Methodist Bishop

Christmas Cracker Humour

2012-01-04T20:49:00.002Z

This year Yahoo published its list of the ten best Christmas cracker jokes ever. Not that there’s much competition! See what you think?

What’s round and bad tempered? A vicious circle.
Why didn’t the skeleton go to the party? He had no body to go with.
What does the word ‘minimum’ mean? A very small mother.
Why was Santa’s little helper feeling depressed? He had low elf-esteem.
What do you call a penguin in the Sarah Desert? Lost.
What do you call a dinosaur coming out of an optician’s? Do-you-think-he-saurus?
How do snowmen get around? They ride an icicle.
What is an ig? An igloo without a loo.
What is Santa’s favourite pizza? Deep pan, crisp and even.

Of course, the Christmas story in the Bible has its own share of jokes and riddles.

What do you call the person who adopts you into his family, brings you up like his own son and lets you inherit his carpenter’s business? You might think the answer would be ‘Dad’, but not if you were Jesus! Luke tells us that Jesus was very clear from his earliest youth that God was his father, and not Joseph. The Bible often calls Jesus Son of David, Joseph’s most famous ancestor, but only twice is Jesus called ‘son of Joseph’, and then only by people who don’t believe his claims to be a special representative of God. It seems he couldn’t be both Son of Joseph and Son of God, he could only be one or the other.

Or how about this riddle? What do you call people who are waiting for a powerful king but who get a defenceless baby instead? The Bible admits that some of them were disappointed, and others were incredulous, though Simeon and Anna were honourable exceptions. But it’s no wonder that Jesus struggled to find acceptance. According to the story the Son of the Most High was born among strangers, tiny, weak and poor. Now, of course, even royal babies start life tiny and weak, but they’re also protected by armies, waited on by servants and surrounded by their family and doting courtiers. The story of the birth of Jesus reminds us of one of the greatest paradoxes of the Christian faith - that the greatest power on earth finds its expression not in brute force but in gentleness.

Or, what if I asked you to name the gift that God gave to us at Christmas? As we have seen, the Gospels are clear that God gave us his Son, but the term Son of God is really just a roundabout way of saying that God shared part of himself with us. So maybe the obvious answer isn’t the only one. Maybe God gave us himself at Christmas.

Ad this leads me to my final Christmas cracker question from the Bible. If everything in the universe belongs to God, where did God find a welcome when he gave himself to us and came to live on earth? The answer is that there was no home where the maker of heaven and earth found a welcome when he came to live among us. Instead, he had to spend his first night where someone grudgingly found a little spare capacity for him, in a manger borrowed from the animals. At the first Christmas the people who witnessed Jesus’ birth had the chance to welcome him properly, but they flunked it. It was only later - after he was born - that people began to recognise who he was and make him truly welcome.

But the story of Christmas isn’t just a seres of Christmas cracker riddles, is it? It’s a series of challenges to each one of us. Do we call ourselves children of God? Is this where our first allegiance lies? Do we try to rely on the power of gentleness or do we secretly think that other kinds of power are really more effective? Do we understand that God has made himself vulnerable and weak in Jesus, and are we prepared to let him in so that his gentle revolution can transform our lives? Simeon and Anna answered ‘Yes’ to those questions. What about you and I?

How to stay happy all the time, and not just at Christmas

2012-01-04T20:44:00.001Z

With a genuflection to some recent articles in The Financial Times and The Guardian, which gave me some of my inspiration, here's my take on how to stay happy all the time, and not just at Christmas.

Remember that God is with us.

Don't read or watch too much news - it exaggerates what's bad. Remember there is always good news - like the angels promised!

Try to mix with young people and children - young people are optimists and children have a sense of wonder, like Mary and the shepherds in the story.

We can imagine the worst because it's the best way to avoid being eaten by lions, but we shouldn't let fear get the better of us because the worst rarely happens and even if it does the story of Easter shows us that God is still with us.

Work alongside God to bring peace and goodwill and focus on getting there one step at a time.

A Christmas Lexicon

2012-01-04T20:24:00.001Z

Isaiah 9.2-7, Titus 2.11-14, Luke 2.1-20

The other day I heard a columnist from the Financial Times talking on the radio about a lexicon he had written to explain how different people understand economic jargon. I was intrigued, so I looked it up, and here’s a flavour of what it contains.

For each entry the columnist, Luke Johnson, has given his own definition of what the word means and then the sort of definition which he thinks Guardian readers, trade unionists or charity workers might prefer. Actually, he’s behind the curve on that one. Charity workers have had to change their tune and get with the market if they want their charities to survive, but that’s another story.

Anyway, let’s look at a few examples from the lexicon. In Luke Johnson’s definition, an ‘opportunist’ is someone who shows initiative by seizing the chance to make a commercial or financial gain, whereas he thinks Guardian readers would see an opportunist as a selfish person who exploits other people’s misfortune.

The ‘profit motive’ is either the thing that drives progress or, if you take the opposite point of view, it’s an immoral impulse to be greedy.

‘Failure’ is either a common experience suffered by risk-takers on the road to success or, if you disapprove of it, it’s an inevitable outcome of a system which encourages reckless behaviour.

‘Selling’ is either a way of persuading people to buy your goods or a technique for conning the public into buying things they don’t need.

An entrepreneur is either an individual who is willing to take risks in order to build a business, or a spiv who shouldn’t be trusted.

And competition is either a healthy spur that drives improvements and causes businesspeople to add value to their products and services, or it’s unnecessary and wasteful duplication that leads to a brutal landscape of winners and losers.

Luke Johnson’s world is a black and white one, of course, where you have to believe either one thing or the other and there isn’t any room for someone who thinks that both definitions may contain a grain of truth. But I thought it was an interesting and revealing exercise and that the same technique might be worth applying to Christmas.
So, for instance, how might militant atheists and believers disagree about the defintion of some of the words we use at Christmastime?

Is the ‘Nativity’ a charming fairy story that we grow out of as we learn to rely more on our own devices and not to trust in an imaginary God, or is it a pivotal moment in history which changes the way we think about God, the universe and everything?

And what about words like ‘redeem’? Is this something we do when we collect our gold and jewelry from the pawnbroker or is it something Jesus does for us by helping us to see how far we are from God, how much God loves us and how our relationship with God can be remade?

Or what about ‘homage’? Is it the act of grovelling in a mindless and fawning way before a despotic supreme being or is it the respect and reverence that is due to the source of all life and power and love?

What about a ‘seraph’? Is this an archaic and fantastical being with about as much purchase on reality as a centaur or a unicorn, or is it a poetic way of describing how God’s message sometimes comes to people in visions and dreams where someone seems to be speaking to them on God’s behalf?

Or ‘tidings’, is this a medieval word for stale news, or does it tell us about an urgent, vibrant and joyful message which is still every bit as relevant and contemporary today as it was two thousand years ago?

And ‘undefiled’? Is this an unsavoury reminder that sex was often regarded by misguided believers as sordid and somehow wrong, or is it a subtle way of saying that Jesus was somehow born into a truly human existence without having to carry all the baggage of human history and the past generations of mistakes which conspire together to weigh down the rest of us?

We use a lot of pretty technical words at Christmas and we use them rather thoughtlessly. We surely don’t want to find ourselves in the same boat as economists and financial journalists. They spend endless hours on television and radio, and endless column inches in the newspapers and on-line, trying to tell the rest of us what’s going wrong with our world but, when asked, most people say they don’t understand a word of it and are bored rigid by the whole thing. It was seriously suggested in the summer, when the government’s happiness survey found that most people are perfectly satisfied with their lives, that this was only because they all have no idea how bad the economic situation really is!

Well, I think we could face a similar predicament in the Church. The Christmas story is really important, but are people hearing it through the background noise of our spiritual jargon and holy hearsay?

The world this Christmas is shrouded in economic gloom. It really is a time of great darkness. And earth-shaking armies really are on the march. In response, it seems people may be shutting their minds to the burdens laid on their shoulders and pretending it will all go away if they ignore it, but there’s no need to hide themselves away because we really have got a message of genuine hope and great gladness to share with them, a real cause for rejoicing. We have a mighty hero to whom we can turn, a wonderful counsellor or adviser, a true source of peace, someone who was willing to give himself for us so that he could become a means of healing and a reason for hope for every human being. No wonder that Mary treasured up all these things and pondered over them, and we should be using direct and contemporary language to persuade everyone around us to do the same.

David Cameron has recently thrown his authority - and a lot of money - behind an initiative to help troubled or chaotic families through a year long programme of ‘tough love’ where a family worker - a single point of contact between them and all the agencies they’re supposed to deal with - will come into their lives, work out what they need and line up the right services for them at the right time. ‘When the front door opens and the worker comes in,’ he said, ‘they will see the family as a whole...and get things sorted out.’ It’s what the government’s new responsibility czar called ‘a big, bold initiative’.

Well isn’t that a good way of describing the incarnation in clear, direct language? It’s a big, bold initiative to sort out not just the problems of a few troubled families but the chaotic problems of the whole human race. And Jesus comes through the door, as it were, not just with an over-arching plan to connect us with God and with the fundamental values of the universe, and not just on a flying visit, but to stay with us to the end - as a single point of contact with God in life and also in death and beyond. Isn’t that what ‘incarnation’ really means?

What if men organised Christmas?

2011-12-24T01:00:00.001Z

2 Samuel 7.1-11,16, Romans 16.25-27, Luke 1.26-38

A recent survey of 2,000 men found a third of them were convinced that, if they were put in charge of organising Christmas, it would be less rushed, less stressful and less expensive. One female commentator remarked acidly that she didn’t believe Christmas would be less rushed if men were put in charge, simply because the planning wouldn’t begin until Christmas Eve. However, the ways that the men said they would cut down at Christmas were by sending fewer cards, (half of them wouldn’t send any cards at all in fact), by giving fewer presents and by having much simpler food. They wouldn’t be cooking turkey, for a start! A fifth said they would cook steak and chips for the family; another fifth said they would order in the food from a takeaway. And two-fifths said they would spend far less time with their in-laws.

School children were also surveyed. They too were worried about the cost of Christmas, and whether their parents would be able to afford it. Two-fifths said they would rather that Father Christmas brought them more time with their parents than a sackful of expensive presents, although - of course - that’s easily said! A quarter hoped to be able to see relatives who rarely visit during the rest of the year, but more than three in twenty worried about family rows at Christmas time. So beneath the veneer of festive cheer, a lot of people believe all is not well with the traditional British Christmas.

Our Old Testament reading from the Second Book of Samuel reminds us how David wanted to plan a more lavish worship space for God - a space fit for the Lord of lords and King of kings. He felt that there was an awful incongruity about God being worshipped in a tent while he was living in state in a palace built of cedar wood.

But God reminded David that he chooses to dwell in the midst of his people. If they live in tents then God expects to be worshipped in a tent, and not in a temple.

John Wesley adopted the same principle in his own ministry. For a long time Methodists were discouraged from building fine chapels and churches because Wesley believed that the proclamation of the Gospel properly belongs in the fields and in the streets, and in the homes of believers where they meet together to pray, encourage one another and break bread.

Our church is very beautiful and an ideal space for contemporary worship, but its existence cannot be justified purely as a home for God or a place purely for worship and prayer. Churches need to be community hubs if they are to be truly places where God is pleased to dwell.

This is an incarnational principle. It is surely no coincidence that the God who was pleased to be worshipped in a tent was pleased also to be born in a stable and to come to live and minister among his people, wandering from place to place like a travelling salesman with nowhere permanent to lay his head.

To think of God in this way is so startling - even now - that Paul calls it ‘that divine secret kept in silence for long ages’. Mind you, calling it a ‘divine secret’, which is the Revised English Bible translation, is perhaps a bit too strong, actually. It might be more accurate to talk about a ‘mystery’ rather than a ‘secret’.

I think Paul has in mind something more akin to a cryptic crossword puzzle or a Men’s and Women’s Fellowship combined Christmas quiz, than a dark Da Vinci code style conspiracy. In his new translation, which attempts to get as close as possible to the original Greek, Nicholas King calls it ‘the mystery that was wrapped in silence’.

Paul’s point is that, although the mystery of the incarnation has been made known to people throughout the world by the Church’s proclamation of the Gospel, many continue to look for God in the wrong place - in a palace rather than in the stable at Bethlehem. Even the wise are wrong-footed, therefore, by the only wise God.

So, last week, clips were played on television of the renowned atheist and essayist Christopher Hitchens calling God a ‘celestial dictator in a kind of divine North Korea’ where ‘nice’ people are ‘forced to surrender their critical faculties’ or ‘do unkind things’ in return for ‘the promise of salvation.’

Clearly he didn’t taking seriously the idea that God could be born as a baby in a stable in Bethlehem. No doubt he would have considered the incarnation to be one of those ‘stupid things’ which intelligent people are required to swallow in order to become Christian believers. But he acknowledged only recently that - although nothing had yet persuaded him to change his mind about God - ‘he liked surprises’. How intriguing, then, that both the Prophet Nathan and St Paul believed in a God of surprises!

Mary, of course, encountered the same God of surprises a little earlier than Paul. Luke tells how she was deeply troubled by the Angel’s message - at least according to the Revised English Bible’s version of events. Nicholas King perhaps captures the intensity of her feelings more acutely when he translates the same phrase as ‘deeply disturbed’. And certainly that word ‘disturbed’ reflects the way that Gabriel interpreted her response, because Luke goes on to record in both versions, that the Angel told her not to be afraid of the message he was bringing to her.

The Angel told her that her baby wouldl inherit God’s promises to David, and that he would sit on David’s throne for ever. The power of the most High would make this possible and Jesus would be called the Son of the Most High.

It sounds impressive, and Luke’s first readers would surely have been amazed to discover, a few verses later, that Jesus was actually destined to be born in a stable and laid in a manger. This is hardly the outcome we would expect for a great king, unless - of course - we are familiar with the prophecy in 2 Samuel, that the family and the kingship which will be established for ever is being set up and sustained by a God who chooses to be worshipped in a tent and to dwell in the midst of his wandering people.

I think there is something of the Ebenezeer Scrooge about the minority of men who are quick to say ‘Bah, humbug!’ about the tinsel and turkey Christmas and who insist that they would stay at home eating a takeaway dinner and eschewing their family and friends. But perhaps they, and the children who hanker after a simpler, less expensive, less frenetic Christmas celebration, are also recalling - somewhere at the back of their minds - a distant folk memory of the humble beginnings of Jesus and the modest demands of the God he represents. Shouldn’t the feast which is named after Jesus be celebrated more simply, in a way that is more in-keeping with the story it proclaims?

