The Hinton St Mary Mosaic

The Hinton St Mary Mosaic

John 21.1-14,

Acts 9:1-6

Who is the person pictured in the Mosaic? He’s a youngish looking man with shoulder length, swept-back fair hair. Most people think he’s clean-shaven, but is there just a hint of designer stubble on his chin? He’s wearing ordinary clothes for the time, a tunic or long shirt and a woollen cloak. On either side of his face there are two pomegranates! 

And behind his head are two letters superimposed on top of one another. They look like the letters P and X, but in fact they’re from the Greek alphabet and they are the letters Chi and Rho, roughly speaking our ‘CH’ sound and our letter ‘R’. So together they make the sound “Chr”, the beginning of the name ‘Christ’, so the symbol tells us that this is probably meant to be the face of Jesus staring out at us from the mosaic.

But there’s a problem, isn’t there? He doesn’t look like Jesus! We’re used to seeing Jesus with a beard and longer, usually brown hair. This picture doesn’t look like a Jewish man from Palestine. So where does it come from?

It was found in a village called Hinton St Mary in what - thanks to a comment on the blog - I now know to be the county of Dorset, where it had been buried under the ground for 1,500 years. It was made for the floor of a large Roman building, probably a villa, sometime around the year 350 after the birth of Jesus. It might have been part of a private chapel for the owners of the villa, or even a house church for the local villagers to use.

It’s the only example anywhere in the world of a Roman floor mosaic showing the face of Jesus, because 100 years later the emperor banned people from making floor mosaics depicting Jesus. He felt it was wrong that people should walk on the image of Jesus and perhaps even spill things on it, so all the existing floor mosaics of Jesus were taken up or destroyed. But by this time Hinton St Mary was no longer inside the Roman Empire so the mosaic survived, even when the walls of the chapel were demolished. Then it remained, covered over by soil and grass, until some builders found it again in the last century.

When the owner of the villa asked the artist to make a mosaic showing the face of Jesus the artist was stuck for ideas. There had never been any pictures of Jesus before. The Bible doesn’t tell us what he looked like. So where to begin?

Around the same time that the mosaic was made, the emperor struck a coin that showed the chi-rho symbol on one side and the emperor’s head and shoulders on the other. His name was Magnentius and he looked remarkably like Jesus in the mosaic. He had the same swept-back shoulder-length hair, and the same cleft in his chin. Because he’d put the symbol of Jesus’ name on the back of his coins ordinary Christians began to make a hole in them, thread a leather thong or a chain through the hole, and wear the coins as a necklace or medallion. One has been found in a cemetery near the villa. So perhaps that’s where the artist got the idea for his picture of Jesus. The only change he would have needed to make is to dress Jesus in ordinary clothes instead of the emperor’s imperial cloak and solder’s breastplate.

But why did the artist make Jesus look so Roman and British, when everyone knew he was a Jewish person from Palestine? I think the reason is because this isn’t the Jesus of history, the Jesus who taught people and healed the sick. This is the Risen Jesus, the Jesus of faith, the Jesus who comes to be with each one of us when we name him in our prayers or share bread and wine together. And we know this because of the pomegranates.

Pomegranates were part of the Easter story for Roman Christians, just as new-born lambs, bunny rabbits and eggs are part of our Easter story. They reminded people of an ancient myth about the springtime, when the harvest goddess Demeter rescued her daughter Persephone from the world of the dead. She was allowed to bring Persephone back to life, but only until the Autumn, when Persephone had to return to the world of the dead again until next Spring. 

Persephone’s story is about dying and rising, and she’s often shown in pictures holding a pomegranate because the deal which Demeter made with the ruler of the dead was that Persephone could come back to life for ever, but only if she had not eaten anything in the world of the dead. Unfortunately, she had got rather thirsty and had sucked seven pomegranate seeds, which is why she was only ever allowed to come back for half of the year.

Of course, it’s only a story, but the pomegranates in the picture are a way of telling us that we are looking at the risen Jesus, because pomegranates - like Easter eggs - are linked with new life and resurrection. On the same mosaic was another mythical picture, of a hero called Bellerophon fighting a three-headed monster called the Chimera. Christians used this story to remind themselves that on the Cross Jesus had defeated death, sin and the devil.So that’s another way we know this is an Easter picture.

Our Gospel story is what’s called a ‘floating’ story, which means it doesn’t belong in a particular place in the life of Jesus. It crops up in different places in each of the Gospels and in John’s Gospel it has been put in an alternative ending which John added after the original version of the Gospel was finished.

The followers of Jesus have gone back to their jobs as fishermen. They don’t know yet that Jesus is alive and following him seems to have been a waste of their time, but now fishing proves equally fruitless. They work all night but catch nothing. Then they see a man on the shore cooking breakfast, and he tells them to cast their net one last time. 

When the net fills up with fish Jesus’ favourite disciple recognises him. Peter is so excited that he throws on some clothes and jumps into the water so that he can be the first to greet Jesus. But no one - not even Peter and the favourite disciple - dare ask him who he is. They know it must be Jesus but he just looks like a man cooking fish on a barbecue.

When Jesus appeared to Saul on the road to Damascus he didn’t even look like a person. Saul just saw a blinding light and heard a loud voice saying, ‘I am Jesus, the one you are being so cruel to.’ But that encounter changed Saul’s life.

