20th March - The Centurion

The Centurion: Mat 8 v 5-13: Go! ‘Let it be done just as you believed it would’

In the main entrance of the Grosvenor Museum in Chester there is a life size model of a Roman centurion wielding his sword and looking as if he is about to strike somebody down. Centurions were battle hardened veterans responsible for training soldiers, maintaining discipline and displaying bravery and resolution on the battlefield. They had 80 men under their command and generally displayed little subtlety when it came to the aforementioned methods of training, disciplining and fighting.

Whilst the centurion in our passage may well have been serving under King Herod Antipas, Rome’s client king in the province of Judaea, whose forces were organised in line with the Roman army, he was definitely a gentile (Jews were exempt from conscription) and represented, if at one remove, the might and power of Rome. This man was not a centurion because of who he knew or where he came from; he had been promoted because he had proved himself to be an effective soldier. Or to put it another way, he was good at killing people in battle.

He is, then, a rather improbable character to be waylaying Jesus as he enters the town of Capernaum with an urgent plea on behalf of his ailing servant (v 6). Being in actual fact a slave, the servant would normally have been regarded as part of his property rather than a human being. The overwhelming majority of people in the centurion’s situation wouldn’t have cared whether the slave lived or died except for the inconvenience of having to buy another one. The world of the centurion was one of commanding and obeying without question and he himself was one cog in a chain of command which ultimately went all the way up to the Emperor of Rome (v 9). Just as he has to do exactly what he is told so those he commands must do the same. There was no room for sentiment of any kind – when you tell somebody to go, come or do this, they unhesitatingly obey (v 9b). If you were serving under the centurion in the heat of battle and he commanded you to mount an attack in which you would were likely to be killed you had no choice but to do what you were told.

Yet Jesus says that this battle scarred veteran displays deeper faith than he has yet seen in Israel (v 10). What an extraordinary statement! Not only does he display a very personal concern for someone who he regarded as a person rather a piece of property but he also believes in Jesus’ ability to heal him. What this says to me is that in spite of the brutalising effects of commanding men who are killing and being killed by their enemies in battle the centurion had not lost touch with his own humanity.

In today’s world both war and slavery continue to dehumanise many. It is not just those who fire bullets and drop bombs (often by pressing a button in a military complex thousands of miles away from the conflict zone) causing death and terrible injury but those whose homes and communities are devastated and whose loved ones are killed or maimed who face an all-out attack on their humanity. Modern slavery takes many forms such as human trafficking, forced labour, child slavery, forced marriage and domestic slavery. Slavery has not gone away and continues to dehumanise both its victims and its perpetrators.

This comes uncomfortably close to home when we consider firstly that because of our long history of selling arms to Saudi Arabia, many of those who are suffering in the conflict in Yemen are being targeted by weapons made in the United Kingdom and secondly that modern slavery is very much present in our society; in recent years trafficked children have been found in every local area in Britain.

One of the reasons the centurion retains his humanity and can open his heart to Jesus is that he loves the people he is supposed to feel nothing for. In Luke’s version of this story he adds the detail that local leaders come to Jesus pleading the worthiness of centurion’s cause because, ‘he loves our nation and has built our synagogue’ (Luke 7 v 5). Perhaps the real evidence of his faith is that he is able to see over the cultural, ethnic and religious barriers of his time and understand that those living, working and worshipping on the other side of these dividing lines are as important as anyone else.

Jesus uses harsh words for those who wish to restrict the love of God (v 12) because it is not just those who consider themselves children of promise who will be at the feast (v 11). Jesus’ assertion that there will be outsiders present was certainly controversial and yet as the story ends with the healing of the centurion’s servant, we see an indiscriminate outpouring of divine love in perfect harmony with his words.

One key aspect of Jesus’s ministry was that he was able to make people who had been dehumanised feel fully human again. Those he healed of leprosy, for example, were not just restored to health but also to the circle of their families and friends ending for some of them long years of rejection and isolation as outsiders.