Remembering the School Nativity Play

2011-12-24T00:55:00.005Z

Luke 2.1-7
Have you been in any Christmas plays at school? If so, what part did you get to play?

I was once a shepherd, a part I remember because the headmistress lent me a valuable family heirloom - a pottery hot water bottle - which she thought would be an impressive prop that would make me look more authentic. She told me it was a special privilege to borrow such a precious thing, but she was letting me have it because I was such a good boy and could be trusted with it. Unfortunately, I was carrying it by a string fastened round the neck of the bottle. The string snapped during the dress rehearsal and - to my horror - the bottle smashed to pieces on the wooden floor. The headmistress lost her temper and shouted at me that I had been careless, so I thought it was in big trouble, but when she calmed down she said she was sorry and that it wasn’t me fault. Phew!

Another year it felt much safer to be a wiseman and read my own poem about the gift I had brought for the Baby Jesus.

The low point for me was when one of my teachers said I couldn’t sing - which wasn’t true - and therefore couldn’t be part of the group chosen to sing Good King Wenceslas. However, I was allowed to be the peasant gathering firewood in the snow. My mother dressed me up in peasant costume, complete with a woolly moustache stuck on with special glue that brought me out in a rash. ‘Oh you don’t need a costume!’ said the teacher. ‘Your ordinary clothes would have done just fine.’ She was like that with almost everyone. No wonder the class cheered when she announced she would be leaving soon!

In November there was a survey of more than 1,000 people to see what they remembered about the nativity and Christmas plays they were in at school. Girls remembered how they always wanted to be an angel, but only beautiful blonde girls were chosen for that role. Their second choice was to be Mary, but the teacher’s pet always got that part. Boys recalled how they wanted to play Joseph, or a wiseman. But someone has to be the donkey, don’t they? My sons got to be the donkey and the lamb one year because their mother was good at sewing and could make the best animal costumes! How lucky is that?

Looking back, older people think now that they would have liked to be the innkeeper or the wicked King Herod. Those are the scene stealing parts! The innkeeper has the power to change the whole story, like the boy who was asked, ‘Is there any room in the inn?’ and replied, ‘Yes, of course. Come in and make yourselves at home!’

The school Christmas play often isn’t fair, but then life often isn’t fair, either, and God understands that. The whole point of the Christmas story is that God came to live among us in Jesus to experience what life is really like from the inside, and to share it with us. Whatever we may face, he faces it with us. That is the wonder of Christmas.

Hope in a Time of Looming Crisis

2011-12-24T00:53:00.000Z

Isaiah 40.1-11
Mark 1.1-8
We were watching the news on Channel 4 the other night when Helen said, ‘The news is so terrible these days that you really don’t have time to take in the enormity of it before they’ve moved on to the next item.’

For example, there was a report that high inflation, government cuts and the longest period of wage stagnation on record will mean that the spending power of the average British family is going to plummet over the next five years. And families with children will be particularly hard hit. In 2016 they will be worse off than they might have been if their children had been exactly the same age 14 years earlier in 2002.

Mind you, it’s not just younger people who are feeling the pinch. As Jeremy Clarkson might have said, public sector workers should perhaps spare a thought for those of us who don’t already enjoy their fairly generous pension arrangements. An announcement in George Osbourne’s autumn statement on Tuesday changed my retirement date from 2024 to 2026. Not only is that the date when I will now receive my state retirement pension, the date when Methodist Ministers are able to collect their full occupational pension was recently pegged to the state retirement pension age as well. So, if I want more or less the same pension I could previously have expected to receive at 65, I must now wait for at least another two years.

And then, of course, there’s the threatened melt down of the Euro, which promises to make the 2008 banking crisis look like a mere overture. The other day I tried to order some more Euros for our post office, where we sell them to holidaymakers, but Post Office Ltd - the people who run the network - were having none of it. ‘We’re trying to limit our exposure to the Euro,’ said the man on the other end of the phone, ‘In case things go wrong.’ In the end I persuaded him to let me have more 20, 10 and 5 Euro notes in exchange for most of our 50 Euro notes - no one wants them anyway.

And so I could go on, heaping one bad news story on top of another. But, funnily enough, a government report published this week also revealed that - at least as recently as last summer - most people in Britain were still feeling happy with their life. Perhaps that’s because, like my colleagues at work, they don’t watch the Channel 4 news, or any news programmes for that matter. Or maybe it’s because, as one expert suggested, when times are hard people have to put more reliance on relationships than on things, and if we’ve got good relationships with the people who matter to us it’s easier to feel happy even when the news is unremittingly bad.

Advent is supposed to be a time of joyful expectation. Instead, this year it’s a time of looming crisis, a crisis more serious perhaps than any when since World War II. How appropriate, then, that we read this Sunday the ancient prophecy of Isaiah, ‘Comfort my people, bring comfort to them. Proclaim that their term of bondage is served, for they have already received double measure for all their sins.’

Isaiah is clear that, no matter how deep the problems we may face, we human beings have only ourselves to blame. We are being punished for our own collective arrogance, short sightedness and greed. We assumed that every year things could go on getting better and better, that living standards would grow, that we could all enjoy longer and more prosperous retirements, and we were wrong.

But Isaiah is also clear that God is not going to abandon us. Instead, he has a message of comfort for us. God is coming to face the music with us, to stand alongside us, to help us and encourage us. And like the world’s major clearing banks pumping cheap cash into beleaguered European banks, the Lord God is coming in might to help us, lending us his powerful arm to protect and guide us.

So what is it that God can do for us to bring us comfort? I think Isaiah’s message is about the power of a personal relationship with God to bring us comfort even in the darkest of times.

He reminds us that we are as frail and fragile as grass or flowers, and our achievements - like our good looks - could so quickly and easily be gone and forgotten, just like a faded flower. ‘The grass withers, the flower fades, when the blast of the Lord blows on them.’ says the Prophet. And we might conclude, therefore, that God doesn’t care to save us; that we matter no more to him than a flower or a blade of grass. But, of course, Jesus said that God does care even for sparrows and wildflowers, and so he will care for us.

And Isaiah says that God will carry us in his bosom, and lead us to water, and shield us with his arm, tending us and looking after us like a gentle shepherd. In him, and in his word, we will endure for ever.

The worship resource Roots on the Web recommended that I should buy some locusts, which it said were readily available in supermarkets, and then do a blind tasting - a bit like the man in the TV documentary who gave his guests road kill to eat at a barbecue. Only after they had eaten the meat, and declared it very tasty, did he reveal that one of the dishes was actually squirrel. Or maybe it would have been more like the delicacies served up to celebrities in the jungle, except that they know what they’re eating. But then I asked myself, ‘What would be the point of giving you locusts to eat, even if they tasted lovely?’

John ate locusts and wild honey and people often say that this was in conscious imitation of the Prophet Elijah, but actually Elijah never ate a single locust in his life, nor is there any record that he ate honey. Like John, he did wear a trademark hairshirt fastened with a leather belt, but like Crocodile Dundee he would probably have advised that, while you can eat ants and grubs you really wouldn’t want to.

Locusts usually figure in the Bible as a symbol of disaster and destruction - they eat up propsperity, a bit like financial speculators. If John has taken to eating the locusts maybe it’s to make a point, that with God alongside us we can chomp our way through even the toughest of credit crunches and come out smiling.

None of this is to make light of the trouble we are in. It’s very real. But the Bible promises us that after John, the man who bit the heads off locusts, comes one who is mightier still, whose sandals he is not even worthy to stoop down and unfasten.

The Messiah, the Lord’s anointed, will baptise us with the Spirit, allowing us to find a relationship with God that is so strong and enduring that nothing will ever be able to separate us from his love.

A Christmas Story

2011-12-24T00:50:00.000Z

Mark 1.1-3
Christmas was approaching and the whole family was looking forward to the holiday - the food, the presents, the decorations, playing games round a blazing log fire. But everyone agreed that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas if they couldn’t attend the Christmas Eve service in the little church down in the valley.

‘I hope it doesn’t snow,’ said Mum. ‘If it snows we won’t be able to go.’

‘Oh, why not?’ asked the Twins. ‘Couldn’t we ski?’ asked Johnny. ‘Couldn’t we go by sledge?’ asked Jenny.

‘Well,’ said Dad, ‘We could only ski if we had any skis. And we could go by sledge down the hill, but then we would have to pull it back up the hill through the snow at one o’clock in the morning.’

So everyone agreed that if it snowed heavily they would have to stay at home, even on Christmas Eve, in their farmhouse high on the hillside.

‘That means we would miss the service where we celebrate the coming of Jesus,’ said Mum. ‘Somehow it won’t feel like Christmas if we can’t be there.’

The weather stayed warm and mild for December right up until the night of Christmas Eve. That evening, as the sun set, dark clouds full of snow blanketed the sky. Soon a few flurries of snow began to fall and - by mid-evening - the snow was coming down so thick that it was impossible to see across the farmyard.

Dad came in from checking the animals. ‘We won’t be going to the service,’ he said. ‘The snow is already half a metre deep on the road. Even with snow chains it will soon be impassable.’

The Twins watched the snow falling through the window and wished they could be outside playing in it. ‘Tomorrow, after we’ve opened our presents, we can throw snow balls and ride on our sledges,’ they said to one another.

Then, just as they were going to bed, there was an urgent kock at the back door. The Twins crept to the top of the stairs and looked through the bannisters, curious to see who was visiting them so late.

It was a young man, his coat and head covered in snow. ‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said to Dad, ‘But we were trying to get home for Christmas to see our family and our car is stuck in the snow. My wife and baby are still in the car, but they can’t spend the night there. is there any chance we could stay here?’

Well, of course, Mum and Dad said it would be no trouble at all. The young man fetched his wife and baby and Mum brought some blankets for them and made up the settees so that they could sleep on them, by the fire. The twins came downstairs and shyly watched the baby feeding while Mum prepared some supper for the visitors. It was all very exciting, much more fun than going to church - even in the middle of the night.

In the morning, after a lovely breakfast of soup and toast and hot boiled eggs, Dad got out the tractor and towed the stranded car - with the young couple and their baby safe inside - down to the village where the road was still open.

I’m sorry you missed your service,’ Dad said to Mum as the family ate their Christmas dinner together. ‘I know you feel Christmas isn’t quite Chritsmas without it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mum. ‘The service reminds us how Jesus came as a baby to live with us in the middle of the night, while his family were far from home. But I think we were reminded of that anyway by our surprise visitors. I think it’s been a lovely Christmas.’

Doing Good For The Right Reasons

2011-11-19T16:30:00.002Z

Matthew 25.31-46
Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince

On one level the parable of the separation of the sheep from the goats is a straight forward story about the rewards of doing the right thing. Like the Happy Prince, the sheep and the goats discover that true happiness lies in serving others not in enjoying ourselves.

However, both the parable and Oscar Wilde’s Happy Prince add a further twist to what would otherwise be a simple morality tale. The more deserving the recipients of our help, the more easily they might otherwise be overlooked, the greater will be our reward in reaching out to them.

If we only help those who can return the favour, that is not good enough. We must make sure of helping the people at the back of the queue, the strangers and the marginalised. If anything, these are the people to whom we should give priority.

And yet there are problems with this interpretation. First of all, shouldn’t doing good be its own reward. Why do we need to inherit a kingdom? Isn’t this no different - on a moral level - from singling out for help those who can afford to return the favour one day. The only differences are that the gratification is being postponed - and also greatly enhanced, because it will last for ever. And if we help people solely in order to be chosen and rewarded by God, we are also scarcely any better - at least at the level of personal motivation - than the misguided individuals who blow people up for the same reason?

However, Jesus has - of course - thought of this objection. The sheep didn’t realise they were earning a reward. They just did what seemed to them to be right at the time. They may not even have believed in God, or in eternal rewards. They are surprised, gobsmacked even, to be chosen and rewarded now. And the same is true of the Happy Prince and the swallow. They never expected any reward save that of knowing they were doing what was right.

This means the parable cannot be a template for getting on the right side of God. It isn’t telling us that, by doing A, B and C we will earn our way into the kingdom prepared since the foundation of the world. The only way into that kingdom is to be the kind of person to whom doing the right thing comes as second nature. There can be no calculation in becoming a sheep.

Second, the parable appears to devalue the spiritual life in favour of robust social action. Getting close to God ceases to be about prayer and worship, about opening oneself to God’s grace and mercy, and becomes a matter of doing as much good to as many people in as short a time as possible. But there are other aspects of the Christian story - and the teaching of Jesus - which emphasise that we can never do enough good to deserve to inherit the kingdom. It is always a gift, even to the sheep.

Perhaps in order to become the kind of person who never stops reaching out and giving to others, we first have to recognise our own need of help, of love and forgiveness. Those who are totally absorbed in seeking their own salvation may never find the time and energy to reach out to others, but equally those who don’t feel any need of help themselves are unlikely to help others with the right spirit, or in the right frame of mind.

Isn’t that one of the points of the story about the pharisee and the tax collector? The first couldn’t see that he needed any help at all. The other could only see his total need of grace and help. Which was the more appealing character?

The third difficulty with the parable of the Sheep and the Goats is that it talks about helping the members of Jesus’ family. Who are they? Is the kingdom reserved for those who help suffering and persecuted members of the Church? Or is Jesus’ family the whole human race, or those who are disadvantaged, those who - like him - are being crucified?

And this, of course, leads us to the final difficulty. What does Jesus mean when he says that, if we help those in need we shall find we have helped him? Being poor, marginalised or disadvantaged doesn’t make people Christ-like.

Sometimes it frees people from a reliance on material things and makes them genuinely content with little things, the small blessings of daily life, like the children in the Happy Prince who were able to play in the streets and enjoy themselves once they had been fed. But sometimes poverty and lack of opportunity make people disillusioned, bitter, despairing, hopeless and even feckless, and helping them can make them reliant on hand-outs or cynical and greedy for more, like the notorious welfare scroungers beloved of right-wing tabloid newspapers.

Of course, if the people in need in the parable are members of the Church, they are therefore part of the Body of Christ, and helping them means helping him too. But it’s difficult to interpret the story with such a narrow focus. Isn’t Jesus calling us to reach out to others and to try to include them into his family, whether they deserve it or not? In doing his will, are we not serving him?

Recognising where we are

2011-11-08T21:41:00.002Z

Matthew 25.1-13

This Gospel reading is about our spiritual journey. It’s a story that gives a young woman’s perspective on the ups and downs involved. It’s like being a bridesmaid. Perhaps other religious communities, like the Muslim community, have a closer experience to the one Jesus recounts than a typical Christian or secular bridesmaid might have. Muslim bridesmaids might have to get dressed up to the nines and then hang around all day with the bride on about five separate occasions because in the build up to the wedding there could be a party every night of the week. No wonder then that it might be necessary to take a whole week off work just to get ready, psyche themselves up and then perform their appointed role.