Some people think the artist who made the mosaic at Hinton St Mary wasn’t very good at his job. Uncertain how to make a picture of Jesus he borrowed an image from a coin, or perhaps made Jesus look like himself or one of his friends.

But I think the artist had understood something very important about the risen Jesus. When he meets us he meets us in unexpected people and unexpected places. And when he meets us he may not look just like he did in Palestine. He may look like one of us, like the people we see on the bus or in the street! Like the surprising image of jesus on the mosaic, and like the surprise the fishermen got when they met him by the lake and Saul got when he met Jesus on the way to Damascus, the risen Jesus will suddenly be with us in surprising ways and when we least expect him.

But he also meets us, as he met his disciples that first Easter, whenever we share food together in his name.

We All Want What We Can't Have

Psalm 27, Philippians 3:17-21, Luke 13.34-35

Next week my wife and I are going to see a famous play called Dr Faustus by the Elizabethan Playwright Christopher Marlowe. The advert for the play said, ‘We all want what we can’t have. But what price would we pay to get it?’

We all want what we can’t have! What do you want? The latest i-phone or i-pad, designer clothes or shoes, an exciting holiday adventure in some exotic faraway place, a wonderful romance with someone stunningly attractive, a new car, a beautiful house to impress your friends, a breathtaking view from your window, long life and happiness perhaps, or lots of money?

We all want what we can’t have! It’s not a new idea. The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament tell us not to covet other people’s things - their house, their husband or wife, their beautiful slave, their strong ox, their cuddly-looking donkey, or anything else that belongs to them.

The people who wrote the Bible understood that it’s human nature for us all to want what we can’t have - either because we can’t afford it or because what we want already belongs to someone else. They also felt that it was wrong to want those things.

There’s a proverb which says, ‘The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.’ Anything that we don’t have, but someone else does, often looks that little bit more attractive than it otherwise might.

“You’re so lucky,” someone says to their friend, “You went to college, you’ve got a good job, you’re earning great money and you’re so smart. You’ll probably accomplish more by the time you’re 30 than I will in my entire life.”

But the friend says, “Are you serious? I’ve always envied you! People expect so much from me. I’ve never been able to enjoy life because of all the studying and other schoolwork I had to do. If I got less then an A, my parents and teachers freaked out about it. It was like I’d got an F or flunked the course completely! I may do every bit as well as you think I’m going to, but with all the pressure on me I’ll probably go insane by the time I’m 35. In so many ways, I wish I could just be an ordinary person like you, with normal expectations and a normal life.” So both friends end up wanting what they can’t have.

‘We all want what we can’t have,’ said the advert for Dr Faustus. And then it went on, ‘But what price would we pay to get it?’ Would we lie, and cheat, or betray or friends and our values, just to get what we want but shouldn’t have? In the play Dr Faustus makes a pact with the Devil to get what he wants. That’s the price he is willing to pay to get what he wants! And, as you can probably guess, it turns out badly.

‘We all want what we can’t have.’ What price would we pay to get it?

The author John Fowles has his own version of the same saying: “We all want things we can't have. Being a decent human being is accepting that.” In other words - managing without those things.

The writer of Psalm 27 asks God for only one thing: to be able to live close to God all through his or her life and to experience God’s loving kindness.

In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul says that many people really do live as though they can have all the things they shouldn’t have, and are willing to pay any price to get what they want. He warns that they are living like enemies of the way of Jesus and they are headed for hell. Instead, he says that we should willingly and joyfully live like Jesus, who gave up what was rightfully his - including his own life - in order to help other people lead better lives and draw closer to God.

Jesus warned that the people of the great city of Jerusalem always seemed to want what they couldn’t have. When God sent prophets and messengers to ask them to change their ways, they threw stones at them and put them to death. That was the price they were willing to pay to be left alone by God, so that they could go after what they wanted.

Jesus gives them his own message from God. God says, “I have often wanted to gather your people, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings. But you wouldn’t let me.”

Do we want to go through life permanently dissatisfied and always wanting more, or are we prepared to be the kind of people who are happy with what we’ve already got, who want to make other people happy too and want to get closer to God? If we do let God get close to us, and if we come closer to God, he will shelter us under his wing. For, as the Psalmist said, ‘God is the light that keeps us safe and we should ask only one thing, to live in him.

Living Dangerously in His Ministry

Luke 4.21-30
My wife is a local preacher and the one thing she dislikes is preaching in her own church. I guess the famous words of Jesus echo in her ears as she’s preparing her sermon: No prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.

Actually, the last time she was there - a couple of weeks ago - the service was very well received, but we can imagine how nervous Jesus was going back to Nazareth and speaking in front of his family, friends and neighbours.

Mark and Matthew only tell us that his message was not well received, but Luke goes further and tells us that - although at first they were surprised how eloquent Jesus was - the congregation quickly became enraged and tried to throw him off a nearby cliff. The implication is that they bundled him out of town towards the cliff face but apparently the nearest cliff is at least 20 minutes walk from the synagogue and perhaps not as close by as Luke imagined. Be that as it may, Luke’s seems to want to heighten the drama of the story. Like Jesus we will often find that the Christian message is rejected by those we know or love. In Jesus’ case it was his lack of formal education that caused doubt but, knowing our foibles, our family, friends, colleagues  and neighbours may feel that we don’t walk the talk sufficiently well to convince them! Nonetheless, we have to persevere and not be discouraged.

