he does is he kind of just has this power and he, like in, maybe like a thanos way, can click his fingers and things happen by will.
Speaker 2:But what if he never does? What if always the way he holds everything together and I'm thinking a bit here of like where cs lewis has aslan just sings the creation into form and order and life and life? What if he? That is how he does it and he just speaks and describes reality continuously, like sings about reality, and therefore it is that way and therefore it all comes together and stays harmonious and makes sense because he speaks it.
Speaker 2:And then when it comes back, I will say one more thing, because then you can sort all this out. But there's a thing that I've really I've obsessed about this for many years when he returns, it is with a word that he destroys the devil and will come and judge. And again there's this image of he comes back and with force of arms, suppresses all evil and destroys it. What if what he does is he simply tells the devil the truth about himself, and that is what the devil cannot handle and that's how he does with everybody. He doesn't need to kind of with with like energy weapons, crush the and all the armies of the world against him, and yet all he need do, he doesn't need to say here, go, here, are massive weapons or swords of fire and you cut everyone's heads off. He says no, no, no, let me just talk to the people, and that is what destroys them. They can't bear when he speaks to them and tells them the truth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, yeah, what if the sword of the spirit is even more powerful than the word of the sword?
Speaker 2:of the flesh? Yeah, what if?
Speaker 1:Well, of course, of course. And so we are not meant to think yeah, the church is not weaponless. Right, we genuinely have a weapon, an offensive weapon, called the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, because the sword of the spirit is greater and more powerful than any carnal sword has ever been. And so that, yeah, that word, that the power that emanates from Jesus is not simply a silent thought and it's not just a force, right, right, which, again in the last 300 years, you know like forces is what you know, thanks, newton.
Speaker 1:But you know forces is what I saw a great meme the other day about medieval theologians saying it's powers that are behind. You know reality and these enlightenment thinkers, with Newton at the fore say no, it's not it's forces right, you idiots, not powers.
Speaker 2:That's totally different Forces.
Speaker 1:But what do you notice about forces? It's just yeah this idea that there is an abstract energy that is not personal that has no real agency, that is not articulate, that doesn't rhyme or have harmony.
Speaker 1:Whereas what if it's a singer who is actually holding the universe together as this heaven and earth, antiphonal, symphonic reality, and Jesus, the high priest of all creation? Psalm 22, verse 22,. He is the choir master who tunes our hearts to sing God's praises and continues the song, and is the choir leader that then makes sense of. I love thinking. First there's Nebuchadnezzar, there's Babylonians and there's Assyrians, and there's, you know, all kinds of, and most of all there's, the rot within the church and there's like idolatry. And how does he take on all these foes?
Speaker 1:Poetry, mainly, mainly poetry mainly poetry, and that is strong enough. You know why is it strong enough? Because the sword of the spirit is actually stronger than carnal swords, because it's something primal, it's something original. And if Jesus is holding up the universe by the word of his power, by the word of his power, then when we encounter the truth via word and beautiful word, glorified word, especially poetry, like we are getting in touch with what is primal. We're not just getting in touch with a mind trick that helps us to access something that's more powerful than that. No, this is original. Poetry is original. It's original in the life of God, it's original to creation. It's what the church has been given to go out into the nations. It's what the church has been given to go out into the nations, to name the nations and to exercise dominion, like the power of God is expressed poetically.
Speaker 2:Honestly, that is an awesome kind of bringing together of everything we've been talking about and it makes me feel, it helps me to think I need to learn the bible, like read it but learn it, so that it's it's doing more than me saying I'm going to extract the relevant information from this book. It's saying no, no, don't. Yeah, do there isn't for me. But it like actually learn it because, as I learned the hymns when I was a kid and they, they impacted me and changed me and informed me in ways that I didn't even then comprehend anything. The bible's like that too and it's the very patterns of ways of speaking and seeing and describing that are going on. Uh, like, oh, what's really doing the the damage kind of thing and changing. And it's like David is a poet warrior, but it's his poems that are his real weapon that changes the world more than anything else he does. Is that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so Revelation 1.3,. You know, blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy. And so some translations they kind of obscure the fact that it's a word for read aloud and again it's a very much in an internal kind of very Western modern idea that reading obviously means silence and inside your head and it's internal and it's individual.