A Christian or secular bridesmaid has to support the bride on the hen night, perhaps at some sort of eve of wedding party nowadays, and - of course - on the big day itself. There’s still plenty of room for things to go wrong - losing the bride on the hen night would be bad, for instance. Failing to take the flowers from the bride in church - or at the register office - and help her remove her veil if she has one are pretty bad omissions too. Assisting the bride in and out of her dress might be a bridesmaid’s responsibility, depending on whether her mother gets involved.

But essentially Jesus’ story is an illustration about the ups and downs of the spiritual life. The message, as in a number of his other stories, is about remaining alert and ready to do our bit when the opportunity arises.

‘Recognising where we are’ is another way of depicting the same idea, and I thought of it because the Guides have been talking this morning about their trip to Switzerland.

'Recognising where we are' is a picture which depicts the spiritual journey as a mountain climb. At the bottom of the picture we find the start of the journey - sitting at the bottom of the mountain and wondering how we’re ever going to get up to the top, perhaps feeling in two minds about whether even to make the attempt, or else - like the wise bridesmaids - planning our route carefully before we set out so that we take the best route and know what to expect.

The picture also depicts some of the foolish climbers, people who were not properly prepared for the rigours of the journey. One person seems to be sliding down the mountain. Are they on the way back from the summit? Are they a risk taker, who enjoys the thrill of the quick descent - like mountain bikers who slog all the way to the top of a mountain, or ride up in a cable car, just for the thrill of hurtling down again at fifty miles per hour? The look on the face of the would be climber suggests otherwise - that they have lost their footing and are making an unintended descent. They are like one of the foolish bridesmaids. perhaps they were too busy looking at the view instead of watching where they out their feet. Or perhaps they just tried to take too perilous a route.

Then there’s a person who’s on their hands and needs. Are they watching their partner sliding down the mountain side or are they just completely out of wind? And another person is hanging from a ledge by their finger tips with no toeholds to help them, but at least they’ve managed to rope themselves to the mountain side so all is not lost. I’m not so sure about a person lowering themselves from a horizontal tree trunk. The tree has leaves growing on it, so perhaps its roots are firm and the climber is like one of the wiser bridesmaids who was well prepared. That certainly can’t be said for one man shivering in a t-shirt and another who’s laid down in the open and seems to be taking a nap.

The picture shows people who are doing a bit better. One of them has taken shelter in a cave, one is in the rain - but at least she has an umbrella. And others look well prepared and confident about what they’re doing.

Finally there’s the summit. But are we all climbing the same mountain? is the person far away on a different mountain top jumping for joy that they have made it to their goal, or furious at finding they have climbed the wrong peak? Are they wise or foolish?

What do these parables have to say to us? Each of us are on our own personal pilgrimage with God. Are we going the same way, or do we all have our own unique direction of travel? Does it matter if we are going to slightly different destinations? or should be going to the same place, even if we take different routes?

The answer to those questions will depend on how you understand the Christian faith. Some people think there is really only one way to the top of the mountain, and certainly only one mountain to climb. They will say that we have to do x, y and z - probably in a very precise order - if we wish to be put right with God. But other people will say that there are different ways of believing and following Jesus, and we must all find the way that suits us. Or again people will say that we each have our own personal vocation - something that God wants us to do to make complete sense of our lives and get the most from our experiences. And, then, of course there will be other people who say that Christianity, or our understanding of what it means at any rate, is not the only way of reaching the mountain top and that - however we get above the clouds - reaching the summit of our particular mountain is still cause to celebrate.

It’s also interesting to ask what this story has to say to our church at this particular time. We have completed the refurbishment, which some people saw as a staging post on our way to the mountain top and others saw as a wrong turn or even a backwards step. We’re now thinking about future patterns of worship. Should we be promoting different ways of worshipping to help people find the way up the mountain which suits them best, or should we be roping ourselves together and trying to go up the mountain in one group by the same path?

The church is also thinking about how we can best serve the local community, and who we need to guide us on the next part of the journey. How can we be sure that we’re making wise choices and not foolish ones?

Because the stakes are high. The spiritual life is not just a personal indulgence, something we cultivate purely for its own sake or because we happen to enjoy it. And the church is not just a club for like-minded travellers.

Young women don’t dress up as bridesmaids just for their own amusement. There is a wedding day looming. And, in the same way, we are asked to make progress - as individuals and as a church community - not just to suit ourselves but so that we can be ready to play our part whenever the opportunity arises to serve God.

I have always found that ministry is about being open to opportunities. They have a habit of coming along, and we can either grasp them and use them to help us make further progress in our vocation, or we can miss them and perhaps find ourselves imagining that we have already reached the summit when it is still actually a long way off, or - worse still - we can end up sliding back down the way we have come. So, in the final analysis, being prepared is the crucial thing. If we’re always ready - or even sometimes ready - to recognise an opportunity when God places it in our way we can make our way to the top of the mountain or gain admission to the wedding banquet.

Dr Fox, Tony Blair and The Counsel of the Wicked

2011-11-08T21:37:00.002Z

Psalm 1
1 Thessalonians 2.1-8

‘Happy is the one who does not take the counsel of the wicked for a guide.’ Why might Doctor Fox come to mind when we read those words? He didn’t take the counsel of the wicked, but neither did he take the counsel of his civil servants for a guide. Despite repeated warnings he failed to stick to the path laid out in the ministerial code and - in the end - he didn’t prosper. When judgement came he found that he could not stand firm in the assembly of the righteous.

Of course, he’s not alone. Tony Blair didn’t take the counsel of the wicked either, but he did take the counsel of spin doctors for a guide when he wanted to justify the war against Iraq. He followed the path laid out in the so-called ‘dodgy dossier’ and - like Dr Fox - he has been driven hither and thither like chaff, by the winds of public opinion. When judgement came, in the shape of the Chilcot Inquiry, he had plenty to say in his own defence - because Tony Blair is never wrong, of course - but will he really find, after the verdict is handed down, that he can stand firm in the assembly of the righteous? In the meantime at any rate, Tony Blair still prospers in all he does. In fact, he’s made his fortune since he resigned as prime minister.

Righteousness took a long while to catch up with Colonel Gaddafi. He began as a radical reformer, but his head was soon turned by the counsel of the wicked. He followed the path set out in his own Green Book. ‘Women are females and men are males,’ he wrote in one of the sillier passages. But in other sections of the book he could be quite philosophical. He called for a universal cultural revolution to rid the world of fanaticism. But, of course, that didn’t extend to ridding the world of his own peculiar brand of fanaticism. When there was a revolution against him, Gaddafi proved the accuracy of one of his own sayings by the barbaric actions that he ordered his troops to take: ‘Boxing and wrestling,’ he had said, ‘Are proof that human beings have not rid themselves of all savage behavior.’ Gaddafi was certainly driven like chaff before the wind, and he was certainly doomed, but he didn’t come to judgement.

Yet is the way of the wicked really doomed? Adolf Hitler came to a bad end, but not Joseph Stalin! Sometimes righteous people do not prosper because they seem too good for a world like this. They seem to suffer because they won’t take the counsel of the wicked - they refuse to take short cuts, or appease the crowd, or short change their customers, or bend the rules.

What about the Welsh ruby team? They considered cheating in their match against France. But the coach did not the counsel of the wicked, nor take the path that sinners tread. His delight was in the international laws of rugby. However, the team didn’t prosper, it lost. Who can say what would have happened if they had bent the rules, instead. Would they have been found out, or might they have won the game?

Later writers got around this problem by coming up with the idea of life beyond death. If judgement comes at the end of time, after death, it doesn’t matter whether or not we have prospered in this life. We can still imagine the wicked being driven like chaff driven before the wind until they perish, while the righteous are like a tree planted by streams of water which stands firm.

The final question to ask about this psalm is, ‘What about the scoffers?’ The Psalmist imagines that the wicked take refuge among the scoffers, but that was before the creation of a free press. The newspapers have taken a battering in recent months, after the scandal of mobile phone hacking. Picking up on the widespread revulsion which people feel about tabloid journalism, Dr Fox couldn’t resist taking a swipe at some of the people who had scoffed at him, accusing journalists of vindictive and hurtful reporting.

In his speech to the Levison Inquiry into the Media, a week ago, Paul Dacre - editor-in-chief of the Daily Mail - put the case for press freedom. He said, ‘I’d … like to persuade you that there are thousands of decent journalists in Britain who don’t hack phones, don’t bribe policemen and who work long anti-social hours for modest recompense – and if they’re in the regional press often for a pittance – because they passionately believe that their papers give a voice to the voiceless and expose the misdeeds of the rich, the powerful and the pompous.’ He suggested that those who feel the press ought to be more regulated should try living in Zimbabwe.

Scoffers today, then, can sometimes be the very people who delight in the law of the Lord and meditate on it day and night, to the discomfort of the powerful. But, of course, the Psalmist is thinking of a different kind of scoffer, the person who deliberately scoffs at the very idea of principles and righteousness and seeks to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator, to human greed and veniality.

Last Monday, on Radio 4’s Start The Week, I heard the famous atheist Richard Dawkins trying to defend himself from just this charge. Although he believes the world doesn’t have any meaning or purpose, nonetheless he was still capable, he insisted, of recognising beauty and mystery - a magical quality he called it - in the world around him, and of finding inspiration in music and so on. In that sense, he wants us to understand that he is not a scoffer. But, of course, plenty of other people, who are less intelligent and thoughtful, have concluded that if the world is without meaning then it no longer matters how they live or what they do.

Another atheist on the same programme, cosmologist Lisa Randall, said that - although she didn’t believe in anything - she still took pride in being the best scientist that she could possibly be. But a lot of people who don’t believe in anything don’t take pride in anything, either. They scoff at effort of any kind, preferring the counsel of the wicked and the feckless as their guide, following the easy path that sinners take, which is why the Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs - who was also a guest on the same programme - insisted that without belief there is no real hope.

Standing up to the scoffers may not be easy if you are a politician caught out misusing your power, but neither is it easy for Christians and other believers in a secular and deeply cynical world. The scoffers of today are not necessarily deliberately siding with wickedness, as the Psalmist imagined. They are simply people who refuse to commit to any principles at all and who find it easy to criticise those who do have principles, especially when they go wrong or if they stand up for what they believe.

This is what Paul and his companions were doing - standing firm for the Gospel despite the outrageous treatment meted out to them in Philippi, where they were stripped, flogged and thrown into prison. When Paul talks about the great opposition they had faced he is referring to mob rule. Anyone would think - from the way they had been treated - that they were trying to deceive people, or cheat them, or that Paul and his companions were somehow deluded and needed saving from themselves. But, of course, all they had been trying to do was delight in the law of the Lord and yield God’s fruit by proclaiming the Gospel.

They didn’t follow the counsel of the wicked, or the path that sinners tread, by currying favour with the angry mob. They were, instead, ever mindful that they would need, one day, to be able to stand firm in the assembly of the righteous.

And, of course, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. Now that they have been to Thessaolonica too, the Thessalonian Christians know only too well that Paul never minces his words or resortes to insincere flattery. He tells it how he sees it.

Although Paul clearly felt that he was entitled to claim authority over the churches he ministered to, because of his call from the risen Jesus to be an apostle or messenger of the Gospel, he prefers - or so he claims here - to take a gentler approach, sharing his very self with the congregations he worked alongside, out of deep affection for them.

In the short term, Paul’s approach appeared to meet with failure. He was eventually taken to Rome in chains where he was almost certainly martyred for his faith. His letters were so easily disregarded, and so little cherished, by the people who had received them that whole sections of some of them, and in other cases the entire correspondence, was lost to posterity. Yet, in God’s good time he was vindicated. Many of his lost letters were rediscovered and dusted off; some new ones were even written around a few scattered fragments of the missing originals; and his theology has come to dominate much of Christian thinking. The Lord watches over the way of the righteous.

What are we to conclude? God will make our cause to prosper, he will help us to yield fruit, he is watching over us. But God’s ways are not the world’s ways. The counsel of the wicked will suggest that we are misguided. The scoffers will insist that we are deluding ourselves. But in the end their opinions will be driven before the wind like chaff. They will not stand firm in the assembly of the righteous. Their worldly wisdom is doomed. And, in the meantime, we must continue to gently share our very selves with the people around us as we seek to impart - fearlessly and frankly - the truth that has been entrusted to us.

The Golden Rule

2011-11-08T21:30:00.001Z

Leviticus 19.1-2,15-18

Matthew 22.34-40

‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ It’s sometimes called The Golden Rule and yet the way it’s understood by the writers or editors of Leviticus is far from obvious to our way of thinking.

According to this passage it means being strictly impartial, neither favouring the poor or being subservient to the rich, but playing a straight bat. That’s all well and good, of course, but it’s not the traditional, Christian understanding of loving your neighbour, which is about showing special compassion to the outcast, the stranger, the poor and the weak. In fact, it has become fashionable for modern Christians to speak of God’s bias to the poor.

There are passages in the Old and New Testament - including Leviticus - which suggest that we are supposed to show partiality to the poor and the oppressed, but this is not one of them. Here loving your neighbour is about treating everyone the same, without fear or favour. The poor should not be condescended to. They deserve the compliment of being treated exactly as the judge, or the magistrate, or the official would expect to be treated if they needed someone to decide about their case. And, of course, we’re not necessarily talking just about court cases, but about any set of rules or regulations that need to be interpreted and applied with fairness. We’re talking about bosses, post office clerks, traffic wardens, and teachers and parents. Are any of us fair and even-handed in the way we interpret and apply rules and regulations?

To love your neighbour doesn’t just mean being fair, of course. Leviticus says that it means not spreading gossip about them, something which is all too easily done in close knit communities. The Revised English Bible’s translation is oddly archaic here, I think, with its reference to ‘your father’s kin’. The New Revised Standard Version says ‘you shall not go around as a slanderer among your people,’ and even The Revised Version - a very literal Nineteenth Century translation which was the original version used in this church when it first opened - says, ‘Thou shalt not go up and down as a tale bearer among thy people.’

In churches there is a fine distinction to be made between being properly concerned about the misfortunes of other people, and wanting to pray for them and support them, and - on the other hand - being at best inquisitive or at worst even prying into their affairs. That’s why, for instance, we can no longer put people’s names in the prayer book, and so on, without their permission. Sometimes loving our neighbour means keeping our counsel.