Like Jesus we will sometimes find that living and preaching the Gospel is a risky thing to do. On this occasion he was spared. Perhaps, in the end, the people of Nazareth couldn’t bring themselves to hurt one of their own. But, of course, Luke’s readers know that Jesus will eventually be rejected and crucified.

It’s interesting that Luke introduces us very early in his story to the dangers which Jesus habitually faced. Sometimes the crowd wanted to proclaim him as their king - which in itself was dangerous enough - but sometimes their mood could turn ugly. Proclaiming and living the Gospel will always involve an element of challenge and risk. It’s not a safe or cosy thing to do. If we feel too comfortable - as a congregation or as individuals - perhaps we’re not really following Jesus.

On this occasion Jesus emerged unscathed, but that wasn’t because he had been given safe passage by God through all life’s difficulties and troubles. It was simply because his hour had not yet come. His destiny was to die in Jerusalem, not in his hometown. What is our destiny? To keep out of trouble or to look for opportunities and confront them head on? Luke seems to be inviting us to ask what Jesus would do if he came to our hometown.

Living Dangerously From The Beginning

Isaiah 60.1-6; Matthew 2.1-12

Whether or not Mathew intended his story about the wisemen to be a commentary on Isaiah Chapter 60, that is how generations of Christians have interpreted it. That’s why the wisemen have come to be seen as kings riding on camels.

Matthew includes his story in the Gospel for a number of reasons: first to show that the birth of Jesus is not just significant for Jewish people, or even for human beings - it is a truly show-stopping event with comic significance; second, he wants to show that even people from other faiths can acknowledge the importance of Jesus, since the wisemen were probably Zoroastrians, an ancient faith which began in Persia and attaches huge significance to the victory of light over darkness; third, he wants to show that Jesus’ birth fulfils ancient Jewish prophecies; and finally to show that Jesus makes a difference to politics and world events. Believing in him is not just a private and personal thing.

It’s interesting that - in his Christmas story - Matthew chooses to include the theme of danger from the very beginning. There’s nothing cosy about his version of the Nativity. The story begins with the ominous words, ‘In the time of King Herod...’ and later, of course, the cruel and scheming King slaughters innocent children and forces Mary and Joseph to flee into exile to escape his wrath. Although, according to Matthew, their real home is in Bethlehem and they have a house there, they dare not return - even after Herod’s death - and start a new life, incognito, in Nazareth.

In the passage from Isaiah, the kings bring only two gifts, gold and frankincense, whereas in Matthew’s story there is a third gift - myrrh - reminding us of the sorrow and danger that lie ahead for Jesus. To live with him and to follow him is to accept challenge, risk and danger as part and parcel of our everyday existence. Being his friend is not a featherbed choice. He faced danger from the moment of his birth until his crucifixion, and he asks us to be prepared to do the same. But he promises to be with us - holding our hands and leading the way - in every peril or danger that we might face.

A Prophecy for Turbulent Times

Zephaniah 3.14-20
Philippians 4.4-7

Zephaniah prophesied in turbulent times. He seems to have been an adviser to the young King Josiah, who came to the throne as a child of eight after the murder of his father. Not that the Prophet approved of Josiah’s father. On the contrary, he was determined to mould the young Josiah’s character so that he would take an entirely different direction from his father. And in his early prophecies, perhaps when he was trying to get the new policy established, Zephaniah rails against the terrible behaviour both of Josiah’s father and of his grandfather too. They had worshipped the Canaanite gods Molech, Baal and Astarte and had practised soothsaying, magic and child sacrifice as well as ordinary everyday idolatry. Although Josiah’s grandfather had reigned for 55 years, the Bible and Zephaniah brand him a terrible failure and a blot on Judah’s history.

In comparison Josiah was a blazing success morally, but unfortunately he lacked the diplomatic skills of his grandfather. The culmination of Josiah’s reign was a foolish alliance with Babylon against Egypt and Assyria. At Armageddon, or Megiddo as it’s also called, he met the Egyptian army on its way to attack the Babylonians, and was shot full of arrows for his pains. He died in Jerusalem, still a relatively young man, his full potential unfulfilled.

Later in his prophecies, then, Zephaniah celebrates Josiah’s reforms but looks back with regret on the demise of this good reforming king, who had heeded the Prophet’s advice and done everything he could to make the people of Judah more holy and God-fearing. Zephaniah tries to reassure the people that another good ruler will be coming along soon. It’s a Biblical example of someone whistling in the dark to keep his and other people’s spirits up.

So Jerusalem or Zion - the name of the hill on which Jerusalem stands - is depicted as a young girl singing a heartfelt song of joy and thanksgiving. The wickedness of Josiah’s father and grandfather - and the willingness of the people to follow their example - have been forgiven by God. And, although Josiah’s death may have brought fresh disaster, God is now in their midst. And he’s a warrior who will give the people victory, so there’s nothing to fear from Egypt or Assyria.

God will renew the nation in his love. It will be like a holiday time, not a tragedy, because God will wipe out the disaster of Josiah’s death and ensure that Judah will not be reproached for taking a wrong turn and getting mixed up in power politics. He will deal with the mighty empires that would like to oppress Judah and rescue the men who were disabled or scattered in the fighting. Their shame at losing the battle of Megiddo will be changed to worldwide praise and renown because God is going to restore the nation’s fortunes.

