Dear Friends,

This coming Sunday, we will be reading the story of Lazarus (John 11). I have always found this story perplexing. We often accept other stories and their metaphors in the Bible without question, but this one is not so straightforward. Why did Jesus resurrect this particular person, and what are we meant to learn from it? It is a miracle, certainly, but of what kind? What sort of resurrected life was granted to Lazarus, his sisters, and their community?

What I appreciate, though, is that it takes the full weight of human emotions…..

Dear friends, 

We are nearing the end of our Lent journey. 

This Sunday we will read the text of Jesus restoring the sight of the blind man in John’s gospel. This text asks some serious questions about how we think of Jesus’ ministry, healing, a theology of disability, and, most importantly, how we think about our own ‘sight’ and ‘seeing’. 

The irony of this story, of course, is that it’s the blind man who really sees. Whereas the pharisees, disciples, and the man’s parents are all unable to perceive what is happening right in front of their eyes. It is almost as if their set ways of ‘seeing’, certainty, and knowing blinds…

Dear Friends,

This week, we are meeting in Geneva for our International Presbytery gathering. It is wonderful to see all the familiar faces of our friends from our “neighbouring” churches. As it is my first time in Geneva, I have committed myself to a reformed pilgrimage. Like all pilgrims’ experiences, it has been a true joy to witness the voices of Calvin and Knox coming alive. As is often said, perhaps jokingly, Geneva…

This week, I came across this graffiti: “NL has remote control over humans”. 

Really? Am I being controlled? From a dark room somewhere? By whom? Rob Jetten? The church? The capitalists around a boardroom table or the CEOs of the big AI companies? To be sure, I stepped left and right a few times, assuring myself of my own free will. 

But, seriously, beyond the conspiracy lunacy, the notion of “control” is important theologically—especially during Lent. Fr. Thomas Keating prays his famous welcoming prayer, specifically renouncing control, “Lord, I let go of my desire for power and control”. In his view, the desire for power and control, not unlike the kind that Jesus had to face in the desert, is part of the human condition. It is neither good nor bad. It just is. The problem, however, is that sometimes these desires far exceed their intended purpose. They could “drive us blindly”, and we “…wilfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us”. Thus, he explains, these desires (control together with the need for security and esteem) can become our “programs for happiness, which can’t possibly work”. It is not so much that some force outside ourselves is controlling us, then, but our desires to be something we’re not. This does not say, though, that we have no control over our lives. In fact, another self-made graffiti artist replied to the one above, saying “your soul, your control”. No doubt, there is …

Dear Friends,

Writing about the Psalms, theologian-priest Emmanuel Katongole notes how a covenant relationship with God enabled biblical Israel to cry out to God: “How long, O God, will you hide your face?” Because of their intimate relationship with God through the covenant, they believed that God could, should, and would do something to save them. This is why, in the Psalms, we get some of the most honest reflections on human suffering. They could complain, mourn, weep, chant dirges, and curse, trusting that these actions are in fact a form of prayer. They did not always stand with their arms stretched out to heaven in praise and thanksgiving. Katongole says: “They praised God, but they also assailed the ears of God, protesting God’s continued silence and pressing God for deliverance”. 

As I was walking the dogs on Museumplein this week…

Dear friends,

During my study leave, the age-old question of the relationship between faith and fabric kept me busy. How is what we believe connected to how we live? What is the relationship between God’s gracious and unfathomable act of salvation and our human action for peace, justice, and so on? As Karl Barth asked, how can we do “the little righteousness”?

I was therefore also surprised on Sunday when this question surfaced again as we met with the 20s30s group after church. How are church and my faith connected to everyday life? That this connection matters is, of course, clear throughout the Bible. For centuries, the church has expressed this through the phrase lex orandi, lex credendi (the rule of prayer is the rule of belief). More recently, we have added lex (con)vivendi. That is to say, how we pray and how we worship are intrinsically linked to our life and conduct. And yet, our daily life is grappling with the “how”. How can we, today, give embodied expression to our faith?

I was also surprised to see that….

This week our minister, Marius Louw, invited John-Harmen Valk to write a reflection:

I write this message from Canada in the aftermath of Nicolas Maduro’s capture and amidst the Trump administration’s continued threats to annex Greenland. The country in which I grew up, which in my lifetime has generally enjoyed peace and stability, is on edge. Might we be next?

Nietzsche famously critiqued religion—Christianity most certainly—in two respects. One, for its perceived inability to face reality and to bear it. “And they blink”, he said. Blinking, that automatic twitch in the face of a loud clap, the unexpected, the frightful, and, for Nietzsche, the vain rearguard attempt for consolation and comfort. Two, for its response, resulting from that inability to face reality and to bear it, which he perceived as driven by resentment and bitterness rather than affirmative joy. Nietzsche would, presumably, have sensed resentment coursing through such praise as this: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea”….

Dear Friends,
At the high point of Jesus’ baptism, something remarkable happens:

“Just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw God’s Spirit descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from the heavens said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’”

“This is my Son” could well serve as a refrain for the season of Epiphany. Epiphany is the time of the church year when we are invited to see Jesus. To see Jesus as he truly is. First, as a baby lying in a crib, God becoming human in the most unlikely of circumstances. Then, as God revealing Godself in our daily lives, just as God did to the shepherds, the Magi, and so many others…

Dear friends,

Isn’t the best New Year’s resolution to have none at all?

This is the question theologian Dirkie Smit asks in a newspaper column, loosely inspired by Alain de Botton’s Status Anxiety. Why do we even care about making New Year’s resolutions, he asks. Is it because we hope for a happier year? Or because we are striving towards a better life, greater hope, or some deeper sense of fulfilment? Perhaps it is because we dream of something different this year and want to invest the time and effort needed to reach that dream. Is this not what lies behind all…

Dear friends,

As we enter the season of Advent we also begin a new year in the life of the Church. Advent offers us a good opportunity for focussed reflection. 

I have therefore put together…