For the centurion, the local Judaean people were outsiders, he was not there to make friends but to enforce Roman rule. However he had managed to form a relationship with the local people that was not that of oppressor and oppressed but based on a shared humanity. It is when we think of people as outsiders for whatever reason that we dehumanise them. At the same time we dehumanise ourselves. God is an inclusive God and asks us to make that real in our daily lives and the lives of our churches.

It might be as simple as the outsider being somebody we don’t know. When I was fifteen I started attending a church youth group. Although my elder brothers had previously been members I knew very few people in what was a large group of young people and felt very much on the outside of things. However somebody called Andrew took me under his wing over a number of weeks. He had his own group of friends but would come over and talk, suggest a game of table tennis and basically check that I was ok. As time went by I found my feet, my own group of friends and a living faith in Jesus. I cannot even recall Andrew’s surname and have not met him for the best part of fifty years and yet he did three things for me. He made me feel welcome, affirmed me as a human being and helped me to find faith; I cannot thank him enough.

It’s given me a particular sensitivity to the after church coffee time on a Sunday morning (which will return, post pandemic!). If somebody is left standing on their own while members of church chat away in their friendship groups that person will, very justifiably, feel like an outsider – a horrible feeling. The centurion went out of his way to understand and build relationships with those who were outsiders (and to whom he was very much an outsider) meaning that there are times (Sunday morning coffee being one of them) when we will need to go out of our way to include and welcome somebody new who may have come to church with a specific need. It’s the kind of thing Jesus did both in this passage and throughout his ministry.

Questions: How might an understanding of God’s love as unconditional impact our understanding of the ‘good news’ of Jesus? How can we live that out?

Prayer: Lord, help me to reach out to those who, for any reason, are outsiders and to offer them a welcome in your name. Amen.

19th March - The woman caught in adultery

The woman caught in adultery: ‘John 8 v 1-11: Go now and leave your life of sin’.

The tabloid press are ever looking for sensational headlines – anything that will sell newspapers. I was listening recently to an interview with Mike Gatting, former England cricket captain, who was asked about how he coped with media intrusion and criticism during his career. Whilst he greatly respected some of the cricket correspondents that wrote about him he did not really have a good word to say for the tabloids. He cited one occasion when an England bowler had performed really well taking eight wickets against the then mighty West Indies. However instead of focusing on a praiseworthy positive, the tabloids gave the headline to an England batsman who had shown dissent when being given out. His point was that an exemplary bit of bowling came second to a sensationalist headline. Don’t get me wrong, the batsman in question should have accepted his dismissal, but it reflects what seems to be an increasingly insatiable thirst for anything with a whiff of scandal to go on the front page. I suspect that many of those who edit such newspapers would not particularly like some of their own mistakes and wrongdoings to become public. The simple truth is that in judging others we are actually, as equally flawed human beings, judging ourselves (see Mat 7 v 1-2) - which is what this passage is all about.

The woman caught in adultery was deliberately brought to Jesus in a very public place right in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles when Jerusalem and its Temple would be full of pilgrims. For her it was humiliating and terrifying, like finding yourself on the front page of the tabloids as well as staring a particularly horrible way to die in the face; only the stone that would finally suck the life from her body would end the agony that was coming her way. Yet given that it takes two to tango, where was the other participant in this adulterous fling? The man she was caught with has got away with it even though the Jewish Law was unequivocal in demanding that he too suffer the ultimate penalty Lev 20 v 10). It is a sad truth that, without in any way condoning her behaviour, her presence and the absence of her lover is typical of the kind of prejudice women have suffered since time immemorial. She, rather than he, is the one being used as a pawn in a cynical game of entrapment intended to catch Jesus out in order to arrest him (see John 7 v 30; 45). The religious teachers demand the ultimate penalty for her (v 5) without seeming remotely to care where he is.

So the trap is set; if Jesus says ‘don’t kill her’ he will be publicly driving a coach and horses through the Law of Moses, but if he says ‘go ahead’, he will be driving another coach and horses through everything that he has been teaching.

Jesus’ response is to write on the ground. Tantalisingly we have no idea at all what he was writing but the fact that he continues to do this after his challenge to any of accusers who are without sin to be the first to hurl a stone (v 7) suggests that it was to give people, including himself, time to think. Once the elders begin to melt away everyone else takes their cue until Jesus is left alone with the woman (v 9b).