So what has this got to do with Advent? Well, arguably the prophecies of Zephaniah did not come true in his lifetime. The succession of weak and vacillating kings who succeeded Josiah did not see the fortunes of Jerusalem restored. Worst of all, perhaps, Josiah’s chosen successor was deported to Egypt and died in exile there. And eventually, many years later of course, Jerusalem herself was overthrown and destroyed by her former Babylonian allies.

Zephaniah’s prophecy survived, one suspects, because it could be looked at more generally, as a promise for the future. It was probably a source of comfort and encouragement to the returning exiles who re-established Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple, and to those who later defended it against another wicked king, Antiochus Epiphanes, who tried to wipe out the Jewish faith and replace it with Greek idols rather than Canaanite ones.

It was also a source of encouragement, of course, to Christians. But is Jesus the warrior king anticipated by Zephaniah? I hardly think so. At best the prophecy has to be treated as a metaphor for God’s victory over evil through Jesus’ death on the cross. But one thing is for sure, God is love and he does intend to save the lame and gather the outcasts. Those who trust in him need not be afraid. All of these things chime with the Christian message of hope.

And we live in pretty turbulent times ourselves, perhaps not as turbulent as the time of Zephaniah and Josiah, but turbulent enough. We too need to know that God is in the midst of us. We too need reassurance that cost-cutting and recession will not go on and on for ever. We too need encouragement not to fear and not to give up - ‘not to let our hand grow weak’ as the Prophet puts it. We too need to know that those at the bottom of the pile, the disabled, the oppressed, the marginalised, have not been forgotten and that our past sins - of greed and over-indulgence - have been forgiven.

In our reading from Philippians Paul says that Christians should stand out from the crowd because we should always be rejoicing, even when times are hard. When others are jostling and competing for influence, or trying to shove their way to the front of the queue for profits, or tax breaks, or funding, or welfare, we should be an example of gentleness and forbearance.

This is because Jesus is the exact opposite of the kind of messiah envisaged by Zephaniah. Zephaniah expected a warrior king, someone with a heart of gold but who was also ready to use tough love when oppressors and enemies of the truth stood in his way, someone who believed that the end can justify the means. But Jesus is the very opposite of Zephaniah’s vision, a gentle messiah, someone who aims to overcome evil and injustice purely by moral example. But he’s a messiah who doesn’t just make peace come about - by force if necessary; he’s a messiah who is the living embodiment of peace.

It can’t be denied that Zephaniah’s picture of leadership has its attractions. His kind of messiah would certainly be a useful ally to have on your side in a bitter conflict against ruthless and determined foes. In contrast, Jesus’ pattern of messiahship is about enduring suffering in order to overcome hatred and violence through love. It’s a tough ask for people who are oppressed by evil forces. Yet Paul insists that Jesus’ way is the only geneuine option if we want to achieve the peace that belongs to God, the peace which passes all understanding and which has the power to guard our hearts and minds forever.

Yet the biggest contrast between Zephaniah’s vision of messiahship and Jesus’ vision is something else. We’re not just talking about a contrast between force force and gentleness, for Zephaniah’s messiah is someone who has never actually arrived. Zephaniah looked forward eagerly to his coming, but even the good King Josiah was unable to bring about the peace of God, and neither could later Jewish leaders. It’s a goal which still eludes the leaders of modern Israel, and isn’t that because - in the last resort - they try to establish peace like a warrior giving victory to his people, who does not let his hands grow weak, just as Josiah tried to do at Armageddon?

If forceful leaders can sometimes restore the fortunes of their people for a time, they can never get over the bar of establishing a peace that endures for ever and guards our hearts and minds. If people follow Zephaniah’s way something always goes wrong in the end, whereas Jesus’ vision may be hard to follow but it really is deliverable. Advent is a celebration of the fact that our messiah did come and he still reigns. As the Prophet Isaiah said, ‘He will reign over [his people] forever, and his kingdom will know no end.’

Courage to Wait

Jeremiah 33:14-16, Psalm 25:1-10, 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13, Luke 21:25-36

A prayer from Christian Aid, written for Advent, begins, ‘God of the waiting,
give us courage to wait.’

During the week I run a post office, and people are not very good at waiting. One day four big heavy bags of coins were delivered. By the time I’d taken delivery of them and then manhandled them into the coin safe the queue was getting restless. Not long after, but when I was safely out of the post office, a disgruntled customer snapped off the ‘Please wait here!’ sign. Somebody wrote a note saying they had queued for twenty minutes - surely an exaggeration. But then one of our trustees had been to the Co-op Bank where she was kept waiting for 25 minutes. And there was a clock in the branch, on that occasion, to prove it. We have to do a lot of waiting, don’t we?

‘God of the waiting, give us courage to wait.’ But why should we need courage? Wouldn’t patience be a more relevant gift? What exactly are we afraid of?

Because Downton Abbey has finished now I was listening to Andrew Marr on TV the other Sunday night and he reminded me of something which I’d forgotten about, or put to the back of my mind. When we were growing up, in the 1960s and 70s, we were all waiting - and we were afraid - because we waiting for the end of the world, weren’t we? We actually thought it might come like a thief in the night. Someone would throw a switch - or two or three people would throw their switches - and nuclear Armageddon would be launched. As Mark Antony says in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, ‘Cry havoc, and unleash the dogs of war!’ We were afraid of the waiting, and thankfully that fear has diminished, though it hasn’t entirely gone away.