‘Do not take sides against your neighbour on a capital charge’ suggests that, if there’s a danger they might swing for their crimes, it would be wrong to report our neighbours to the police. It seems a totally alien way to interpret loving your neighbour, as if running them in for burglary or for trespass would be perfectly all right whereas accusing them of murder, or giving evidence against them for poisoning their Granny, would be unsporting. But again the Revised English Bible seems to have taken certain liberties with its translation. The Revised Version translates the Hebrew very literally as ‘neither shalt thou stand against the blood of thy neighbour’, which the New Revised Standard Version takes to mean, ‘you shall not profit by your neighbour’s blood.’ Gone here is any suggestion of our neighbours having formal charges laid against them in a court. I think what we’re talking about here is a good old-fashioned witch hunt or a land grab, where someone appears to be throwing accusations around just to discredit their neighbours and gain advantage over them. Sadly, it still happens, but nowadays it’s more likely to be the kind of thing that goes on in an employment dispute - with staff members hurling rival accusations against one another in an attempt to blur the real issues and get the hearing to find in their favour. Needless to say, that’s not a neighbourly thing to do.

Loving your neighbour turns out, then, to be a more forensic idea than we might otherwise think. It’s about being fair and open-minded, about not taking advantage, about having honest and straight dealings with one another. And, as it’s understood in Leviticus, loving your neighbour doesn’t rule out reprimanding or reproving him or her. In fact, failing to tell other people what you really think about them - while nursing a secret hatred for them in our heart - is much worse than being open with them.

In his poem, Mending Wall, Robert Frost talks about walking along a boundary wall with his neighbour to make sure that it‘s in good repair. This makes him reflect on why the wall is there in the first place. ‘Good fences make good neighbours,’ his neighbour says, but Frost thinks to himself, ‘Only where they are needed.’ His neighbour’s side of the wall contains only pine trees, on Frost’s side is an orchard, whereas you need a wall only where there are cows! Frost thinks:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offence.

That’s pretty much how the writers and editors of Leviticus think about neighbourliness. Let’s not put up walls of hypocrisy and pretence between us, walls to hide our feelings. Let’s be honest and open.

But, with honesty must come acceptance. When we find out what our neighbours really think we can’t be grudging or unforgiving, or try to get our own back or take vengeance on them. We must live and let live. That’s what Leviticus means by loving our neighbours as we love ourselves.

Jesus sets the Golden Rule in a different context. First, he makes it far more important. He elevates it almost to the same status as the first commandment - to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. And by doing so, of course, he brings the focus to bear much more sharply on love. For Jesus the saying is definitely about loving your neighbour rather than about respect or honest dealing.

And second, the way that Jesus highlights this verse, and juxtaposes it with the first commandment, reminds us that there are three crucial aspects to loving our neighbour. It’s not possible to love our neighbour properly and consistently unless we first love God and also love ourselves.

Modern society has dropped God out of the equation - but that tips the balance towards the self. If you don’t have to love God in order to love your neighbour, but you do still have to love yourself, then you start to get people saying, ‘Unless I first find myself, and journey into myself, or pamper myself, I won’t be able to look out for my neighbour as well.’ So people will say, ‘I knew the children couldn’t be happy because I wasn’t happy.’ Or, ‘I knew my partner couldn’t be happy because I wasn’t happy.’

So then, of course, the only solution is to make yourself happy, whatever the cost might be to the other people in your life, because only then will you be any real use or support to other people. This creates a tendency for loving your neighbour as you love yourself to become a very introspective, inward-looking, self-serving idea. But is that what Jesus really intended?

I don’t think so, because Jesus set the commandment to love our neighbour as we love ourselves alongside the prior commandment to love God, and loving God means looking outwards, trying to imitate God’s love for creation, caring not just about ourselves - or not first about ourselves - but treating other people’s well-being as equally important to our own. Yes, we can’t love other people properly if we don’t love and respect ourselves - and we see that again and again in parents who fail to love their children in a healthy and rounded way because they haven’t yet dealt with their own hang-ups. But, by the same token, we can’t love and respect ourselves properly if we don’t love and respect others, beginning with God.

What have the Romans ever done for us?

2011-10-17T17:31:00.003+01:00

Some people came to see Jesus. They didn’t like the politicians in charge of their country and they didn’t like the taxes that the politicians were making them pay, but they were afraid to say so.

I often find this. People used to come into my office in Toy Town to complain about this or that, and I would tell them, ‘Well, you need to write to your councillors, or give them a ring. Here’s their number. Here’s their email address.’

‘Oh, I’m not sure about that!’ they would say, as if they were afraid that if they made a complaint then the Special Branch of the police would come knocking on their door or open a file on them marked ‘Troublemakers’. But if we only grumble about things and never do anything about our grumbles, how can we expect things to change?

Of course, what people really wanted me to do was make their complaint for them, but that’s not how democracy works. We have to stand up and be counted if we want to change the world.

The people who came to Jesus were afraid to do that. They wanted things to change, but they wanted Jesus to sort the world out for them. And, of course, the society he lived in wasn’t a democracy like ours. The politicians of the day took a dim view of complainers, so they were asking him either to be very brave or very foolish - like the people protesting for change in Syria.

Jesus asked for a coin and asked the people whose picture was on it. ‘The Roman Emperor’s,’ they replied. ‘And what have the Romans ever done for us?’ Jesus asked. ‘Well they said, the Romans have given us aqueducts and sewers and roads. They’ve made the streets safe to walk in at night and they’ve brought us peace.’ ‘In that case,’ said Jesus, ‘If the Emperor asks you to pay taxes, shouldn’t you give him back some of the money you’ve received so that he can pay for those things?’

Politicians, or the organisations they run anyway - like councils or government departments, do a lot of good and I find that by and large the politicians are usually keen to help us if we ask them and if it’s in their power to do so. If they make a mistake, it’s usually by promising rather more help than they can actually deliver! But - with some exceptions - they don’t usually ignore people or refuse to help them.

Some time ago I was sent a circular by a council department called Buy For Toy Town, inviting me to bid to carry out a piece of research work. My understanding was that the Toy Town council had decided, whenever it could, to buy the things it needed from people who were working in Toy Town instead of buying them from people who worked outside. Of course, they could only do this if the things were good enough, but I thought our research would be good enough so I submitted a bid.

When the short-list was drawn up you can imagine how disappointed I was, to find that no one from Toy Town was on it, so I asked why not. The man in charge of Buy For Toy Town said, ‘Ah well, Buy For Toy Town really means, “Tell organisations in Toy Town that we’re going to be buying something,” it doesn’t mean we actually have to try and buy anything from people who work in Toy Town.’

Now I never take ‘no’ for an answer, so I wrote to the councillor in charge of Business, Jobs and growth in Toy Town and asked her what she thought Buy Four Toy Town should mean, and she decided to hold a meeting with the man in charge, to see if he could explain it better to her. I don't know how successful she was, sometimes changes in council policy can be very subtle and somewhat opaque, but councillors do try to be helpful. We can’t complain about them, or the policies carried out in their names, if we don’t give them a chance to put things right.

But Jesus went on to say something else. He said we should also give to God whatever belongs to God. It’s God who has really given us everything we enjoy, so we have a duty to be grateful to him and to stand up for what he wants to happen. And God wants everyone to be just, and merciful, and kind, and generous. So we have a duty to keep on saying that’s how our world should be, and working to change it.

There are no quick fixes

2011-10-17T17:24:00.001+01:00

Isaiah 25.1-9
Philippians 4.1-9

This passage from Isaiah is made up of two distinct halves. The first half celebrates God’s power to stand against ruthlessness and cruelty in order to protect the poor and needy.

It may often seem as though the ruthless and the cruel will always be on top, but God has long been planning their downfall. It is as certain and sure as the fall of Sirte in Libya, for instance.

Nonetheless, it seems an alien idea for worshippers to exalt God, or praise him, for turning cities into heaps of ruin and fortified towns into rubble. In recent history we have seen more than enough of this kind of thing - the sieges of Stalingrad and Sarajevo, the destruction of Dresden and Berlin, the terrible fate of the twin towers in New York. We know how many innocent people suffer or are killed, even when cruel nations are defeated. Does God really seek to win awe and respect through displays of shocking destructive power, like the assault on Baghdad at the beginning of the first Iraq War? Does he trample the cruel and the ruthless under his jack boots ‘like slush’, to quote from a little late in the prophecy? Or does he seek to defeat cruelty and ruthlessness on the cross, overcoming them more patiently, with the power of love?

The Prophet can’t wait for patient solutions to oppression. He knows from his own experience that the blast of the ruthless is like an icy storm or a scorching drought. It destroys everything in its path. The Prophet calls on God to provide immediate refuge to the victims. He imagines God riding at the head of the Soviet tanks racing to encircle the besiegers at Stalingrad, or the NATO forces which eventually broke the siege of Sarajevo. He wants quick fixes.

But our own experience, trying to neutralise the Taliban in Afghanistan and to defeat al-Qaida across the world, has shown that there are no short-cuts, no easy wins, in the battle against cruelty and ruthlessness. Their advocates can’t be permanently overcome or eliminated by bombing them back to the stone age, not least because that way of combatting them brings us down to their level and makes us appear just as cruel and ruthless. This is a lesson which seems to have been learnt at last by NATO. Having intervened in Libya to stop Colonel Gadaffi from destroying the city of Tripoli, NATO realised that its bombers have to be used very sparingly against the remnants of his forces.

The second half of the passage makes more comfortable reading, therefore, because it offers us a vision of peace. On Mount Zion the Lord God will prepare a wonderful end-time banquet which brings together all the different peoples of the world. The things which separate them - different languages, cultures and religions, mutual hostility and suspicion - will be swept away. At last people will recognise the true authority and greatness of God, and they will all rejoice together.

This celebration is about removing the indignities which people face each day and wiping away their tears. Even death itself will be destroyed.

In my job at Sheffield we have just had a matrix inspection visit. Matrix is a standard used to assess how organisations treat their customers or clients, and the standard has recently been made stronger by giving it a new emphasis on treating people with dignity and respect. Well the Lord God clearly invented the new matrix standard, at least judging by what the Prophet reveals in the second part of his vision.

The passage from Philippians has something in common with the prophecy but its focus is intimate and personal whereas the scale of Isaiah’s vision is global and epic. The one large scale reference point which the two passages share is that, in the preceding verses of Philipians, Paul has reminded his readers that we are all supposed to be citizens of heaven, and it is from heaven that we expect our deliverer to come. Isaiah would have approved that sentiment wholeheartedly.

But Paul’s focus is on personal disagreements rather than international conflicts and the violation of human rights. Euodia and Syntyche have fallen out over something, probably something trivial one suspects, and Paul appeals to them to settle their differences with the help of someone he calls his loyal comrade or companion. All we know about these three is that they were loyal and valued fellow-workers,so there’s a warning here that even the best of us can fall out with one another. Being of long-standing in the faith, and even being in leadership roles within the church, like these two women, doesn’t inoculate us from the natural human tendency to quarrel with those closest to us.

The antidote to this tendency is to stand firm in the Lord, to rejoice in the Lord - or find in him reasons to be glad, and to make sure we are known for our consideration of others. If we’re considerate, if we try to be happy, if we focus on the Lord, it should be harder for us to f all out with one another. Remembering that the Lord Jesus is near to us at all times, and immersing ourselves in prayer and contemplation, will help us to discover the deep peace of God, which is otherwise beyond all human understanding. And that same peace will enable us to fill our thoughts with all that is true, noble, just and pure, lovable and attractive, excellent and admirable.

If we can put these lessons into practice perhaps we shall find a better way of overcoming cruelty, ruthlessness, bullying, harshness and quarrelling than the quick fixes that the Prophet imagined in his vision.

I shall not be afraid

2011-10-09T13:18:00.001+01:00

Psalm 23, Matthew 22.1-14

The Twenty-third Psalm was written for people facing a challenging situation. They were probably returning exiles, going home to Palestine from Babylon after their liberation by the Persian Emperor Cyrus. The journey home will be difficult and dangerous for them, but they need not be afraid. The Lord God will be their shepherd, guiding them home just as a Palestinian shepherd leads his flock through the wilderness.

The Psalmist seems to insist that they shall lack nothing. That’s a strong statement, which might not match our own experience of hard times, although there are plenty of Christians who would argue that - if we show enough faith in God and are seeking to do his will - he will always provide for our needs.

That’s still not quite the same thing, of course, as saying we shall lack nothing. The New Revised Standard Version opts for a slightly softer translation, ‘I shall not want.’ Not being in want is quite different from lacking nothing. It means having enough, but not necessarily any more than enough. It means being able to get by.

There is also the question as to whether the Psalmist is describing the pilgrims’ physical experience or their spiritual experience. Will they never be tired, or hungry or thirsty? Or will they never be spiritually exhausted if they trust in God?

Are the green pastures and still waters actual oases which the Lord God will lead his pilgrims to on their journey, like up-market motorway service stations on a modern journey? Or are they a state of mind? The Psalm certainly talks about reviving the traveller’s spirit or soul, rather than the body. But then physical and spiritual refreshment sometime belong together.

The middle section of the psalm poses an awkward question. If the Lord God guides his pilgrims along right paths, how do they come to find themselves walking through the valley of the shadow of death or the valley of deepest darkness? Is this because dark times are unavoidable in life, even when we are being guided by the Good Shepherd? Is it also because nothing worth doing is ever easy? To win the race, do we have to break through the pain barrier on the way?

The Psalmist doesn’t say that the pilgrim will come to no harm, only that he or she should fear no harm or evil. Moods and tenses aren’t normally very important in English, are they? In every day speech, and also in writing, we slip easily from one tense or mood to another without even noticing. But the translators here opt quite deliberately for different moods and tenses when they set out to interpret what the Psalmist is saying. In practice that means the pilgrim should fear no harm, or will fear no evil, or fears no evil, depending on which version we read. But those are very different statements!

If I should fear no harm it doesn’t mean I won’t be worried when I go out on a very dark night. It just means that I am worrying unnecessarily, like elderly people living in a country village who are terrified of being attacked by muggers on their way back from the chapel. If God is with us we should laugh at danger, because even when we are attacked, or do face real risk, evil cannot harm the core of our being. The spiritual part of us is safe with God.

If, however, I will fear no evil, or I fear no evil, that means the true believer should never be afraid. Even when he or she is being wheeled into an operating theatre, the true believer looks on the bright side of life. Even when he or she is staring over the abyss, the true believer whistles a happy tune.

Well, maybe not. Maybe the Psalmist is just trying to encourage us, to bolster our spirits, to help us face down our fears. So even when we are afraid we can tell ourselves, ‘I will not fear!’ - like the children’s song, ‘I will not be afraid, for God has said he’ll be with me, so I will not be afraid’.