It’s important to see that Jesus does not condone her adulterous behaviour; it isn’t the case that he is somehow on her side of the argument and lets her off. But he doesn’t condemn her either. Her other accusers all trudged off because they were made to realise that when you live in a glass house you really shouldn’t be throwing stones. But Jesus, the one whose sinless life does potentially give him the right to condemn her, refuses to do so. Instead he offers her an opportunity to transform her life and make a new start.

It is Jesus’ clear understanding that judgement is meant to be restorative rather than retributive that I think undergirds his words and actions in this story. One wouldn’t be forgiven for thinking that quite a lot of judgement in the Old Testament looks pretty vindictive, the Genesis flood and the wholesale slaughter of Canaanite communities by the invading Israelites are cases in point. But the Jewish people returning from exile in Babylon came to understand that God’s judgement on them and their consequent journey into exile wasn’t a capricious act of revenge because they had turned their backs on him but a ‘last resort’ attempt to restore and renew their vocation as the people of God (Is 48 v 17-20). In our passage Jesus is giving us an example of restorative judgement, in effect saying to her, ‘whatever you have done wrong, learn from it and move on to better things.’ It goes without saying that this would be impossible if she were to end up lying lifeless in the dust.

Judgement is, of course, a key theme in the Bible. Yet there is also a vision of universal restoration present in the earliest Christian proclamation (Acts 3 v 21) as well as the teachings of Paul (Rom 8 v 19-21). Add to that Paul’s belief that God’s intention is that every human should come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2 v 4) and the restorative rather than retributive nature of judgement starts to come into focus. We have to do some thinking about what kind of God we believe in. Is he essentially vengeful, dishing out nasty stuff to those who have offended him even to the extent that exclusion from his light and love is permanent and non-negotiable no matter what the torment involved?

Of course we have to take seriously the concept of God as judge. One of the tenets of the Christian faith is that what kind of person you are, how you treat other people and what you believe to be true all matter very much. This means that thoughts, words and acts which are cruel, selfish, hurtful, careless and hateful, or to put it another way ‘sinful’, can’t just be swept under the table as if they didn’t matter. Yet as we weigh Jesus’ words that he came into the world to save it rather than to judge it (John 12 v 47) we need to remember that Christianity is, at its heart, a faith that rest on love rather than fear. This in turn rests on the fact that although God judges, he does so mercifully, so much so that he gifts his only Son to atone for our sins in a way that is so vast and mysterious that however we describe it falls far short of its full wonder. Which means, taking us back to the woman caught in adultery, that God does not stand with the stone throwers whose idea of judgement is to destroy, but instead wants her, as the Book of Common Prayer puts it, to ‘turn from her wickedness and live’. This means living life in all its fullness as a restored and loving human being.

So when you are tempted, with the tabloid press, to throw metaphorical stones at those who fail to come up to scratch just bear in mind that Jesus gave his life for your sins as well as theirs and that all any of us can do is to kneel at the foot of the cross and say, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.’

Questions: Why do you think people have sometimes found Christians judgemental? How do we reconcile the judgement of God and the mercy of God?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, when we are tempted to judge, remind us of the loving mercy you have shown to us and to all people. Amen.

18th March - Zacchaeus

Thursday March 18th: Zacchaeus: Luke 19 v 1-10: ‘Today salvation has come to this house.’

Zacchaeus was perhaps a bit like the school bully, somebody nobody liked but everyone was afraid of. First and foremost because he was collecting taxes for the hated Roman authorities you had no choice but to pay him if you didn’t want to land in hot water. As a chief tax collector (v 2) he would have staff working under him and would be in an ideal position to cream off whatever he wanted and make himself extremely wealthy; something he took full advantage of (v 8b). He lined his own pockets at the expense of others and, to cap it all, he was not even a Roman, he was ‘a son of Abraham’ which made him, in many people’s eyes, a collaborator.