What are we afraid of now? What terrible future might we need courage to face? Climate change? Losing our jobs, or our children and grandchildren losing theirs? Economic meltdown, like we see happening in Greece and saw in Iceland? Natural disaster? Illness? Old age? Dying? Are we like people waiting for the flood waters to rise, hoping their little row of sand bags will be sufficient to hold back the deluge? ‘God of the waiting, give us courage to wait.’

The Christian Aid prayer continues, ‘We pray for those who have given up on the coming of hope, because they feel they wait in vain - at checkpoints, at borders, for jobs, for food...’

It’s easy to overplay our fears, isn’t it? To get them out of proportion. Someone commented on the radio the other day that people were much more matter of fact about their fears a hundred years ago. Every child, growing up, had seen a relative lying in their coffin in the front parlour. Even the ultimate fear wasn’t something to be so frightened of as people are now. People had more courage. They expected to have to endure, to need to be stoical.

Often today we’re in denial - about pain, about death, about fear itself. So much so that the Liverpool Care Pathway, which is supposed to ease people’s suffering, is on the point of being outlawed because the self-same politicians who want to make assisted dying easier for people with debilitating diseases want to outlaw a natural process that is designed to assist people to die in peace and with dignity.

When we’re not feeling afraid, what else weighs us down and prevents us from looking forward to the future? Is it the endless grind of providing first for our children, and then paying off the mortgage, and finally saving for our retirement? Is it the boredom of a repetitive job or a tedious routine? Is it anxiety and stress about all the things we’ve got to do, and about getting them done on time? What about that endless list of Advent chores - the Christmas cards, the shopping, the food, the parties, the carol singing? Or are we weighed down with regrets about relationships that have gone wrong or lives that have been cut too short?

When we’re afraid or anxious we tend to look out for signs, don’t we, to warn us that things are going wrong or to reassure us that they’re about to get better. It’s a bit like looking out for road signs, warning us of a 30 mile speed limit, or a z-bend, or stray wild animals, or the hidden brow of a hill coming up on the road ahead, or else reassuring us that there’s a stretch of dual carriageway, or a service station, or a lay-by within easy reach?

There’s nothing worse, is there, than missing the signs? Like the stretch of M1 motorway just south of here where you suddenly come to a gantry of average speed cameras and realise that you must already be in a 50 mile speed limit and - whoosh - there you are, it’s over and gone and goodness knows how fast you were going!

Jesus reminds his listeners how easy it can be to read the signs of the times. When the fig tree buds then it’s a sure sign that summer has arrived, just as wilting leaves on an ash tree are likely to indicate that Ash Die Back disease has spread to our neighbourhood.

And sometimes the signs of the times can be clear for all to see, even those who don’t know one type of tree from another. Someone reported recently, in a radio news feature, about the Cuban Missile Crisis that happened fifty years ago. People living just outside one of the air bases where NATO’s nuclear missiles were stored knew that if they saw a missile being fired they had exactly three minutes to live. That was the sign they were looking out for to tell them if the world - as they knew it - was about to end.

One of the RAF crew responsible for the missiles said there was an official drill, which they were supposed to follow, for tidying up the launch pad after their missile had been fired, but they also had their own unofficial plan for what they were really going to do. They were going to commandeer a fire engine, crash through the gates of the base, and get as far away as they could before the Russians retaliated. And they certainly weren’t going to pay any attention to road signs!

On a more contemporary note, a year or two ago we went into one of Helen’s favourite clothes shops and noticed to our surprise how little stock there was on display. Helen had some vouchers with her and we decided to spend them  straightaway - only just in time, as it happens, before the whole chain went into liquidation. We may not know our Ash Die Back from our elbows, or our fig trees from our olives, but on this particular occasion we had read the warning signs correctly.

Jesus also told us to look out for signs - but not just warning signs, like the Arctic ice caps melting away and the jet stream changing direction. He also encouraged us to expect signs of hope and comfort. Not only that, but he encouraged us also to be signs of hope and comfort.

As disciples of Jesus we’re not to be weighed down with worries and fears. We’re to raise our heads in joyful expectation. We’re to be strong, even when others are faint-hearted, hopeful even when others are downcast. ‘God of the waiting, give us courage to wait.’

One would imagine that only the most hardened American Methodist tourists would visit the New Room in Bristol, where John Wesley established the first Methodist chapel. But no, apparently it has what the Methodist Church rather pompously calls ‘missional value’. People come there seeking answers, or to find hope and comfort: homeless people, drug addicts, shoppers looking for a Bible to buy, the lonely and bereaved, those crushed by mental illness. In the New Room they find an unlikely sign of hope.

The Acorn Centre in Edinburgh is perhaps a more stereotypical example of mission on the edge, encountering people where they most need hope and reassurance. In partnership with the YMCA it offers support to homeless young people and helps them to rebuild their lives. Some of them go on to volunteer to help others. It’s a sign of hope.

God is already with us in the waiting. He is not just in the future. He is here and now. Jeremiah prophesied that ‘The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfil the promise that I made.’ But Advent reminds us that those days are no longer coming. They have dawned.

‘Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame,’ said the Psalmist. ‘God of the waiting, give us courage to wait with those in the most broken places of the world, and with all those who struggle to be bearers of hope there.’