And telling ourselves that we will not fear isn’t simply a case of singing in the dark to keep our spirits up. We can derive real comfort from God’s presence with us. Even when we are in danger, his rod and staff are symbols of his protective power and his final authority over evil and death.

Here the Revised English Bible over-translates the psalm by saying ‘your shepherd’s staff and crook’ whereas the Psalmist has undoubtedly widened his horizons by now, to think about God as king as well as shepherd. In the ancient Near-East the rod and staff had become symbols of the king’s ability to protect his people, as well as symbols of the shepherd’s trade. So the promise of God’s presence gives the pilgrims a very real sense of God’s power to save them from ultimate harm.

Finally, of course, we have the symbol of God’s hospitality, which is like the welcome always offered by the Bedouin and other Near-Eastern people to travellers in need of somewhere to stay. The visitor can be assured of a warm welcome even when he or she is a stranger being pursued by enemies. The host will feel compelled first to anoint the guest with sweet-smelling oil, and bring out something good to eat, before asking awkward questions. It is the height of bad manners to turn someone away, and refuse to protect them, without hearing their side of the story. And when God is the host this is true even if enemies are prowling right around the perimeter of the camp. How much more, then, will God offer us his protection if we are pilgrims on the way to his Holy Land?

Jesus often compared God’s future reign to a great banquet at which all would be welcome if they chose to accept the invitation, and at the banquet in the Psalm the pilgrim’s cup overflows with goodness and mercy. Is this the heavenly banquet which lasts for ever? Or is it an earthly banquet whose promised bounty lasts only our whole life long, or ‘throughout the years to come’ as the Revised English Bible puts it? These more modern translations probably get closer to the Psalmist’s point of view, because he would not have believed in life after death.

The story of the great feast is also told in Luke’s Gospel, but Matthew’s version is much stranger and darker. In Luke’s account it isn’t a wedding banquet, and the excuses offered by the guests are all quite reasonable. Their only fate is to miss out on a cracking party and instead the banqueting hall is filled with the poor and the needy.

In contrast, Matthew ups the ante from the very beginning of his version, where the feast becomes a wedding banquet so that refusing the invitation is an even greater insult to the host. What’s more the guests don’t even bother to offer any excuses, even when they are twice invited to attend. They just get on with their lives as if nothing is happening, and - inexplicably - some of them even seize the messengers sent by the host and murder them.

Clearly we are no longer just in the realm of the parable. Matthew is comparing the ungrateful people on the guest list to the people of Israel, who had ignored or killed God’s prophets and put to death his anointed Messiah. Now they have been punished by the Romans who - acting as God’s avengers - have sent troops to put those murderers to death and burn their capital city. Now, instead, the Gentiles are being invited to the wedding, to take the places which should have belonged, by right, to the Jewish people had they been prepared to listen.

And what are we to make of the man who comes dressed in the wrong clothes? Is this a dreadful warning about wearing our Sunday best to church?

In the context of the story singling one guest out to be tied up and ejected from the banquet simply doesn’t make sense, because everyone there seems to have been collected in off the streets without any notice at all, and good and bad people alike have been invited, so surely none of them are dressed in wedding finery and many of them do not really deserve to be there at all. They are there just because they said, ‘Yes to the invitation’.

Perhaps we are meant to imagine that the host offered the guests a complete change of clothes, or a wash and brush up, as they entered his home - an equivalent of the anointing with oil described by the Psalmist. If so, this particular guest has had the temerity to refuse the offer. He has stayed in his ordinary, everyday clothes.

Matthew, is I think, already well on the way to turning Jesus’ story into a sermon. He wants us to understand that all are welcome at God’s end-time banquet, but only if we are willing to be changed by God’s grace into a new creation, putting on righteousness like a garment in obedience to God’s will.

So what do these two passages have to say to us? Like the pilgrims who first heard the Twenty-third Psalm we live in challenging times, and like the guests in the wedding story we may think this is not the right moment for frivolity or partying, or that we can’t afford a new suit of clothes. The guests who rudely refused the original invitations to the wedding were more concerned with making a living than celebrating someone else’s good fortune.

I think that whatever Matthew may have made of it, the message of Jesus’ original parable is about getting our priorities right. No matter how tough things might get, or how busy we might become, putting God first is still the absolute priority. And, if we are prepared to let go and let God, we shall still find there is much to celebrate even in the darkest times.

The psalm is about trust, but whether we think it promises to keep us totally safe from harm, and even from death or other threats to our happiness, or whether we think it offers us the spiritual strength and comfort to endure adversity and overcome it with God as our companion, will depend on our interpretation. There is lots of adversity out there at the moment, isn’t there? Shrinking pensions, rising unemployment, personal stresses and strains, and all the normal challenges that are part and parcel of life, such as ill health, or relationship problems. And believers overseas face much bigger stresses and strains than we do - from warfare, pestilence, famine and flood.

With the good shepherd alongside us we can journey on without fear. The right paths along which the Good Shepherd must lead us do not take us around trouble and danger - but he is with us whatever may befall, and we can be sure that the paths he bids us take with him are necessary and unavoidable. Wherever our pilgrimage takes us we can know that he will comfort and sustain us in this life, and - at journey’s end - we shall sit at his banqueting table.

God's Not Fair!

2011-10-02T15:51:00.005+01:00

Jonah 3.10 - 4.11, Philippians 1.21-30, Matthew 20.1-16

All Age version

Have you ever said, ‘It’s not fair’?

I’m sure you have because none of us would be human if at some time in our lives we hadn’t said, ‘It’s not fair!’

Why do I always get the smaller half?
Why do you only get cross with me and never with her?
Why do you let him play with my toys, or sit on my chair, or annoy me?
Why can’t we have a dog, or a cat, or a rabbit, or a guinea pig? All my friends have got one!
Why do I always have to lose?
It’s not fair!

But then life isn’t fair. We don’t all get exactly the same chances. Sometimes we just have to make the best of what we’ve got. If we envy other people or allow ourselves to feel bitter and hard done by, we won’t be able to enjoy life and get the best out of it.

And God’s not fair. He likes to give people a helping hand, an extra chance, all the help that they need in order to make something of their lives. Sometimes that means he wants to help us, but sometimes it means that he wants us to make an extra effort to help other people less fortunate than ourselves.

That’s the message of the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. God’s not fair!

Adult Version

God's not fair! The people of Nineveh were notorious for their wickedness and cruelty. The Assyrian Empire, which had conquered most of the Middle East from its base in Nineveh, did not believe in avoiding collateral damage. Its invading armies burned down all the towns and cities which resisted them, enslaved all their women and children and beheaded all the men. Whole nations were deported in an attempt to erase their identity. Then the Assyrians carved monuments depicting and celebrating their war crimes.

Contrast that with the approach of the Persian ruler Cyrus, not long afterwards. He still dealt sternly with people who stood in his way but he was magnanimous in victory. When some of his opponents decided to negotiate surrender terms he spared them and the towns they were defending. Famously, Cyrus was tolerant of, and even encouraged, different faiths and cultures and celebrated his magnanimity in allowing thousands of exiles to return home to the lands from which they had been taken.

The Book of Jonah is a story written long after these events to illustrate the breadth of God's love and acceptance, and the point of the story is that God's not fair. He forgives people even when they do not deserve to be forgiven, even when their wealth and their lifestyle have been built on systematic cruelty, vindictiveness and intolerance of difference and dissent.

God's unfairness made Jonah very upset. He had travelled hundreds of miles to warn the Ninevites that their city would soon be overthrown. It wasn't something he wanted to do. It was something he felt impelled to do by God, so he was appalled when God forgave the Ninevites. To him it was an example of cheap grace.

It's not that Jonah was ignorant of God's true nature. He knew already that God was merciful, slow to anger and ready to forgive. That's why he had been so reluctant to travel to Nineveh in the first place. He had feared right from the outset that it would be a wasted journey, that the destruction of Nineveh would not go ahead and that the Ninevites would be let off too lightly.

Of course, if we look back to the beginning of the story we shall find that Jonah had misunderstood his call. Jonah had assumed that God was calling him to preach to the Ninevites about their impending doom, so that they could make their peace with God and prepare to meet their maker, but as the story unfolds God shows him that his real mission was always to invite the Ninevites to change direction and alter their destiny.

This is demonstrated by the parable with which the story ends. If Jonah can regret the senseless destruction of a plant he should be able to understand God's generous impulse to spare hundreds of thousands of people and give them another chance.

Nonetheless, of course, God is unfair. I've already described the notoriety of the Assyrians but perhaps it's easier to get a handle on the unfairness of God's grace and mercy if we bring it bang up to date, because the meaning of the story of Jonah for us is that God loves and wants to save all of the people whom we really don't like.

He loves the Taliban, and Muslim extremists in general. And at the other end of the political spectrum he loves Colonel Gaddafi's dwindling band of supporters.

He loves rioters. He loves people on Anti-Social Behaviour orders. He loves squatters. He loves people who break the planning laws by establishing encampments for gypsies and travellers on greenbelt land. But, at the other end of the spectrum, he loves merchant bankers as well.

He loves all the people who have deliberately dropped out of the formal economy, the so-called feral under class or illegal migrant workers, but he also loves members of the BNP and the English Defence League. He loves fox hunters, but he also loves hunt saboteurs.

Last week at synod we were introduced to a hymn from Singing the Faith, the new hymn book of the Methodist Church which will be published later this month. In the middle it contained a verse with some even more startling things to say about God’s unfairness:

For just and unjust, a place at the table,

Abuser, abused, with need to forgive,

in anger, in hurt, a mindset of mercy,

for just and unjust a new way to live.

The hymn writer is saying that God even loves people who are found guilty of abuse, and that the victims of the abuser need to be able to find it in their hearts to forgive too - making an almost superhuman effort to overcome their anger and hurt, an effort which really we have almost no right to ask of them. But this is not just the writer’s own opinion, because the words are now included in an official hymn book of the Methodist Church.

This year the Church also adopted new policies on safeguarding children, young people and vulnerable adults from harm. Conference takes this very seriously and expects us to protect everyone from abuse. But the inclusion of this hymn in our new hymn book shows that we’re not supposed to share the sort of vindictive and unforgiving attitude which tabloid newspapers encourage. We’re called to adopt a mindset of mercy, because God loves and wants to save even those people whom the rest of society chooses to detest and condemn.

And the same goes for the unjust. God loves employers who stretch the law to the very limit in order to exploit and mistreat their work force, sacking members of staff just before they qualify for legal protection from unfair dismissal or denying them their rights in other ways. He loves unscrupulous landlords who charge extortionate rents for damp and dilapidated property. In fact he loves people whom we might think do not deserve any love, because, you see, God simply isn’t fair!

However, the words of the hymn also remind us that there is a caveat, a crucial qualification or limitation to God’s mercy and generosity. To be forgiven and accepted we have to embrace God’s new way to live. That’s why the Ninevites were spared. They weren’t forgiven in spite of their terrible crimes. They weren’t given a free hand to carry on as before. God showed mercy to them only because they repented - because they changed their ways and went in a radical new direction. They accepted that they needed a new way to live.

The parable from Matthew’s Gospel continues the theme of God’s unfairness but develops it in a different way. The Book of Jonah shines the spotlight on God’s love for people who had a notorious reputation for depravity and callousness whereas Jesus shines the spotlight on God’s willingness to forgive people even when they leave it to the very last moment to turn over a new leaf.

Matthew is wrong. It’s not that the last shall be first, and the first last. That saying doesn’t really belong with this parable. Its true meaning is that there’s no hierarchy at all in the kingdom of God, no pecking order. Everyone who turns to God for forgiveness is equally loved and equally rewarded. People who have spent a lifetime burnishing their halos are on the same footing as those who repented only after doing the most terrible things, or after doing nothing at all to make their lives worthwhile. Leading a good life, or a just life, is not something which we do in order to win favour with God. It has to be its own reward.

The parable is clearly not a guide to good labour relations. Despite what I said earlier about bad employers who mistreat their staff, the owner of the vineyard certainly hasn’t got the right approach to getting the best from his work force. How demoralising to find that if you work hard all day you won’t get any more reward than someone who has only just tumbled out of bed.

However, if hard work is its own reward then there is at least one practical lesson in the story. It’s best to get one of the ten happiest jobs, then you won’t mind if you end up working harder than other people, because you’ll just be happier than they are.

According to a survey in the United States the happiest job is being a clergyperson closely followed by being a firefighter, a physiotherapist and a special needs’ teacher. All of these people don’t mind how hard they have to work because it makes them feel happy.

Being an author is also in the top ten, presumably because you get to sit down all day just writing down whatever comes into your head. Artists of all kinds are also pretty happy. Psychologists may not be able to make other people feel happy, but they’re pretty pleased with themselves. And people who get to drive giant bull-dozers, diggers and JCBs also have fun at work.

The oddest job in the happiest top ten is people who sell financial services, presumably because they have somehow avoided all the misselling scandals that have dogged the financial services industry in the UK, but most of the other jobs in the list seem to make people feel happier because they also make them feel that their work is worthwhile. Up to a point, at least, the more work they do, the more meaningful their lives seem to be.

Contrast the happiest workers with the ten most unhappy careers in America, which are things like director of information technology, director of sales and marketing, product manager, senior web designer, technical specialist and marketing manager. In theory these are high status jobs with fancy titles, but people complained that they couldn’t really see the point of what they were doing.

So if the parable has a practical message it must be that employers need to make their work force feel so good about their work that they would feel motivated to do it, and do it well, no matter long the job took and whatever the other rewards might be.

It’s no wonder that clergy people are the happiest workers in America. We only have to look at St Paul to see a happy person at work. ‘It is my joy to suffer for you,’ he tells the congregation at Philippi. He feels he has a really strong sense of vocation. He is doing the task ‘assigned to him by God’. He is helping to complete the work which Jesus Christ began by ‘putting God’s word into effect.’ He is ‘teaching and instructing everyone in all the ways of wisdom.’ No wonder, then, that he feels like ‘toiling strenuously with all the energy and power of Christ.’

The tragedy of worklessness is that it denies people the opportunity to feel useful, valued and worthwhile, that their lives have a sense of purpose and that they are making a useful contribution to society. That’s also the tragedy of people who feel their work is pointless and doesn’t really make a useful contribution to the general good.

That’s why God acts unfairly. It’s not because he’s an immature teenager - like the petulant God depicted in a recent novel by the author Meg Rossoff, nor because he’s simply fickle and erratic in his dealings with the human race. It’s because he wants to give everyone the best possible chance to make something of their lives, to find their vocation, to share in the work of creating a better world.