And yet, if you will pardon the pun, there was something in his life that didn’t add up. He had everything he wanted materially and you would have thought that he would be the last person to show any interest in the itinerant rabbi with his uncompromising views on the perils of wealth. So why is he scrambling up a tree to get a better view (v 4)? None of those who worked for him or were being cheated by him would have known it, but he was a deeply unhappy man. One of very many who have discovered that possessing everything you could possibly want and more does not bring fulfilment or contentment but is actually a road to nowhere.

This story is about how it is possible, whoever you are and however far down the wrong road you have travelled, to embrace change. I always find it inspirational to read of people who have found themselves in the grip of addiction, whether that be to drink, drugs, gambling, food, computer games or whatever, who manage to turn their lives around and get back on track. I wonder how much of an addiction money had become for Zacchaeus and how much of his life he had spent worshipping at the shrine of mammon? And yet there is still hope for him.

As for the locals, they did not share that hope! It’s clear from the text that Jesus’ decision not just to talk to Zacchaeus but to go to his house for a meal (v 5) did not go down well at all (v 7); their unanimous view was that he was the last person whose hospitality Jesus should be enjoying, especially considering the possibility that the food they would eat was paid for with fraudulently obtained funds. They may well have subscribed to the cynical but very often accurate view that people like Zacchaeus are incapable to taking their noses out of the trough for long enough to even notice the pain and hardship they are causing.

But Jesus was able to see not just what Zacchaeus was (a pretty nasty piece of work) but also what he might become. His world was one where anything is possible and where nobody is beyond redemption. We’re not given any details about the meal Zacchaeus and Jesus shared; without doubt they talked about many things. But by the end Jesus was listening to a changed man who had a completely different purpose in life. After a transformative tea Zacchaeus committed to giving 50% of his dishonest gains away and repaying anyone who he had cheated fourfold (I’m sure they very quickly formed a queue). In promising to do this he went way beyond the Law which stated that the amount defrauded plus 20% should be repaid (v 8 see Num 5 v 7). It’s interesting that Jesus accepts Zacchaeus’s offer of restitution and does not insist, as he did in the case of the Rich Ruler in the previous chapter, that he give away every single last penny (Luke 18 v 18-30). Maybe it was the fact that Zacchaeus himself offered to give such a large sum of money away off his own bat (as far as we can tell) that made a difference.

The upshot of all this is that somebody who had lost his vocation as a son of Abraham has been found and saved (v 9-10); the Good Shepherd has found one of his lost sheep and brought him home. In doing so he upset many of the citizens of Jericho and would have become ritually unclean in the eyes of many by sharing food and drink with a collaborator. Yet his core task was to reach out to all those blundering around in a darkness often of their own making and lead them into the light. That is still a core task for today’s church which means reaching out to the kind of people many people would rather not associate with. That is why every prison has a chaplain offering pastoral care and a listening ear to people who, for whatever reason, have made a mess of their lives by committing criminal acts. This expresses eloquently one of the central truths of the Christian faith; that God doesn’t give up on anybody and ceaselessly reaches out in love to everybody. This doesn’t mean that God condones criminal, addictive, abusive, narcissistic or destructive behaviour – very far from it. It was because evil has disfigured the world and couldn’t just be waved away with a flick of the divine hand that God gave his only Son in an act of painful love. The Bible makes it abundantly clear just how seriously God takes the fact that we have all lost our way.

Which people assume, or have assumed, the role of Zacchaeus in our lives? They might be people we know or have known who we feel we have been hard done by, who have upset us in a way that we have found impossible to forgive, who get on our nerves, who we have written off as a bad job or who have done well out of behaving badly. I have sometimes found that when I think about somebody in that way it helps very much to pray for them. If I bring that person into God’s presence and ask for his blessing on them (rather than just saying ‘please make them easier to deal with!’) then I begin to see them more from God’s point of view rather than my own more jaundiced perspective. They may be lost in one way or another but God is reaching out to bring them home and the story of Zacchaeus underlines both the possibility of change and the indefatigable nature of God’s search for all in need of bringing home.