A colleague who’s just become a community organiser, going from door-to-door listening to people’s concerns and trying to inspire vision and hope among local residents, was telling me about the reaction she got when she told a friend she had a new job. ‘That sounds wonderful!’ the friend said. ‘Where will you be working?’ ‘In Darnall,’ replied the new community organiser. ‘Oh dear!’ said the friend. ‘Good luck there then.’  

Actually Darnall doesn’t deserve its bad reputation. It’s got a lot going for it really, but let’s just think of the most difficult communities to live and work in in our own city, and the most difficult places in our world. God gives us courage to go and wait with those in the most broken places, because if the Gospel doesn’t mean anything there it means nothing at all.

God’s concern is not with the powerful and the influential. God longs to be with, and to lead, the humble in what is right and to teach them his way.

Paul prays that we may be blameless before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his saints. If we are blameless, after all, we can be of good courage. And the only way to be blameless, in case we find ourselves wondering about that, the only way is to abound in love.

The Christian Aid prayer concludes,

Turn our lack of hope into courage,

so that our waiting may be over

and all the things of darkness shall be no more.

I think the prayer means that hope in the coming of Jesus, two thousand years ago and again this Christmas, should be all that we need to encourage us to stop waiting for something to happen and go out - abounding in love - to be alongside those who are broken, or living in broken places.

But one final word of caution. Grace is not cheap. Nor is it easy to bring words of comfort. The people who are working around the country as community organisers - as part of a programme dreamt up by David Cameron and others - are cautioned to listen, and then listen again, before doing anything or breaking the silence with their own quick solutions.

R S Thomas understood this and captured it in his poem ‘Kneeling’. Is he describing a service in an empty church, where he’s saying the daily office alone surrounded only by the communion of long dead saints - the spirits of those who have worshipped here down the centuries? Or is he kneeling before an expectant congregation of the living, waiting for guidance, to know what to say and when to interrupt their thoughts?

Moments of great calm,

Kneeling before an altar

Of wood in a stone church

In summer, waiting for the God   

To speak; the air a staircase   

For silence; the sun’s light   

Ringing me, as though I acted   

A great rôle. And the audiences   

Still; all that close throng

Of spirits waiting, as I,

For the message.

                     Prompt me, God;

But not yet. When I speak,   

Though it be you who speak   

Through me, something is lost.   

The meaning is in the waiting.

‘God of the waiting, give us courage to wait.’

Two Feisty Women and What They Show Us About The Way of Jesus

Ruth 3.1-5, 4.13-17, 1 Kings 17.8-16, Hebrews 9.24-28

Here are two Old Testament readings in the lectionary - a hard one and an easier one. The hard one comes from the story of Ruth, and it’s a hard reading to talk about because it is so alien to our understanding of what women should aspire to in their lives.

Ruth was an immigrant, and worse still she was the daughter-in-law of an elder widow, Naomi, whom she had to try to support. Purely because of her own unselfishness and loyalty to Naomi, whom she could just as easily have abandoned and gone back to her own family, she found herself stuck at the bottom of the economic pile and the future didn’t look too bright for her.

But Naomi had a cunning plan. Strictly speaking, the head of her husband’s clan - Boaz - had a duty to take care of them both. Clearly this wasn’t happening, otherwise Ruth wouldn’t have been going out scrounging for barley - picking up the gleaners left behind by the reapers in the field. But by God’s providence Ruth had found herself in one of the field’s belonging to Boaz, and he had recognised who she was - and how kind and loyal she had been to her mother-in-law - and had allowed her to collect more than just the leftover grain. He had also ordered the young men not to bother her and had shared his lunch with her,  but he hadn’t offered to look after Ruth and Naomi. Compassion and family duty apparently had their limits.

Naomi’s plan, therefore, was for Ruth to get dolled up - to make herself look and smell as beautiful and appealing as possible - and then to sneak under Boaz’s blanket while he was asleep on the threshing floor with the rest of his gang of harvest labourers. It was a fairly desperate plan, because the intention was for Ruth to compromise her good name by making herself look like a young woman of loose morals, in the hope that Boaz would take pity on her and do the decent thing by them both. Naomi was banking on the fact that Boaz was obviously a man with a social conscience and that, just to give him a nudge in the right direction, he would be attracted to Ruth.

It all worked out just as Naomi had schemed, and we are meant ot feel positive about the outcome because so much good clearly came out of Ruth’s marriage to Boaz. The prayer that Ruth’s son might be renowned in Israel did not come true but eventually - long after their deaths one suspects - Ruth and Boaz became the great-grandparents of King David .

Of course, even today one way for a young woman to make her way in life is to find a wealthier man to appreciate her and support he and no doubt a mixture of feminine wiles and allure can be useful in helping a man to realise what’s going to be good for him. But is that any longer an accepted role model?

And, even if it is, the problem with Ruth’s story is that she was trapped into the role. Today we would hope that young women might have a choice about their marriage partner, their career path and their lifestyle. But, life conspires against us, sometimes, doesn’t it? The first time she got married, Ruth may have had a choice, but then her husband and father-in-law died, leaving her with a difficult moral dilemma - to stick with Naomi and become a pawn in Naomi’s own attempts to secure the future for both of them, or to claim her right to walk away and remain in charge of her own destiny.