The Hour of Crisis

2011-09-08T13:09:00.000+01:00

Romans 13.8-14
Matthew 18.15-20

‘The hour of crisis’, is a phrase that can have several meanings. Perhaps uppermost in Paul’s mind was the idea that it can mean the end of human history and God’s final intervention to judge the world.

A slew of recent New Age books has been predicting exactly this, for December the 21st 2012. This is the date when a 5,000 year cycle will come to an end in the calendars of the ancient Mayan civilization of Central America. The Mayans probably saw this originally as a an opportunity to have a huge celebration before the calendar was reset to the Year Zero again, but pundits have variously predicted either a global catastrophe or - at the other end of the spectrum - a new equilibrium between the earth and its inhabitants, and perhaps even between the masculine and feminine impulses at work in our society.

St Paul didn’t know anything about the Mayans, but he had a similar mindset. He thought the end time for human beings was absolutely imminent. ‘The hour of crisis’ was upon the human race. In other words, the coming of Jesus had triggered a series of events which would culminate in the end of history and the moment of judgement.

And yet his words summon to mind a phrase often used by Jesus, at least in John’s account. ‘The time is coming, indeed it is already here...’ says Jesus in John Chapter 4, talking about the time to offer true worship to God instead of empty words and gestures.

Again - in Chapter 5 - Jesus says, ‘In very truth I tell you, the time is coming, indeed it is already here, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall come to life.’ Is he talking here about the end of history, when the dead shall be judged alongside the living, or is he talking about people who are spiritually dead and who are now being given a once in a lifetime opportunity to wake up from slumber?

In John Chapter 7 Jesus escapes arrest for his outrageous teaching because - the Gospel writer tells us - ‘his appointed hour had not yet come’. We’re getting more personal here, of course. John is not talking now about a general day of reckoning, or an opportunity for ordinary people to decide their fate, but about Jesus’ own personal destiny. But in John Chapter 12 Jesus goes on to make clear that his moment of destiny is certainly not a bad thing; it’s an unreservedly good thing. ‘The hour has come,’ he says, ‘for the Son of Man to be glorified.’

This is a different way of interpreting the moment of truth. It now becomes a tipping point in history, like light breaking into a dark room. For the first time it allows human beings to see what really counts. Is this also part of Paul’s thinking as he draws on this evocative phrase?

Of course, the same idea appears from time to time in the other Gospels too. Matthew enhances Mark’s account of the betrayal of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane by adding the words, ‘The hour has come! The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners!’ This addition to the text emphasises that Jesus’ arrest is no mere accident of history, it is meant to be. It is part of the warp and weft of God’s plan of salvation.

But, like the cycles of history in the Mayan calendar, the ‘hour of crisis’ is something which recurs, isn’t it? And it comes at different times for different nations and different individuals.

1940 was one of Britain’s hours of crisis, when we stood alone in Europe against the victorious armies of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. If we journey back in time, the Spanish Armada was another. We could even go back as far as the Viking invasions of Britain if we wanted to, which was a very real ‘hour of crisis’ for Christians at the time.

But unless we’re historians, it’s probably more productive to focus on recurring personal moments of crisis - the times when each one of us is forced to consider what really matters to us and what we really believe. In the Gospels we see that meeting with Jesus provokes a moment of crisis in people’s lives. They have to decide how they’re going to respond to his challenge to their lives. And the cross is a moment of crisis or judgement for our whole value system. It turns upside down the normal values of our society and the normal measures of success and failure.

Paul sees all human experience as a struggle between the unspiritual side of human nature - our physical needs and appetites - and more other-worldly impulses and aspirations, our spiritual calling. In this he is only following the thinking of the majority of the thinkers and philosophers of his time. And perhaps not so much has changed. There is a widespread view today that human nature is governed by our selfish genes, the difference being that allowing our human nature to dictate our behaviour is no longer seen as necessarily a bad thing to do.

Paul feels that if we give in to our human desires the inevitable outcome will be drunkenness, sexual licence, quarreling and jealousy. But today people are more likely to feel that giving in to our desires, and doing what we really want to do, might make us happier and more contented, and therefore more at peace with our neighbours and our families, and more useful members of society.

I suspect the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes. Much harm was done at various times in history when Christians took the advice of St Paul too much to heart and veered towards a harsh and unbending sort of puritanism. On the other hand, no society can function well if the majority of people think only about their own pleasure and don’t care about anyone else.

Fortunately, Paul offers us an excellent and enduring yardstick for assessing whether our behaviour is spiritual or not, whether it is the right response to the time of crisis or falls short and finds us wanting. And that yardstick is love.

Paul is the kind of person who would subscribe to Shakespeare's advice, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loseth both itself and friend.’

Like Shakespeare, he certainly wouldn’t have subscribed to the consumer society. But in one respect only he believes in open-handed generosity, and that is when it comes to love.

I think the Revised English Bible over-translates St Paul’s terse observation - trying to make rather more of it than is really there. St Paul actually says something like, ‘Owe no one anything, except to love one another.’ But that doesn’t quite make sense, does it? It could seem to imply that it’s all right for Christians to receive love from others without actually giving it in return. That’s clearly not right, so the Revised English Bible supplies a more acceptable meaning: ‘Remember the debt of love you owe one another.’

However, as one New Testament professor has put it, St Paul’s real meaning is probably that there’s no balance sheet when it comes to love. We are just supposed to keep on giving, without taking into account how much we have received. And, in any case, loving other people means accepting them and opening ourselves up them to such an extent that we are ready both to give and to receive at the same time, instead of being stand-offish, or reserved, or self-contained. Love is about sharing.

Long after the time of Paul, St Augustine tried to sum up what Paul means here in the memorable phrase, ‘If you love, you can do as you like.’ Paul himself seems to be quoting the teaching of Jesus, that all the commandments can be summed up in just two, to love God and our neighbour as much as we love ourselves. Except that, interestingly, Paul overlooks the bit about loving God.

Paul is saying that - properly understood - there isn’t any conflict between self-fulfilment and Christianity. We can and should pursue our own well-being. We can and should try to make the most of life. We can and should love and care about ourselves. But this will teeter over into self-indulgence and become negative and unsatisfying if we forget that we must also love other people as much as we love ourselves.

The challenge which meeting Jesus throws down, in Paul’s view, is the challenge to consider what sort of celebration should mark the moment of truth, or the hour of crisis in our lives. Is it the opportunity for a desperate and dissolute round of party-going or should it be the signal for an out-pouring of genuine generosity, of loving and sharing with our neighbours?

Matthew’s Gospel tries, to explain, here in today’s passage, how we should deal with circumstances where loving our neighbours doesn’t seem to do quite enough to put things right between us. Suppose we feel that they have gone too far, and done something of which we really must entirely disapprove? Suppose the relationship between us has completely broken down? Loving the other person in some vagues, wishy-washy way isn’t going to put things right between us, is it, even if we feel that we want to put things right.

The passage that goes before this advice is the story of the lost sheep. Is Matthew commenting here on what the parable means for our day-to-day practice? Or is Jesus still speaking directly to us?

Either way, the advice we’re given is to try to repair the damage when relationships get broken down. Brothers and sisters inevitably do fall out with one another, but that breakdown need not be irretrievable.

ACAS, the government’s Advisory, Conciliaton and Arbitration Service for employers and employees, has a set of guidelines which have borrowed Matthew’s solution almost word for word. We are to start by trying to sort things out informally. Most problems can be resolved that way, says ACAS. Failing that we have to hold a formal meeting, where evidence is kept and witness statements come into play, or where perhaps we get someone in to arbitrate or conciliate between us, to see if we can agree a way forward. And only failing that do we need to take our disputes to a tribunal and sort them out the hard way.

That’s pretty much Matthew’s advice about how to deal with disputes within the church family, except that he adds a vital extra ingredient. Jesus will be there with us, helping us to decide things fairly and reasonably, and with love. And if we open ourselves to the real presence of Jesus, even in our disputes, then what we decide will be endorsed in the court of heaven.

Can a moment of crisis in our relationships be turned, then, into an opportunity for personal growth and discovery? Can self-giving love conquer all? Can the quarrels and petty jealousies of life in community be smoothed over? Can we find personal fulfilment in giving as well as in receiving, in opening ourselves up to other people as well as in voyages of personal discovery? When Jesus is in the midst of us, we can.

God's message to a nation rocked by riots

2011-08-29T11:26:00.000+01:00

Isaiah 51.1-6
Matthew 16.13-20

The opening verses of Isaiah chapter 56 are like recent events in reverse. Some young people around the country took advantage of a spot of lawlessness to do what was wrong and to seek their own personal gain. When they set out they certainly did not consider their law-abiding and God-fearing ancestors. Instead they headed down to the local electrical store or off-licence, determined to help themselves.

Isaiah speaks of ruins being turned back into an Eden, a place of plenty and ease, gladness and joy, whereas on our television screens the streets in some parts of London, Manchester and Birmingham were turned from prosperous shopping centres into arid and empty ruins where ordinary passers-by felt suddenly vulnerable and afraid. Isaiah talks of melody breaking out. Our experience has been of sudden discord.

At the end of this morning’s Old Testament lesson God addresses the people directly through the Prophet, and urges them to listen to his message of good news and deliverance. He talks about light breaking through, about imminent victory, about the everlasting protection offered by his strong arm.

In striking contrast, at the end of the recent episode of social unrest, we have been offered a host of commentaries and theories to explain what has gone wrong, ranging from the growing divide between rich and poor in our acquisitive society, to criticism of the Police for, on the one hand, losing the trust of local people but, on the other hand, being too soft on the rioters. There have also been complaints that we don’t teach enough ethics and morality in our schools. The message has been about darkness, about failure, and about the need for the strong arm of the law to crack down on the offenders and give them harsh sentences to deter others from trying the same thing.

Actually, a very similar thing happened in the aftermath of the Bradford riots, when first time offenders also got very long sentences, sometimes for doing no more than throwing a stone towards the police lines even when it fell far short of the target. But David Boyle from the New Economics Foundation said of last week’s riots, ‘These were not riots of rage’ like the rioting in Bradford and other northern towns, ‘they were riots of greed.’ On our TV screens, he said, we witnessed ‘a valueless materialism that allowed hundreds of young people to go on violent and thieving rampages’.

David Cameron and Tony Blair have had contrasting things to say about the riots. Tony Blair warned against elevating our response to the riots ‘into a highfalutin wail about a Britain that has lost its way morally.’ If we did this, he said, we would ‘depress ourselves unnecessarily, trash our own reputation abroad, and worst of all, miss the chance to deal with the problem in the only way that will work. Britain as a whole is not in the grip of some general “moral decline”, he insisted. ‘The truth is that many of these people are from families that are profoundly dysfunctional, operating on completely different terms from the rest of society, either middle class or poor.’ In contrast, David Cameron thinks ‘There are deep problems in our society that have been growing for a long time: a decline in responsibility, a rise in selfishness, a growing sense that individual rights come before anything else.’ For once, I’m inclined to agree with Mr Cameron.

But is this outburst of selfishness and greed entirely surprising, when the same level of naked greed is often equally evident in older people, too? In their own lawless and destructive way the young rioters were simply copying some of their elders. As Professor Colin Talbot from Manchester University said, we can see excessive greed at work among a good number of the people who lead our society too: ‘financiers, directors, derivatives traders, newspaper moguls and others who have decided that the “normal rules” do not apply to them.’

How can we get back from this abysmal picture to the sort of future promised by Isaiah? Well, last week I was sent a hymn about the riots. Surely that must be a first! Actually, I think it’s more like a poem than a hymn. The writer, Gary Hopkins, says:

I dream this world will wake up and see the grief and pain –

lives broken by division, the barriers that remain –

to see that all our hatred brings misery and tears

and conflict with each other which only stokes our fears.

Yet there must be another way to be the human race;

together we can find it and build a better place;

A place where lives are cherished and no one has it rough,

where no one is neglected and each one has enough.

This dream will be accomplished in give and not in take,

through sharing with each other not being ‘on the make’;

A world of peace and justice, with love for everyone,

where hand in hand, united, we all shall live as one.

After watching shops and homes going up in flames, pedestrians being robbed and even a motor cyclist being dragged from his bike so that it can be ridden away by another member of the gang, we might find Isaiah’s vision, and the words of the poet, too optimistic and other-worldly to entirely reassure us. But Isaiah seems to have foreseen this response, for at the end of the passage he tells us that when peace dissolves and certainties are shaken, or even if the earth were to be destroyed and its inhabitants were to die like flies, God’s saving power is still going to be there to catch us as we fall.

Today’s Gospel passage actually makes us actors in the drama. Not only will God save his people, but we - the members of his Church - will have an active part to play, for Peter makes the astounding claim that the good news of God’s deliverance, which Isaiah had announced, is not just a pious hope, a dream or a vision, it is a concrete reality which has come true in Jesus.

If Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed, that means he is God’s saving power, God’s arm, in action in human history. When Peter makes this profession of faith Jesus then responds with an even more amazing claim. He says that Peter is the rock on which he will build his community, and even the powers of death will never be able to conquer it.

There are two ways of understanding this. First, there’s the Roman Catholic interpretation, that Jesus is talking specifically about Peter and his successors. They are to be the leaders and shepherds of the Christian community, the rock which will help to secure its faithfulness down the ages. But alternatively, Peter can be understood as a representative of all believers. When we come to trust that Jesus is the realisation of God’s promises then we too become part of the rock on which Jesus is able to build his community on earth.

The task of the community of believers is to hold the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Traditionally, that was interpreted by many Christians as giving them the authority to decide who was in favour with God and who was out of favour, who was a true believer and who was a heretic or outside the true Church. It’s a bit like imaging the Church as a vast international court-room with the power to hand out exemplary sentences to alleged wrongdoers.

‘You stole a bottle of water? One month in gaol!’ ‘You planned a riot in Nantwich, did you? Well, we’ll lock you in a cell and throw away the key!’

Roman Catholics have gone even further, and seen these verses as entrusting the Holy Father with the power to rule infallibly on issues of faith and morals. But the verses could be understood in another way.

For the last five years I have had a large bulky chain fastened to the crossbar of my bike by an equally chunky padlock. I kept meaning to borrow some bolt cutters to take the chain off, because it was quite a nuisance. But then, while doing some spring cleaning in the garage, I found the missing key to the padlock! What a difference it makes to be able to remove the chain. Surely the mission of the Church is not to lock people up or tie them down. It’s to set them free to be their true selves as part of the community of e and trust in Jesus.