The bottom line is that all of us are lost in one way or another and we need to remember that there may be people who find us difficult! It might be that reading these words brings an awareness that we ourselves are not in a great place. The global pandemic has taken from us much of the fabric that makes up day to day life and many of us have felt a bit lost as we have been unable to go to church, meet up with family and friends or go to work. We have all spent much more time in our own company! Yet the message of the story of Zacchaeus applies to us as well; God is searching for us and every moment reaching out to us in mercy and love did we but know it. There is nothing that we have ever done or could ever do that would stop God loving us. That, of course, does not give us carte blanche to do whatever we like (Rom 6 v 1-2)! But it is the amazing grace of God, undeserved but freely offered, that shapes our lives and calls us home.

Questions: Has there been anyone in your life who has been unfair to you, upset you or made you angry? Have you ever prayed for them? If not, why not give it a go.

Prayer: Lord, thank you that you came to find the lost and bring them home. When we are lost, find us and when we encounter the lost give us your compassionate love. Amen.

17th March - The Man Healed of Leprosy

The man healed of Leprosy: Luke 17 v 11-19: ‘Were not all ten cleansed?’

These days a journey from Samaria to Galilee would entail crossing the wall separating the Palestinian West Bank from Israel, something that many Palestinians are unable to do. For safety reasons pilgrims travelling from Jerusalem to Galilee have to drive east down to Jericho, near to the border with Jordan, and then turn north rather than take a more direct route.

Even back in the time of Jesus it wasn’t a safe place; the bitter and lasting hatred that could be traced all the way back to the division of Israel into two separate kingdoms over nine hundred years previously meant that this border area was a risky place to be travelling (the context for the Parable of the Good Samaritan). The best part of a thousand years is a very long time to be bearing grudges!

There is a clear link back in this story to Jesus’s earlier parable (Luke 10 v 25 37) because in both cases the unexpected hero is a Samaritan. In Jesus’ parable a member of that community goes to enormous lengths to care for a half dead Jewish man who was supposed to be his sworn enemy and in the real world setting of our passage the only one of ten men healed of leprosy who bothers to come back to thank Jesus is a Samaritan (v 16). This means we have to consider this passage from two different perspectives.

Firstly and most obviously it is about the need to be thankful. We can imagine all ten of those healed by Jesus being caught up in the excitement of being able to return to their families after months, if not years, of exclusion and isolation. The impact of this on their mental health is reflected in the intensity of their pleas for restoration (v 12). And all ten are healed; their healing is not dependent on their returning to give thanks and leprosy does not flare up again because they went straight home. This healing is an act of unconditional love and, as such, is done freely. The fact that it doesn’t seem to have led to spectacular spiritual growth for all but one of the ten might make us doubt their faith. Yet Jesus makes it quite clear that faith did indeed play a key role in the healing (v 19), something which must surely have applied equally to the absent nine. Perhaps it was just that in the excitement of the moment and the rush to get home they simply forgot to come back and say thank you. It may even be that some of them regretted their omission later but felt that the moment had passed. Sometimes when you mean to contact a friend you haven’t been in touch with for a while or write a thank you note to somebody who has helped you the longer you leave it the harder it becomes to actually do it. ‘Do it now or don’t do it all’ is often the way it goes. Their faith may not have been as great as the Samaritan but even a small amount of faith in Jesus can apparently make a difference, something I personally find greatly comforting.

The point for us here is that true thankfulness always includes a response. In the case of this Samaritan it meant coming back to Jesus to let him know how much what was done for him was appreciated. Many people who volunteer to work for charitable organisations such as hospices, mental health charities, cancer care centres and churches do so because they themselves received help when they really needed it and want to give something back as a way of saying thank you. There were a number of cases over the years I was involved in running the Alpha Course when people who had done the course subsequently became involved as leaders and helpers. Other people give financially to charities that have helped them in a difficult time which is another important way of saying thank you. The Holy Communion service is sometimes called ‘The Eucharist’ which derives from the Greek word ‘eucharistia’ meaning ‘thanksgiving’. This means that at the heart of Christian worship is an act of thankfulness for all that Jesus has done for us. Again and again we share bread and wine, tokens of his broken and pierced body, in thankful remembrance of God’s gracious and reconciling love. One significant reason Jesus left us this meal was that we would never take for granted the sacrifice that he made for us; each time the drama of the crucifixion is made real for us in bread and wine it is a reminder that it was for us and for all. Then at the end of the service we are sent out to ‘live and work to his praise and glory’ or to put it another way, to express our thankfulness to God in the way we serve him day by day. It’s why James says that without ‘works’ (which, for him, very much includes caring for those in need – James 2 v 14-17) faith is moribund (James 2 v 26).