In some ways, then, Ruth’s story is very contemporary. It brings us up sharp against the modern debate about rights and responsibilities. Today we would be concerned about the rights of people like Ruth and how to protect her from exploitation by Naomi and Boaz. The Old Testament chooses, however, to focus on responsibility - Ruth’s perception that she was responsible for looking after Naomi and Boaz’s perception that he was responsible for looking after both of them. Ruth emerges as the hero of the story precisely because she chooses to put her own rights and self-interest to one side out of a sense of loyalty and love for her mother-in-law.

The second Old Testament story is a more straightforward one. It’s about another widow, this time unnamed. However, like Ruth she is not an Israelite. Elijah goes to stay with her to escape the consequences of a drought and to hide from his enemies and takes advantage of the traditional Middle Eastern custom of showing hospitality to strangers.

Elijah asks for food and water, without even saying ‘Please’. The woman happily obliges with the water but points out that she has almost nothing to eat. Elijah asks her to trust in his God to supply the needs of all of them - the widow, her son and himself - but, in a supreme gesture of faith, she must give the first bun that she bakes to him and not to her starving child.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant once said, ‘I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.’ That’s what Elijah asked the widow to do. She had to deny the certain knowledge that there was only enough flour and oil left in her storage jars to make one last meal for herself and her son, and in faith she had to bake a bun for Elijah before they fed themselves. The woman did make room for faith, as Elijah had asked. She denied the evidence of her own eyes and her faith was rewarded. Her household ate for many days.

Do we make enough room for faith? Are we too quick to be cowed by the facts into believing that what God wants is impossible?

I heard a comedy sketch in which someone was told that he couldn’t have his favourite drink because the barman had run out of stock, to which he replied, ‘I’m the kind of person who doesn’t take ‘No’ for an answer’, and, ‘I’m the kind of person who always gets what he wants.’ Of course, it didn’t make any difference. The barman still didn’t have his favourite drink in stock.
Some things just can’t be done. But Elijah was effectively saying the same thing. Sometimes we do have to be willing to refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer if we are to get done what God wants done.

The kind of person who always gets what they want is traditionally an aggressive, often unpleasant and pushy sort of person, who disregards the needs of others. But Jesus is a different kind of person who gets things done an doesn’t take ‘No’ for an answer. He doesn’t do it by ruthlessly pursuing his own interests; he does it by putting his own life on the line for others.

During the First World War a man disobeyed his commanding officer and crawled out into No Man’s Land to rescue his friend who had been shot while laying barbed wire. He picked the friend up, put him on his back, and started running towards his own lines. Just as he reached the safety of the trench the German machine gunner opened up and peppered him with bullets. He and the friend fell into the trench covered with blood. The friend was dead and the man who had gone to save him was dying.

‘Why did you go?’ said the officer furiously. ‘You have thrown away your life. And for what?’

‘No,’ said the man. ‘It was worth it. When I got to my friend he said to me, “I knew you’d come!”’

Well, we didn’t know Jesus would come to rescue the human race, though the prophets had predicted that God would act to save us. He came and, in the process of saving us, he himself lost his life. But his was not a sacrifice like the soldier’s sacrifice, that has to go on being made in each generation to save wounded men under fire, like the soldiers who have lost their lives or limbs in Afghanistan going to the aid of their friends. His is a once for all sacrifice.

Sacrificing yourself is not a popular idea in a culture obsessed with success, but Jesus is someone like Ruth who puts obligation and responsibility above self-interest. In her case it was her obligation to her husband’s family, even when he had died. In Jesus’ case it is his sense of obligation to God and to doing what is right.

Are we willing always to do what is right, whatever the personal cost, and to refuse to take ‘No’ for an answer in order to do God’s will? Are we willing, if necessary, to deny the odds against us in order to make room for faith?

What it Means To Be A Priest

Hebrews 5.1-10

The writer of Hebrews tells us a great deal here about his understanding of Jesus, but he starts with his understanding of what it means to be a priest. Of course, in the traditional Methodist understanding of priesthood we are all priests, so perhaps he is also telling us what it means to be a Christian.
Part of our job is to be a go-between, a bridge, between God and people on the fringe of our church life - people who are supporters rather than joiners - and people in the neighbourhood too for whom we are their community church. A lot of people look to us to do God shaped things for them. They're not ready yet to it for themselves. They might never be ready! They want us to do religion vicariously for them, on their behalf.

Of course, being a Christian doesn't mean that it's necessary for us to do anything on behalf of other people or that we have to represent them to God as a priest would normally do. None of us needs an intermediary, we can all approach God directly if we want to and - as the writer goes on to say - Jesus has made this possible for everyone by his once for all time sacrifice to make us acceptable to God no matter how unworthy we might otherwise be. But quite a lot of people, who would call themselves believers in a fairly loose and undogmatic way, or who think of themselves as honest seekers after truth, do look to us - the regular churchgoers - to do religious things vicariously for them. They're glad someone is praying and they would like us to pray for them in their hour of need, and perhaps help them to have a dignified funeral for their loved ones, or provide a worshipping community where they can celebrate weddings and baptisms. In that sense they do look to us to fulfill a priestly function for them. And being a righteous servant, getting alongside them in Jesus' name, is a priest-like function, a representative role.