Historically, of course, one of the roles undertaken by the Church was to set parameters for people’s lives, to give them the moral and ethical guidelines which commentators now feel are so sadly lacking. Perhaps our ancestors in the faith undertook this task too enthusiastically at times, so that Christians became more closely identified with forbidding things than with allowing people to be what they are truly meant to be. However, the modern permissive society has gone to the other extreme. Leaving people to feel that they are free to do whatever they can get away with, even running riot, or that the “normal rules” do not apply to them, is actually not empowering or liberating. It leads ultimately to a state of lawlessness and free-for-all which is arguably just as bad, if not worse, than Christianity at its most repressive and puritanical.

But, of course, we should not be appealing to the lost values of Victorian England to justify believing in Jesus and his Church. Instead, we should be invoking the vision of Isaiah. If we believe in Jesus and become an active part of the believing community of his friends and followers, the rock which he established, we can help to usher in God’s deliverance, his gentle rule, his everlasting protection, his saving power.

Taking things for granted

2011-08-29T11:01:00.003+01:00

Romans 12:1-8

Raise one eyebrow
Lick your elbow
Twitch your nose
Wiggle your ears
Touch your nose or chin with your tongue
Make a fist and put it in your mouth
Tickle yourself

Bend your middle finger and place the rest of your hand on a table or on a flat surface like a book, or even on the back of a chair. Then lift your thumb, and your index finger, and little finger. No problem, right? Now try the ring finger.

Lift your right foot a few inches from the floor and then begin to move it in a clockwise direction. While you’re doing this, use a finger your right index finger to draw a number 6 in the air... Your foot will turn in an anticlockwise direction and there’s nothing you can do about it!

Stare at the middle of the black and white picture, (if you can, look at the little cross or plus sign), for at least 30 seconds and then look at a wall near you, you... You should see a bright spot which twinkles a few times, and then do you see?

Most of the time the different parts of our bodies work so well together that we don’t notice what most of them are doing for us. We take it for granted.

St Paul said it’s a bit like that when we belong to a family, or to any community of people, including a church. It’s not until people stop doing the things they always do to help us, day by day or week by week, that we notice how much we have come to depend on them.

St Paul gives us two different examples. He reminds us, for instance, that different parts of our bodies have highly specialised functions - like the light sensors in our eyes, which are easily tricked when we stare for too long at the same black and white image; or the part of our brain which controls rhythm and movement - which is quickly upset if we try to draw in the air two completely different patterns at the same time, one with our hand and the other with our foot. We seldom notice these different parts of our body until something out of the ordinary happens, but then we realise just how much we depend upon them all of the time.

It’s a bit like having a grandmother who usually does all the cooking and a grandfather who usually does all the gardening when we go to visit them, or it could be a grandfather who does the cooking and a grandmother who does the gardening. But anyway, what if one of them was suddenly taken poorly - with a bad headache - and the other one had to take over the cooking, while trying to dig up the potatoes and pick the runner beans all at the same time, or vice versa?

And in a church it’s a bit like having some people who provide the music, and others who count the collection, and others who give people a welcome at the door. If one of those people didn’t turn up on the day they were expected we would very soon notice, although most of the time we might take them for granted.

The other example that St Paul gives is the way that some people have extraordinary abilities that no one else - or very few other people - share. Some people, for instance, can wiggle their ears, or lift their ring finger when their middle finger is bent, but most of us can’t! St Paul says that we need to make use of the special gifts that people have. Now wiggling your ears might not have much value, except for making other people laugh, but being able to teach people, or give them a lead in a difficult situation, or use special skills to make something beautiful, or even simply to be patient and kind to awkward or unhappy people - these are very special gifts which we ought to value very highly, because many people can’t do these things, no matter how hard they might try.

All of this leads St Paul to say that we ought to treasure the whole of our bodies and treat every part of them with love and respect, even the parts which we normally don’t notice very much. And the same is true of our families, or of the other groups we belong to, including the Church. We ought to treasure every member because each person has a unique part to play and we would miss them if they were no longer there.

The True Bread and The Prosperous Vineyard

2011-08-01T17:03:00.004+01:00

Psalm 80
John 6.24-35

The old Testament reading in the evening lectionary is the story of Solomon’s encounter with the Queen of Sheba. You can read it for yourselves in 1 Kings chapter 10, but it’s not a passage which lends itself to preaching because there’s not very much to remark upon so we haven’t read it tonight.

The most notable thing in the passage is that the Queen of Sheba asks Solomon enigmatic questions. In the Qur’an Solomon persuades her to adopt the worship of the one true God, but in the Bible she merely praises God and the way that God has blessed Solomon’s reign. Apart from that the passage seems to be telling us that Solomon’s wealth, although it was amazing, was as nothing compared to his wisdom. In that sense, 1 Kings chapter 10 echoes this morning’s reading from Isaiah 55. Wisdom is free. There is no need to spend lots of money trying to find it and anyone who tries to buy wisdom and God’s favour is on a fool’s errand.

And so we turn, instead, to the psalms and to Psalm 80 with its repeated refrain, ‘Restore us, O God of hosts; let your face shine, that we may be saved.’ The psalm begins by celebrating God’s leadership. He has been a good shepherd to the tribes of Israel in times past, but now - in the words of Roy Orbison - God has ‘left Israel standing all alone, alone and crying.’ No wonder Israel’s enemies laugh her to scorn.

The Psalmist then evokes one of the Bible’s favourite images for Israel - the vineyard planted by God in Palestine. The Psalmist reminds us how God drove out the people and animals which had occupied the land before, patiently cleared the ground of weeds and stones, built a wall around it and then planted the vines, which flourished and grew so tall and strong that soon even mountains were in the vineyard’s shade, and it stretched from the Jordan River in the east to the Mediterranean Sea in the west, or perhaps from the source of the River in the north to the Dead Sea, where it finally empties, in the South. But then, inexplicably, God broke down the walls he had so painstakingly built and allowed outsiders to come in and steal the fruit. Worse still, wild boar from the forest were able to uproot the vines and wild animals came and ate them up. Finally, what the animals didn’t eat, and the thieves didn’t steal, was set on fire and destroyed by Israel’s enemies. The psalm creates a picture of utter devastation, from which God appears to have averted his eyes.

No wonder, then, that the Psalmist concludes it is time now for God to send Israel a new leader, a Messiah, someone he has chosen and marked for greatness and who knows his will. But at this point the Psalmist suddenly admits - almost in passing - that what has gone wrong in the past is not really God’s fault after all. Israel has provoked God into abandoning her. She has turned away from him, much as the people in the market place - in this morning’s reading from Isaiah chapter 55 - had been spending their money at the wrong stalls, buying the wrong kind of food and drink.

Now, however says the Psalmist, the people of Israel have learnt their lesson, they will never turn away from God again; although, the Psalmist’s tone isn’t as contrite as perhaps it ought to be. At the very end of the psalm he tries to strike a bargain with God. ‘Give us life and we will call upon your name.’ Surely this offer is back to front? Shouldn’t Israel call on God’s name in the hope that he will restore her life?

All we can suppose is that the nation has endured so much suffering that this degree of faith and trust is no longer possible. God will have to act first. He will have to send his Messiah to save her before she will be able to summon enough faith to respond. And, of course, isn’t that exactly what did happen with Jesus. God sent him to a world which was living in a spiritual darkness so deep that its people did not even recognise him, although the world owed its very being to him. He came to God’s own people, and they would not accept him. ‘But to all who did accept him, to those who put their trust in him, the Messiah gave the right to become children of God.’

In the background to all of our lectionary readings today has been the famous story of the feeding of the five thousand. We have heard - in the prophecy from Isaiah chapter 55 - how God wants to give us free food and drink, but it’s no ordinary food, it’s the spiritual sustenance of a new covenant with him, mediated by a new Messiah. John’s Gospel, more emphatically even than Matthew’s Gospel, wants its readers to understand that the feeding miracle is also a spiritual story, a story about the Eucharist, a story of holy communion with God through Jesus.

In tonight’s reading Jesus has left the place where the miracle happened, but the crowd has pursued him, hungry for more signs and wonders. To Jesus’ disappointment, however, it is the wondrous nature of the miracle which has them in its thrall. They have come to him hoping to be offered more of his wonderful free bread. What they have failed to understand is the significance of the miracle. It isn’t about giving people an endless supply of free food - otherwise we would be able to solve the food crisis in the Horn of Africa just by offering up prayers for another miracle. Instead, the feeding of the five thousand is a sign that Jesus is able to offer the bread which lasts for ever , the food of eternal life.

Actually, I’m particularly interested in this idea because I make my own bread. I think it tastes much better than anything you can buy in the shops. And, despite the fact that it contains no preservatives, my bread also lasts much longer than shop bought bread. It doesn’t go stale as quickly and it hardly ever gets mouldy. But the bread which Jesus offers is better even than this. It is the true bread from heaven, which brings life to the world. Whoever eats it will never be hungry again.

This is better not only than my homemade bread, but even than the manna which God sent from heaven when the people of Israel were wandering in the Wilderness. The manna lasted only for a few hours. It couldn’t be stored. But holy communion is a gift for life. It is a sign that Jesus will always be with his Church.

Going back to the psalm just for a moment, perhaps there are times when we feel like the Psalmist. We feel that the Church needs to be restored, that her defences have been broken down, that God is no longer watching over us and he doesn’t care about our plight. A wave of secularism washes over us, and over the people around us, and we feel as though our Christian heritage is being uprooted, and trodden underfoot, and pillaged.

Worse than that, people with very different aims and ideals from Christianity have nonetheless claimed our heritage for their own. The mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik wrote in his manifesto, ‘If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.’

Breivik’s warped view of the Christian moral platform means that, as Christians, we now find ourselves in the same uncomfortable place as Muslims found themselves in after 9/11, 7/7 and the Madrid bombings - seeking to disassociate ourselves from people who claim to stand under the banner of our faith when we can see clearly - even if the media cannot - that they are not real believers at all. Breivik is not, as first reported, a Christian fundamentalist; he is someone who, in the words of the Psalmist, was passing along the way when he plucked its fruit.

Like the enemies who had attacked Israel, destroyed her independence and scattered her people, Breivik burned with fire and cut down the stock which God had planted. The modern state of Norway has a history of peacefulness which owes a great deal to its Christian heritage, and we might feel that we wish to join the Psalmist in calling on God to rebuke Breivik and people like him with his stern countenance, so that they might perish.

But the one at God’s right hand, the Messiah whom God made strong for himself, does not cause his enemies to perish. He only asks that we might believe he has not abandoned us. The cross reminds us that he himself faced opposition, misunderstanding, prejudice and ignorance, and overcame them by standing firm against them in love.

We must continue patiently rebuilding the broken down walls of the vineyard, replanting the vines and clearing the ground, and restoring God’s reign as far as we are able. For God’s face does shine upon us. He is working to restore the world. He has not turned his back on us and he intends to give us life when we call on his name. When we gather at the Lord’s table he comes again to feed us with the bread from heaven, the bread of life, which is his presence with us to strengthen and encourage us, now and always.

The Perfect Pitch

2011-08-01T16:51:00.004+01:00

Isaiah 55.1-5, Matthew 14.13-21, Romans 9.1-5

The opening verses of Isaiah chapter 55 are set in a market place. The Revised English Bible softens the market trader’s pitch in the opening verse and makes it sound far less arresting than the Prophet intended. The passage should really begin with something like, ‘Hey, gather round everyone!’ or ‘Listen up!’

To picture what the Prophet has in mind you need to think yourself back to Wakefield Market a good few years ago. Here is someone selling dinner services, or tea services. ‘Ladies, I’m not offering you one tureen,’ the pitcher says, perhaps twirling a tureen around his head. or throwing it up into the air and catching it expertly on the way down, ‘I’m not even going to offer you two tureens. Because you - the good ladies of Wakefield have such an excellent eye for a bargain - I’m going to throw in a third one as well and, also, because it’s your lucky day today, you’re not just going away with three tureens, I’m going to give you a full set of dinner plates, and I’m going to give you the side plates, and I’m even going to throw in the soup bowls as well, and all made in this lovely hand-glazed Staffordshire pottery that you see before you. And no doubt you’ll be wondering what I’m asking for this amazing twenty-one piece dinner service. Well I’m not going to ask for thirty shillings, I’m not even going to ask for twenty-five bob, or twenty-four. In fact I’m going to rob myself today, because I’m not even asking for twenty-three shillings, or twenty-two shillings and six pence. This handsome dinner set - one, two, three tureens, six dinner plates, six side plates, six soup bowls, and even the lovely box they come in - is yours today, Ladies, for the bargain price of just one guinea. So come on Ladies, put up your hands quickly before I come to my senses and change my mind.’

Or what about the fruit and veg man, holding open a big carrier bag? ‘Look! I’m going to give you one, two, three, four, five, six juicy jaffas, and - look! - a handful of satsumas, and two handfuls of monkey nuts ‘shell-on’, and a pound o’ plumbs, and a cabbage, and a cauliflower, and a whole bunch of celery sticks and I’m not going to ask for one-and-six, I’m only going to ask you one shilling the lot. Snap my hand off before I think better of it!

With that picture in mind we can go back to Isaiah and get the full flavour of this passage. ‘Look! Ladies and gentlemen, are you thirsty today? Come and get some beautiful, refreshing spring water! And not just this lovely spring water, how about I throw in some milk, and look, just because it’s you, I’ll throw in a skinful of wine for good measure. Are you hungry? Well I’ll throw in a bagful of grain as well. And what am I asking, ladies and gentlemen, for this amazing bargain? I’m not asking three shekels, I’m not asking two, I’m not even asking one.’

The first shock for the reader in this passage is that the pitcher or spieler is offering the goods for free. ‘Today, ladies and gentlemen, I’m giving it all away! Snatch my hand off before it’s all gone!’

Why would the pitcher do this? It’s not as if the buyers haven’t any money! The problem is that they’ve been spending their hard earned cash on the wrong things - on junk food that fails to satisfy - when all the time the genuine article was available for nothing.

The second shock for the reader is that the pitcher or spieler seems to be God. Now that’s not very God-like is it? Descending to the market place to shout out an offer for his wares, making his pitch against the cacophony of all the other faiths and lifestyles on offer, surely that’s beneath God’s dignity?

In fact, the image of God competing in the hurly-burly of the market place is so unusual that some commentators think the pitcher or spieler is not God as such, but God’s servant Wisdom. In Israelite tradition Wisdom is pictured as feminine, so if this interpretation is correct, the reader gets a different shock. Although plenty of market traders are female, the pitchers and spielers tend to be male, simply because you need a very loud voice to make yourself heard. Women can shout out their offer to the customer, and you often hear them doing it, and that’s where the expression to shout like a fish wife comes from, but pitching or spieling takes a concentrated or prolonged effort which would be a struggle for most women and also for many men. Here, however, Wisdom would seem to be making her pitch to the people; and if not Wisdom, then God himself.