Secondly we need to consider the implications of the Samaritan being the hero of the story.  It’s interesting that in calling him a foreigner (v 18) Jesus identifies himself with the Jewish race. He doesn’t do this in a narrow nationalistic sense, I think, but to emphasise the omission of the other nine, who we assume to be Jewish, in failing to come back. In affirming the faith of a Samaritan Jesus is actually being counter cultural and ground breaking. We have to wait until Acts 10, when Peter is shown a vision and sent to the house of Cornelius, a gentile Roman Centurion, to find him and his fellow believers beginning to tumble to the fact that, as he puts it, ‘…God does not show favouritism…’ (Acts 10 v 34). Convincing his Jewish followers that God wanted to bless Gentiles as well was always going to be a tough nut for Jesus to crack.  Our own age is one in which nationalism, factionalism and populism are once again raising their ugly heads and triggering conflicts in places such as Nagorno Karabakh, Ukraine, Yemen, Ethiopia, Syria, South Sudan and Myanmar. The suffering this has caused to the many victims who have been killed, maimed, bereaved and forced to leave the communities they have lived in their whole lives is such that we often can’t bear to look. Many other regions and individual countries are becoming bitterly divided along ethnic or political grounds – the United Kingdom and the United States of America are two good examples of where this kind of division is on the increase. The message of Jesus Christ is that we have a fundamental unity rooted in the fact that Jesus died for all regardless of race or ethnicity. This grateful Samaritan is a signpost pointing us to truths that transcend the divisions that scar our beautiful world reminding us that love, the self-giving love that we see in Jesus, must and will win the day because the risen Christ has triumphed over hate in all its forms and invited us to be citizens of an eternal kingdom of love, life and peace.

Questions: What do you need to say thank you to God for today? In what ways should living with a thankful heart shape our lives?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for all that you have done for us. Help us never to take you for granted and to respond in the giving of our lives to your service. Amen.

16th March - Martha and Mary

Martha and Mary: Luke 10 v 38-42: ‘Mary has chosen what is better.’

I vividly remember an outing with some friends one Sunday afternoon when my children were young. The nearer we got to our destination the more the rain came pouring down and we eventually had to admit defeat. However the parents of one of our party lived quite nearby so plan B was to knock on their front door. We were made to feel enormously welcome and miraculously, as it seemed, food in abundance was placed before us!

Hospitality was, and still is in Middle Eastern culture, a sacred duty. The house that Jesus visits in Bethany belonged to Martha and she would have felt an obligation to provide a welcome and a meal. So we can understand why she gets a little hot under the collar about her sister spending time with Jesus while she is working hard in the kitchen. Households in which one person does all the chores while others do very little to help don’t tend to be happy ones!

However there is a bit more to this than meets the eye. In ‘sitting at the feet of Jesus’ (v 39) Mary was both occupying a male space within the house (women lived in the more private rooms, such as the kitchen) whilst also assuming a male persona as, effectively, a trainee rabbi. Paul uses the same expression to describe his own rabbinic training under Gamaliel (Acts 22 v 3).  

This means that a kaleidoscope of thoughts must have been whizzing round in Martha’s mind. Everything from ‘who on earth does she think she is, we’ll never live this scandal down’ to ‘how many arms does she think I’ve got!’ The result is that she became thoroughly distracted (v 40) and was unable to embrace the moment. Jesus was not going to be around for all that much longer, Jerusalem and a Roman cross await him, and it is Mary who has made the better choice on this particular day (v 42). I suspect that for most of us life pootles along from day to day without the kind of great excitement or drama experienced by Martha and Mary when Jesus came to visit. Yet the message of this passage is that even when life seems uneventful Christians are called to live attentively, sitting at the feet of Jesus with open hearts and minds listening for and to his voice.