Speaker 1:Whereas reading aloud the words of this prophecy says John in Revelation 1, that's an utter blessing to you. And if it's a blessing to read Revelation, I'm sure it's a blessing to read the whole of the scriptures, revelation. I'm sure it's a blessing to read the whole of the scriptures. They've been given to us in these words as not a contingent husk for the kernel of truth that's within them.
Speaker 2:But so the very form of them, the way that they are given to us, is vital to them, and that when, when we share Jesus and his song of creation with those, to be able to do that, instead of saying, let me extract for you this kind of impersonal factoid, and then we're surprised that the person isn't impacted by that and laughs at us or trolls us or something, whereas to learn, how do the prophets do this, how does Jesus do this, when you know he says no, hang on what's going on with the way this person is seeing what, because I know it's like preachers from the past. I'm going to be a little bit controversial in the sense that no.
Speaker 2:You know, I know I have'm going to be a little bit controversial, in the sense that you know, I know I have been known to be, but it's like. I think one of the reasons that a lot of modern preaching is rubbish is because it is gone with the, the enlightenment idea that what I'm trying to do is educate and it's an informative process and so literally it's like a chat lecture.
Speaker 2:So I quite often hear preaching that it's essentially a chat lecture, yeah, and that what the correct response they're looking for is for you to open a notebook and record information yeah whereas I think our ancestors, whether early church medievals, reformers, pur Puritans, spurgeon, he's like, oh, he's like, so they would just not even comprehend what that was even about. Like what the?
Speaker 2:because they, the way like I know, owen Batstone sort of argues that rap comes from the preachers of the 18th century, 19th century, early 20th century, and it does, because they have a rhythm and there's a kind of way of like preaching is much, it's really poetic, it's supposed to be, and with all the rhythm, the melody, the rhetoric of that, and that is what you go away like. Sometimes I'm'm like, oh man, like I encountered Jesus, I'm transformed, like I'm changed, and like I haven't taken necessarily any notes. It never crossed my mind to put down a few bullet points on things. Do you know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the preacher has not done their job. If you want to write down the three points beginning with P, this is convicting. If you want to write down the three points beginning with P, this is convicting because on Sunday I preached on there's one Thessalonians 5, a beautiful bit that says Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in every circumstance, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. And I used some imaginative ways of helping people to live in the moment and to know that you can rejoice and pray and give thanks in all circumstances. But then, as I thought about our conversation and poetry, I instantly thought of a poem by RS Thomas and I thought I should have just read this poem, because it's all about, like how do you live in the moment, how do you be present to what God is up to, in making you rejoice, in making you dependent, in making you grateful? Here's RS Thomas. He's a Welsh pastor and poet from the last century, the Bright Field it's called.
Speaker 1:I have seen the sun break through to illuminate a small field for a while and gone my way and forgotten it. But that was the pearl of great price, the one field that had treasure in it. I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it. Life is not hurrying on to a receding future, nor hankering after an imagined past. It is the turning aside, like Moses, to the miracle of the lit bush, to a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once.
Speaker 1:But is the eternity that awaits you. Just sit with that, and doesn't that help you be present in the moments? You know what, if all of life is like the burning bush and Christ is there within the field to meet you with his eternity? There's an eternity that awaits you as you, moment by moment, expect to know Jesus in all things, so that you can rejoice in this situation and pray in this situation, be grateful in this situation. Right, but it's the poem that has situated you. It's proclaimed a world for you to inhabit, to sit, to dwell on this thing, and it's beautiful. Shouldn't preaching be like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's beautiful in that sense that it may be hard, tough truths, but there's this kind of impactful, captivating beauty to it also that's saying, yeah is the truth, but look look at christ, kind of thing and any preaching that doesn't leave me like. Whatever it's saying about sin and ugliness and death, and we have to have that yeah, that we said light, say, like the expectation light in that poem, that anywhere, any place, anything, he's there, he's stretching out his hands always to say listen.
Speaker 2:If you hear my voice harden not your heart. And all that way in which he is speaking. The whole universe hears him and is held together by him.
Speaker 1:Why don't we Always and don't you feel I certainly feel that this wages war against my distracted mind because you have to pay attention, you have to slow down with this, and I don't know where I read it, but but somebody, somebody said that you know, entertainment has eaten art, but distraction has eaten entertainment, right like it like even just 10 years ago. Probably the big problem was entertainment, was just the netflix. Box set was taking me away from what is truly beautiful and Sabbath rest giving. But now distraction is eating up. A-muse, a-muse, amusement.