Having hooked the passer-by’s attention, God or Wisdom then unpacks the offer a little more. It transpires that the goods he, or she, is giving away are not actual meat and drink but words - very special words, though; life-giving words which spell out a new covenant or bond between God and his people.

If the people choose to buy into the covenant, then God will make them even greater than David. He offered a covenant to David and made David the leader of an entire nation, but David and his successors proved unworthy of God’s trust. So now, instead, God makes his offer direct to the people. If they follow him obediently they will be able to repeat his offer to all the nations and the nations will hasten to respond. What was once just a national movement, under King David, will become international instead.

I hope you can see at once the link to our Gospel story. Jesus’ heart goes out to the crowd just as God’s heart went out to the Jewish exiles in the market places of Babylon. But there is a problem. Unlike the people in the market place, the crowd gathered around Jesus is far away from shops and restaurants, or the comforts of home. The disciples urge him to send them away to buy something to eat. Jesus, however, can’t see the problem. Like the pitcher in Isaiah Chapter 55, he thinks it shouldn’t be necessary to pay for nourishing food and drink. ‘Feed them yourselves!’ he says.

Matthew juxtaposes this feast with another one, the feast given by King Herod to celebrate his birthday, when there was lots to eat and drink. But the spirit in which that party was conducted contrasts sharply with the calm and purposeful devotion with which Jesus and his disciples set about feeding the crowd. Herod’s party marred by anger, scheming and self-centredness, culminated in the violent and untimely death of John the Baptist.

Matthew compares that tragic occasion with the way that Jesus, the true successor to King David, feeds the people who have come to him. With his blessing, the five loaves and two fish which the disciples have found become more than sufficient to feed everyone and magic numbers of leftovers are collected up afterwards before the crowd disperses in peace.

Is this a simple feeding miracle? If so, it begs the question why similar miracles cannot be wrought to feed the hungry children in the Horn of Africa today. Or is the real miracle of the Horn of Africa that ordinary people around the world - and governments too - are willing to donate food to help strangers thousands of miles away from them? Did something like this happen in the crowd around Jesus as well? Did strangers share their picnics with those who had come without anything to eat, as the disciples began to distribute their meagre supplies of bread and fish?

Last week a Baptist minister from Gildersome near Leeds published a new website, called ‘The £100 Wedding’, after he heard on the radio that a wedding now costs at least £5,000 and many people who live together would prefer to marry but are put off by the cost. He argued not only that it could be done for no more than £100, but that, in fact, it needn’t cost more than £67 - the price of getting two marriage certificates from the registrar.

His thinking was based on something like the naturalistic interpretation of the feeding miracle - the idea that people were encouraged by Jesus’ example to share their food. He suggested that if couples were able to prove that they really couldn’t afford a posh wedding, and weren’t buying things like a wedding dress, gold rings, a fancy reception and a honeymoon, then many Free Churches would be prepared to perform the ceremony - and perhaps even cater for a simple buffet style reception - free of charge. Anglican churches can’t do this. They must by law make a charge, and a Church of England wedding typically costs at least £400 - just a bit more than a top of the range wedding here.

However, if going without a wedding dress, rings and even a reception all sounds a bit extreme, the minister from Gildersome still has lots of ideas for keeping the cost to a minimum, and most of them are based on sharing. For example, he suggests asking your family if they have any gold rings bequeathed by relatives that you could reuse as your own wedding ring, and getting your friends to upload all their photos of your wedding onto a special website where you can select the best ones to make up your own wedding album. Instead of a reception, he suggests booking a restaurant and asking the guests to pay for their own meal in lieu of buying you a wedding present. That way they don’t have to worry about what to get you, and you don’t have to pay for the wedding breakfast either. And he suggests asking all your friends on Facebook if they’re old wedding dress would fit you co that you can borrow it from them.

I have to say that if any of her friends had wanted to borrow Jenny’s wedding dress they would have to pay for it to be dry cleaned, to get off the gravel marks left by the church path even before her wedding began, and that would cost more than £70 just by itself. But I’m sure you get the idea. A wedding need not cost £5,000. If we followed all of these tips it would probably set us back less than £1,000 - perhaps even much less. And the whole concept is based on people sharing with one another and making a little go a long way as a result. Perhaps that’s what happened when Jesus fed the crowd.

But, of course, any discussion of the feeding of the five thousand men, plus women and children, wouldn’t be complete without a mention of another very special kind of sharing - the eucharistic sharing of bread and wine. Granted, the miracle is about bread and fish, but otherwise it has all the elements of a holy communion. The bread is offered to Jesus, who blesses it, breaks it and shares it with the people. The parallels are so obvious that Matthew must have intended us to see how Jesus is the Wisdom or Word of God, come among us to offer us food that will truly satisfy us, life-giving sustenance, an everlasting covenant, and all at no cost except our own faithfulness to him. Why go chasing after an invitation to Herod’s poisonous banquet when we can have all this for free?

And so, finally, to Paul’s comment about the Jewish nation in Romans chapter 5. Helen and I watched a programme on TV the other day about an excavation in Norwich, on the site where a new shopping centre had been built. The excavation uncovered a disused well shaft, abandoned in early medieval times, where seventeen Jewish men, women and children were either thrown to their deaths, or disposed of after their death, before the sheriff and his men could find out what had happened to them. Apparently there was a riot, and the sheriff briefly lost control of the city - where there were probably about 17,000 people living at the time, 200 of them Jewish moneylenders and merchants together with their families. An angry mob attacked the home of at least one Jewish family and the occupants either took their own lives before they could be captured, or else were murdered in cold blood. A similar atrocity, on a much bigger scale, happened at about the same time in York. But none of this might have happened if the people of medieval England had been able to read, or to listen to the Bible being read in English. For Paul makes clear that the Jewish people have a very special place in God’s plan.

They are the people to whom the prophecy was revealed about the new covenant. The Prophet seems to envisage that the whole nation will take on the messianic role of bringing God’s message to the nations, but of course Paul wants to identify the Messiah, God’s anointed messenger, with Jesus. Nonetheless, he makes clear that Jesus the Messiah is himself Jewish, just like Paul, and that the promises and covenants made with Israel are for ever and still apply, even though - by God’s grace - they have now been extended to us as well.

Look everyone! Gather round and see what we have to offer. God’s promises are freely available to all - even today - and in communion with Jesus, so beautifully symbolised in the re-enactment of the Last Supper, when he comes to join us in the circle as we share the bread and wine, we can be fed and satisfied with all God’s spiritual gifts. Why look elsewhere? Why spend money on what is not good to eat?

Wildflowers & Weeds

2011-08-01T16:35:00.006+01:00

Romans 8.15-25

Matthew 13.24-30, 36-43

What does Jesus’ story mean? First of all, perhaps, it’s a reminder of just how hard it can be to tell the difference between ‘wheat’ and ‘tares’.

Even a Palestinian farmer might have difficulty distinguishing wheat from darnell because the young plants are both similar to grass stems and look very alike when they’re first sprouting. It’s only as the seed heads mature that you can easily tell the difference between them, and by that time uprooting the darnell might uproot some of the wheat as well.

For us, of course, the confusion is even worse, as this little game we played earlier might reveal! Our problem is that weeds and crops are shifting categories which can be hard to separate.

So, for example, oats can be both a cereal crop and a weed, the domestic variety being closely related to the weed. This means that wild oats are the English equivalent of ‘darnell’, plants which - when they are immature - are virtually indistinguishable from the main crop. Hence the proverb, ‘To sow your wild oats’, refers to behaviour which can have very serious consequences but which, nonetheless, is hard to pin on any particular culprit because he - and it usually is a ‘he’ - will be long gone by the time the outcome - usually a pregnancy - is discovered.

Another example of shifting categories is the poppy - sometimes cultivated in its own right for its seeds, or for its beautiful flowers, as well as being a poignant symbol of spilt blood, and yet also a weed. Once the flowers have died back the dried seed heads will be mixed in with the main crop when the harvester collects it in, and the poppies can then be removed only by painstakingly cleaning the whole harvest to remove them. When poppies once get in among a crop then, like darnell or wild oats, they spell financial disaster.

But there is another problem in trying to categorise weeds. As we have noted, when they occur naturally - in a haphazard way - they may cost the farmer a lot of money to remove and are definitely unwelcome. However, attempts to eradicate weeds have proved equally disastrous and led to what a prophetic voice of the modern ecological movement, Rachel Carson, called ‘the Silent Spring’. By this she meant a countryside so clean and tidied up that there was no longer any room for wildflowers, and therefore less room for insects, and consequently scarcely any room for birds and for their birdsong.

So before we are too hasty to condemn weeds we have to ask ourselves, ‘When is a weed not a weed?’ And the first answer, is that weeds are no longer unwelcome, but become wildflowers again, when they grow on land which has been ‘set aside’ to encourage wildlife, even when it stands cheek by jowl with the main crop. And, of course, because we are no longer intimately connected to the land in the way that our ancestors used to be, most of us are now merely sightseers and for us wildflowers - even when they are growing in the midst of a crop, and should strictly be regarded as weeds - can still be beautiful to behold. So, finally, a weed is only really a weed when you are the farmer and the weeds will cost you money!

Perhaps, then, we should think of this parable as having a life of its own. The details of the story never change but its meaning shifts according to the perspective of the reader. It can no longer mean the same thing for us as it meant for Matthew, but in turn Matthew seems to think that the meaning needs unpicking even for his generation, within fifty or sixty years of Jesus’ death. Hence, although parables are supposed to speak for themselves, he gives his readers the secret meaning of the parable just to make sure that they understand it properly.

Are there some things about the story which never change, even over time? If so, then I think those unshifting messages might be these: we most never forget that the weeds are growing, even when we cannot see them - they are a silent menace lurking among the crop; but it’s not always our job to seek them out, since - at certain points in the development of the crop - we may accidentally pull up the wrong plant; however, God is on the case and eventually he will clean the harvest and remove anything that shouldn’t be there.

What about the changing messages, then? Some people have speculated that Jesus’ original message was for the protesters and agitators of his day - people who were campaigning to get rid of the absentee landlords who creamed off all the profits from the land, and perhaps also the Roman occupiers who protected them. The protesters needn’t worry too much about getting caught or singled out for special treatment by the authorities because, according to this theory, Jesus means them to understand that they can just blend in with the crowd. The authorities can’t arrest everyone, or put everyone under surveillance, so they will escape the net simply by pretending to be part of the silent majority. Then, one day, when the time is right, they will be able to rise up and challenge injustice without being crushed.

It’s the sort of advice which someone must have been giving to our top politicians. ‘Don’t complain about Rupert Murdoch and News International invading your privacy. No one will care and he is so powerful that he will simply crush you like a bug, even though you might have been the prime minister. Keep your head down and your powder dry until the time is right - until he’s already in trouble, for bugging the phones of murder victims and the families of soldiers killed in Iraq. That’s the right moment to break cover and accuse him. That’s when you’ll be able to get even with him.’

Perhaps that sort of theory explains the motivation of the people going after Rupert Murdoch just now, but it doesn’t sound like a plausible explanation of one of Jesus’ parables, does it? It’s not that Jesus’ message had no political implications for his contemporaries. It certainly did, and that’s why he ended up on a cross. He was on the side of the little person and on the side of justice against oppression. But he also said that we must render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and that his kingdom did not belong to this world. In other words, although his message had political implications, he was not a political operator and his parables weren’t coded messages for political agitators. He did mean his followers to infiltrate society and change it silently from within, but not by rising up against the landlords and occupiers. He expected them to change the world by the irresistible power of example, by love in action.

What’s more, there’s little doubt that Jesus saw the weeds as a bad thing, a contaminatiion of the crop rather than a pleasing addition. He’s not in sympathy with the weeds, he just thinks they cannot be removed.

So what about Matthew’s explanation of the parable? He saw it as a message for the Church, about the need to be an open circle which welcomes in the sinner and the stranger. It’s not our task, in Matthew’s view, to excommunicate or anathematise one another, or to judge one another’s motives and behaviour. That’s something we should leave to God, who will be ruthless in rooting out sinfulness and falseness, but will do it when the time is right and without needing our assistance.

By and large I think I would agree with him. His interpretation of the parable is still a valid one. The Church is never more dangerous than when it goes in search of sinners and heretics within its own ranks, in a bid to guard its own purity.

However, there are limits to how far we can agree with Matthew. In the past, Christians who have followed this line have allowed all sorts of bullying, harassment, emotional manipulation, pastoral malpactice and even downright criminal activity - such as child abuse, to go unchecked because it’s not supposed to be our job to sort out the wheat from the tares. Clearly that laissez-faire attitude was just as misguided as the Christians who have gone on a witch-hunt against all the people who disagreed with them, in a bid to root them out of the Church.

So what about the modern interpretation of the parable, the one influenced by the ecological movement and environmentalism, the version that sees weeds as maybe not so bad after all? As we approach the story from today’s perspective doesn’t it have something to say to us about the beauty and importance of diversity and difference?

It’s tempting to try to make everyone the same as us, or to cluster together with people who are just like ourselves - who look like us, perhaps, but who - more importantly - think like we do and believe the same kind of things. But isn’t that kind of world awfully sterile and dull? Isn’t there something missing? Where’s the buzz, the excitement, the challenge?

The other day Helen and I walked across a field of wheat near our home. To the right and left of the path were serried ranks of wheat stalks - every row the same. But, in the middle of the field, along the footpath, was a large swathe of set-aside land and as we walked along it we startled a skylark up into the air and it sang to us. How boring the walk would have been without that beautiful birdsong!

Of course, celebrating diversity is not the same thing as saying that there is no difference between one set of ideas or beliefs and another. Nor is it an excuse for letting people get away with things that are plain wrong, such as denying the human rights of members of their community on the grounds that they are entitled to behave totally differently from the rest of us. But it is saying that we should reserve judgement on many of the things that divide us, and agree to disagree, safe in the knowledge that God is the final arbitrator of all things.

Isn’t Paul saying something similar in his letter to the Christians in ancient Rome? Isn’t he saying that, much as we might like to second guess what the future is going to be like, when God completes the creation, we can’t rush things. We have to turn our backs on fear and look forward to the future eagerly, but with patience.

We may feel that we are God’s children, but at the moment that doesn’t give us any special privileges over everybody else. We all have to wait, with eager anticipation, for God’s truth to be revealed. Living in a diverse world, a world not yet completely under control or entirely obedient to God’s will, may sometimes be frustrating and may even cause us pain at times, but it’s God’s way and it allows us to discover so much that is exciting, challenging and hopeful, which will make our pilgrimage more interesting as we continue on our way through life with Jesus.