Many Christians find a method of reflecting on each day called ‘The Examen’ very helpful in this regard. It is a way of prayerfully reflecting on the day just past and discerning whether God is speaking to us through some of the emotions we have felt, which may include anger, disappointment, love, gratefulness, envy, anxiety or optimism. It also encourages us to reflect on one event that took place that day, examples of which include a significant conversation, a task performed, a change of plan, something that went wrong, a surprise, an opportunity taken (or missed), a misunderstanding or a new insight gained into something. Then, whether the day was really good or pretty lousy, we share our thoughts, including what we might have learned, with God. It may be that we will be giving thanks, saying sorry, praying for somebody, offering praise or asking for God’s help. It’s really about understanding that God weaves his presence through the fabric of our day to day lives and that nothing that happens to us is bereft of meaning. It’s clear that on the day of Jesus’ visit Mary understood that better.

Martha was distracted because of her worry and anxiety (v 41). In today’s world there are many distractions which, sometimes in ways that we are barely conscious of, shift the focus of our lives away from the call to sit at Jesus’ feet. Many today, (myself included!) need to reflect on the amount of times a day we consult our mobile phones and tablets. So, we think, I’ll just check emails, WhatsApp messages, the news, Facebook, the weather app, how many steps I’ve done today and on and on it goes. None of these activities are at all wrong in themselves; it’s great that we can, for example, communicate so easily with one another, share photos and videos and check our fitness levels. During the pandemic the internet has provided churches with the ability to stream services online and Zoom and other conferencing apps have enabled families and friends to keep in touch with one another in ways that would have been impossible a few decades ago.  The problem is that not only is it possible for phones, tablets, laptops and computers to gobble up time without us noticing, they can also fill us, along with Martha, with worry and anxiety. It has been well said that the last thing you should do to try and diagnose a medical condition is go on the internet. It reminds me of the opening chapter of Jerome K. Jerome’s comic novel Three Men and a Boat in which the narrator, having been looking through a medical encyclopaedia, decides that the only condition he doesn’t have is housemaid’s knee!

What this kind of distraction does is shift the focus of our lives away from a securely anchored relationship with God. When we are distracted (whatever is claiming our attention) it is very often spending time with God that is the casualty and it won’t be long before a sense of unreality, that God if he’s there at all is a long way away, permeates our being. This is particularly relevant to our use of social media. Facebook and other platforms are not evil in themselves, one Facebook group I belong to is dedicated to old photos of Chester, the city I grew up in, and many of them are fascinating. But it’s clear to many now that they are also being used to manipulate the way people think about important issues by spreading falsehoods such as the allegations of fraud in last year’s presidential election in the USA which, as far as I can see, have no basis whatsoever in reality. If we’re spending hours and hours on our devices and little or no time with God our spiritual lives will inevitably be out of kilter.

But with Martha, there was a further element to her distraction that we have already alluded to. Jesus’ approval of Mary being a de facto trainee rabbi represents an enormous challenge to her worldview according to which this was a role most definitely reserved for men. ‘Martha, Martha’, says Jesus as he encourages her to see how the listening Mary is doing as the one thing needed at that moment (v 42). Being a disciple of Jesus, now as then, involves being open to change in every part of our lives including our beliefs, our lifestyle, our relationships and our values. Change is difficult, especially as we get older, and it is tempting to draw the comfort blanket of familiarity around ourselves whilst looking the other way. Yet we live in a fast moving world that is facing enormous challenges and this will involve new ways of being church, presenting the good news and caring for the planet. It is this need to spend time at the feet of Jesus, learning from him and asking the question ‘what would you have me do?’ that is the reason why, in Martha’s house that day, Mary chose what is better.

Questions: What are things that distract you most and prevent you from spending more time with God? What things do you feel most anxious about and how often do you share your worries with the Lord?