Speaker 2:Because muse is like. There was always this idea of like, let's produce some creative things and think and imagine, and now we deliberately want amusement, something that prevents me imagining creatively and things.
Speaker 1:That poetry is like that burning bush, because it is forcing me to turn aside. Turn aside, but you've got the flock and everything, and the burning bush is this strange sight that makes you turn aside. And poetry can do that. It can. It can wake us up to the moment and to the present. You have to be present with poetry. You can't be distracted. You can't double screen a poem.
Speaker 2:No, that's true, I tried on the train. No, but I think that what we, what perhaps we, leave with in this conversation, is that sense that if one, let us up our game in speech, because we often say, oh, poetry, that's something I don't need to bother with, and it's like no, no, you have to bother with it, like just as the baby had single words and then went to sentences and so on and then we'll go, that's enough. Now I've taken languages and words far enough. Jesus is like no, no, honestly, I've given you. You possess with this, much more power. I'm telling you in the Bible, this is much, much, much more powerful than perhaps you appreciate. Take that seriously, own language as something that is much, much more powerful, and learn how to use it and that he sends us out as well. We often there's lots of Christian imagery of being like an army of the Lord, but I'm going to think of that as poet warriors.
Speaker 2:We are poet warriors in the army of the Lord and the weapon he's given us is ultimately poetry, which is the spirit we'll use, so that when we talk to others, and particularly respond when we're attacked, or questioned the the. The response we're looking for is the way that jesus does it in the property. Instead of simply like accepting the imagination that we were given, we're saying no, no, we've got another one. Yeah, is that fair?
Speaker 1:Yeah, make worlds with your words the way God does. Yeah, so he sends out poets.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and my one little word, because there'll be listeners to you who are kind of in this space and they want to get better as poets. Yes, I would recommend, please do, please devote yourself to this. Fan into flame the gifts that God has given you in this area. You're not just playing tricks on people with words, you're in touch with something very deep. For that reason, I would say, take yourself seriously as a poet and not simply as a spoken word artist, because I think spoken word you can sort of wash your hands of craft. You can wash your hands of any need for the discipline of poetry and actually bringing a real level of craft to your game. You know, bezalel and Holyub were gifted by the Spirit with real skill and craftsmanship and the Spirit wants to give you skill and craftsmanship in your poetry, not just to get on a stage and emote right.
Speaker 1:And hopefully you know some of the selection of poems that I've brought you know, such as RS Thomas and people like that. There's a craft to them. And devote yourself to this, because you know a swords person who's just flailing around with that big, heavy sword is probably not going to do much good. But yeah, learn the craft.
Speaker 2:I think that's very helpful and I noticed I have, over the years, read a lot of preaching books about preaching. Older ones have a lot about learning the craft of language and looking at people you know, learning from others who are good at your language and how to do it, whereas, like recent ones I've read, have very little on the craft of language and it's lazy and it's not good enough, because when you're young you don't accept a very low level of like.
Speaker 2:You sort of keep trying to get better at language until you get to a point that you think, oh, this is enough. And I think I do think particularly for preachers, but really, as all I think Jesus is this ultimate word obsessed person who's always like no, no, I'll teach you. I want to teach you how to do better and speak, and the Bible has so much about it for a reason To learn it. We can do better and he will help us. I think we could just pray and say you know, holy Spirit, and so many of the gifts of the Spirit are about words.
Speaker 2:So, thanks so much, Glenn. Amazing Speak Life. I know there's lots of resources for communicating Jesus well, Anything like what about 321? I know that that's one of the brilliant things. I was looking at the new material you have from that and that was just so powerful because you've really employed these strategies, haven't you with that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we want to see all things through the lens of Jesus and if you want your friends to as well, first of all, you know Christians, come and see life again through Jesus' eyes and see the threeness of God, the two-ness of the world, the oneness of you. So people can go to 321coursecom and then it's a resource for you to share with your friends and, like I say, every episode begins with a story to immerse you in a beautiful world where you can really resist the imagination of modern life and be centered again on Jesus. So yeah, go to 321coursecom and check it out.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much, Glenn.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Paul.