Breaking Down Walls

Peter’s strange dream, where he found himself eating giraffe, and antelope, elephant and parrot, wasn’t a call to give up being vegetarian and tuck into all kinds of meat. Nor was it a promise that he would soon be going on the sort of exotic holiday where you get to eat something unusual - like my son who recently went to Peru and got to eat alpaca, which he said was delicious. He also spent a night in the jungle but I haven’t heard yet whether he got to eat any juicy ants.

Peter could have woken up and thought, ‘Oh good! I’m going on holiday!’ and made his way round to the estate agents. But he didn’t, and that’s because just as he woke up some people who weren’t Jewish knocked at the door and asked him to come and help them, and their families and friends, to join the Church and become followers of Jesus. That made Peter realise that the dream was about building bridges and breaking down walls. People can look different, and have different languages and customs, but in the end we’re not that different, and we can all be one in Jesus.

One of the most exciting moments in my lifetime was when ordinary German people broke down the wall that had separated them for forty years in Berlin. Many people had been shot trying to get over the Wall. Many families had been separated for all that time - some stuck in the East while their brothers and sisters were living in the West of the City. To our amazement the East German government gave up the struggle to keep their people behind the Wall and let the people on both sides break it down.

It’s heartbreaking to see people building walls between people once again. Peter’s dream reminds us that followers of Jesus are called to build bridges not walls.

Comments

I don't believe in an interventionist God

Matthew 28.1-10, 1 Corinthians 15.1-11 I like Nick Cave’s song because of its audacious first line: ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God’. What an unlikely way to begin a love song! He once explained that he wrote the song while sitting at the back of an Anglican church where he had gone with his wife Susie, who presumably does believe in an interventionist God - at least that’s what the song says. Actually Cave has always been very interested in religion. Sometimes he calls himself a Christian, sometimes he doesn’t, depending on how the mood takes him. He once said, ‘I believe in God in spite of religion, not because of it.’ But his lyrics often include religious themes and he has also said that any true love song is a song for God. So maybe it’s no coincidence that he began this song in such an unlikely way, although he says the inspiration came to him during the sermon. The vicar was droning on about something when the first line of the song just popped into his

Giotto’s Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds

John 1.10-18 In the week before Christmas the BBC broadcast a modern version of The Nativity which attempted to retell the story with as much psychological realism as possible. So, for instance, viewers saw how Mary, and Joseph especially, struggled with their feelings. But telling the story of Jesus with psychological realism is not a new idea. It has a long tradition going back seven hundred years to the time of the Italian artist Giotto di Bondone. This nativity scene was painted in a church in Padua in about 1305. Much imitated it is one of the first attempts at psychological realism in Christian art. And what a wonderful first attempt it is - a work of genius, in fact! Whereas previously Mary and the Baby Jesus had been depicted facing outwards, or looking at their visitors, with beatific expressions fixed on their faces, Giotto dares to show them staring intently into one another’s eyes, bonding like any mother and newborn baby. Joseph, in contrast, is not looking on with quiet a

Meeting Jesus on Zoom

‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’ (John 20.19-31 ( https://www.biblegateway.com NRSVA) This is my second reflection about today’s Gospel reading but I wanted to write something about meeting Jesus on Zoom. Zoom’s been very useful during the lockdown, but it’s also got a bad press. Various mischief makers have gatecrashed meetings on Zoom, either to eavesdrop or make inappropriate comments. That’s why worshippers needed permission to join our on-line service this week. If they managed to press all the right buttons, and entered all the right codes, they should've found themselves looking at a screen not unlike the cartoon picture below of the eleven apostles trying to meet on Zoom with the risen Jesus. Anyone who couldn't see the service on the screen would've been in good company. In the cartoon Jesus has done something wrong. Either he hasn’t enabled Zoom to t

Methodist Bishop

Search This Blog