The Wages Of Smug … And A Lectio Divina Of The Signs Of Resurrection

An article in Vox.com on smug american liberalism says to the post-Trump defeated liberals ‘I am not suggesting they leave their values. I am suggesting that they think about what it might be like to have little left but one’s values, to wake up one day to find your whole moral order destroyed; to look around to find the representatives of a new order call you a stupid, hypocritical hick without bothering, even, to wonder how your corner of your poor state found itself so alienated from them in the first place… (They tell them) “You wouldn’t listen anyhow. Like talking to an old block of wood….”. The wages of smug is Trump’. The last sentence echoes the apostle Paul’s phrase ‘the wages of sin is death’.

In the light of this continents-wide failure in listening and making community I am encouraged by the Church Times review last week of 'St. Aidan’s Way of Mission' which concludes ‘this little gem is a Lectio Divina of the signs of resurrection’. But I am sad that so few people realise, when they read marketing material about this book, that its key dynamic speaks so directly to our modern crisis.

Although it is true, as far as I know, that this is the only book that includes all relevant material about Aidan’s Mission from the monk historian Bede, it is much more than history. It offers seven criteria by which we may appraise contemporary missional movements. Are they 1) Indigenous; 2) Non-possessive; developing 3) life-long learning 4) relationship with creation 5) daily spiritual disciplines 6) spiritual companionship 7) passion for justice, the poor and the common good?

Think just about the first and last criteria: Indigenous - Incarnational - Connecting with the people. Aidan’s Mission approach reaches out to the most alienated people. We listen to them. We love them and the people reciprocate that love. Now we must listen to God for a new generation.

St Aidan’s Way of Mission Celtic insights for a post-Christian world. Church Times 25 November 2016

Ray Simpson is the Lindisfarne-based founder of a new monastic movement, the Community of Aidan and Hilda. His Australian co-author, Brent Lyons-Lee, is an expert in indigenous mission initiatives.

At one point, the authors commend the practice of lectio divina. It means "godly reading", and is based around the four Rs of reading, reflection, response, and relaxing. It serves them well. Often, all there is to go on is fleeting insights into Aidan's life from Bede. But, in the spiritual realm, a little goes a long way. The Irish saint's very name means "little flame". From the book's first chapter - "Incarnational and indigenous mission" - we are carried straight to religious flashpoints of contemporary importance.

Born at about the time that St Columba died, at the end of the sixth century, Aidan was commissioned from Iona to evangelise the brutally warring Anglo-Saxon settlers of Northumbria. Not for him the later Romanised colonial model of mission, a model replic ated from Australia to the Americas, where "the gospel was preached, but abuse was modelled." Instead, the Lindisfarne mission seeded "little colonies of heaven" that helped to grow "an indigenous, English-speaking church".

I loved the chapter on "Soul friends and lifelong learning". Here we are reminded that, when universities were separated from a spiritual grounding in the Beatitudes, and Christ's relationship to nature, they lost "a holistic understanding of godly learning that embraces head, heart and hands". Other chapters explore pilgrimage, women as spiritual foster-mothers, social justice, and religious rule and rhythm.

There are those who would see "Celtic Christianity" dead and buried. There are those who believe the future to be post-Christian. This little gem is a lectio divina of the signs of resurrection.

Dr McIntosh is an Honorary Fellow in divinity at Edinburgh University