You might say, 'What, me? I'm not good enough to lift other people and their concerns up to God! But isn't this what we all do every time we offer our intercessions, our prayers of concern for other people? And the writer reminds us that when we do this we must remain conscious of our own weakness. We can pray for other ignorant and wayward people, he says, only because we know how weak and wayward we are, and because we also know that we are loved and accepted by God through Jesus. We can deal gently with other people only by first recognising that God has dealt gently with us and we no longer need to offer anything to God as a way of saying sorry for our shortcomings. And, of course, representing our community to God and praying for them is something that we can do and an honour that is given to us only because we are called to it by God. The priestly task of a christian, or a church community, is not a job in the ordinary sense. It's not something we apply for or choose for ourselves. It's a vocation that is entrusted to us.

Anyway, enough about us! What are the implications of all this for what the writer believes about Jesus?

The first thing he says is that Jesus was chosen or appointed by God to take on the priestly task of representing all of humanity, and indeed the whole of creation, to God and making it an acceptable gift. I think he perhaps differs from other New Testament writers in seeing Jesus' mission as a vocation given to him at a particular point in time rather than something he was born into. He isn’t perfect from birth, he is made perfect through suffering. In the writer’s understanding Jesus is a man to whom was allotted a unique and timeless task, a role that stretches back to the beginning of all things and forward to the end if all things, but he is a man who was made perfect for the task rather than someone who was born perfect.

Whether that's quite the same as what the Creeds have go say about Jesus I'm not sure and maybe the difference has to be acknowledged, although we might think that what the creeds say is the logical conclusion of the writer’s line of thinking.

The second thing the writer asserts is that Jesus is not the sort of high priest who was in charge of the Jerusalem temple in his own day. Instead he belongs to a much older pattern of priesthood. He is a royal priest according to the order of Melchizedek, who had been the king and priest of Jerusalem in the time of Abraham. Later Israelite kings also modelled themselves on the pattern of Melchizedek, but the writers of the Old Testament didn’t entirely approve and only hints of this kind of royal priesthood remain.

However, the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews hasn’t forgotten this tradition, and he includes a quotation from Psalm 2, one of the psalms once used at the coronation of the ancient kings of Judah, when explaining how Jesus was called to the priesthood. ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you,’ God tells the king during the coronation ceremony, and those are the same words that Gods uses when he designates Jesus as the true and everlasting high priest.

Jesus understood that the kind of priesthood he was being called to was a new and radical kind where he would be offering himself as a sacrifice, not animal or human substitutes, and the writer tells us that he wasn’t immediately reconciled to the idea. He offered up prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears, hoping to be saved from death, and the writer insists that God heard him even though in the end Jesus wasn’t spared and he understood that he must submit to suffering and death for our sakes in order to be able to complete his work.

The Gospels also describe Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, but Hebrews does so with an amazing amount of psychological realism. He is clear that Jesus really did not want to accept the way of the cross and was dismayed and desolated by the knowledge that he would have to submit to such a terrible death. This is why we can be sure that, no matter how afraid or alone we might sometimes feel, Jesus understands our feelings and is there with us.

Celebrity Come Dancing & The Righteous Servant

Isaiah 53.4-12

This passage resonates so strongly with the experience of Jesus that, from the very beginning of the Church, Christians have identified the subject of the prophecy with him. Yet the Prophet identifies this person only as the righteous servant - perhaps the faithful remnant of God's people who had been taken into exile with all the unfaithful ones. 

One of the most striking things for me about Celebrity Come Dancing is the way that the dancers are punished for the mistakes of the celebrities. Indeed some of the dancers are harnessed over and over again, series after series, with people who have two left feet, or are seriously overweight or who just can’t dance. No matter how hard they work, and sometimes they work very hard to choreograph creative and entertaining routines and then dance until sweat pours off them, they are doomed to be condemned by the judges. The righteous share the fate of the unrighteous. And thus it ever was.


In ancient Babylon the righteous servants of God had shared the suffering of the other exiles, but in their case it was undeserved. Their punishment was a perversion of justice. People lumped them together with all the other sinners and assumed that they must have done something terribly wrong, but they had been wounded for the transgressions of the whole nation.
The suffering of the righteous will not be in vain, says the Prophet. God has not forgotten them and will honour them, especially for the way they have been willing to endure hardship with, and have prayed for, their fellow sufferers, even to the point of death. The Prophet says they will be allotted a portion with the great.

There can be little doubt that Jesus was inspired by this passage and modelled himself on the righteous servant. Luke tells us as much in the Emmaus story.

The passage reminds us that none of us can escape the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous. We can never be immune from, or sheltered from, the calamities which befall the community around us.

This is true whether we're talking about the impact of the recession on the life of our church, or about what it feels like to be the church in a community where mines and factories have closed and people have been left behind while others were prospering.

Do we always remember to stand alongside and pray for those who are being hit hardest by unemployment and falling incomes? What practical things are we doing to support them and show our solidarity with them? And do they know that what we are doing, and our simply being alongside them, is meant to be incarnational - that it is our way of mirroring Jesus' own identification with struggling humanity?

I was at a conference this week where a vicar shared with us two recent encounters with his parishioners - one an elderly bus driver who had suddenly lost his wife and was feeling very alone, the other a single mother with six children, living on benefit but full of passionate love for her demanding brood. What does it mean, he asked, to be a righteous servant to these ordinary people?

How, without making them feel self-conscious or singled out, can we affirm people like these, encourage them, remind them that - in their daily struggles - they are loved by God and upheld in prayer by the church?