Prayer: Lord, forgive us for being so distracted. Help us to sit at your feet daily and learn more about you that we may better serve you in a changing world. Amen.

15th March - The widow of Nain

The widow of Nain: Luke 7 v 11-17: ‘Young man, I say to you, get up!’

As a curate long ago I remember knocking on the door of a house one particular evening as part of an ongoing visiting project. It was entirely co-incidental that I was on that doorstep that night but one member of the family living there, who had no previous connection with church, had just that day finished reading a copy of John’s Gospel. It had, in his words, ‘changed him’ and this ‘chance meeting’ was an important moment in his spiritual journey as we were able to talk through then and there what he had been reading and its impact on him.

Today’s reading is about Jesus and his disciples being in the right place at the right time; a ‘chance encounter’ as they happen to enter the village of Nain in the middle of a funeral procession involving the entire community. A mother is burying her only son having already, at some time in the past, buried her husband. Not only is it a deeply felt personal loss, it potentially leaves her destitute as the two men who could provide her with an income are now both now dead.

Let’s just pause a moment and consider the intuitive emotional response of Jesus in this passage. Mark tells us that ‘his heart went out to her’ (v 13). Jesus encountered tragic and distressing situations throughout his ministry and in spite of (or because of) the fact that he was so often able to provide miraculous healing this would surely have taken its toll on him. Yet as he watches the funeral of an unknown person in a town that wasn’t his home his heart is full and he feels for the woman’s loss so keenly that he cannot stand by. It is a reminder to us that Jesus is not the kind of miracle worker who rises above it all and is untouched by the pain and sorrow he encounters; there is always a cost to those who really care and there surely was for him. One of the reasons that he very often went off on his own for hours on end, much to the consternation of the baffled disciples (Mark 1 v 35-37), was to pour it all out to his heavenly Father and ask for ongoing strength for the task.

So it’s important that we understand the real emotional engagement that Jesus makes with this bereaved mother. We can perhaps imagine silence falling as he gently encourages the mother to still her tears. Time seems to stand still as he approaches the young man’s bier with the intention of significantly delaying his burial. As he touches the coffin there is perhaps a sharp intake of breath as any such contact would, according to the beliefs of the time, render him unclean - once again Jesus goes out on a limb. As life returns to the dead body and words pour forth from his mouth he is ‘given back’ to his mother (v 15). His life henceforth is a divine gift which will profoundly shape the lives of both mother and son in the years to come.

Two thoughts occur. Firstly that although this mother received her child back and Mary, even after having her soul pierced as she watched her son die naked on a Roman cross, was a witness to his resurrection, all other parents who face the loss of a child do so without the happy ending. I once heard of a priest visiting a family who had lost a child and remarking, ‘this isn’t God’s fault, you know’. I wouldn’t have blamed them for ejecting him from the premises without ceremony. Those who have experienced such crushing loss and those who have ministered to them will understand the impossibility of explaining why, for instance, childhood cancers take such young and precious lives. Jesus’ ministry was a signpost pointing us to what the kingdom of God looks like; it was never designed to establish a universal panacea for the world’s pain or provide us with a way of explaining it. This is why there are times when words do more harm than good; sometimes it is just being there that speaks more eloquently than a thousand words.

Secondly we need to remember that by raising her son, Jesus ministered to this mother on more than one level. We noted earlier that as he turned her tears of mourning to tears of joy he also addressed her financial vulnerability. In a previous study we noted the plight of widows in the days when most women relied on their menfolk for financial security. In the course of Paul’s detailed instructions to Timothy he makes it clear that those who fail in their duty to provide adequately for vulnerable family members have ‘denied their faith’ (1 Tim 5 v 4, 8). The son will now have the opportunity to fulfil his own responsibilities to his mother.

Visiting the bereaved and the sick, conducting baptisms, weddings and funerals, leading worship and preaching, leading Bible studies and helping people think through their own personal faith and walk with God are a central parts of the church’s vocation and in parish ministry I spent lots of time doing all of those things. Yet in the UK today churches are also involved in running food banks, debt counselling services and breakfast clubs for children from low income families as well as helping people into employment, providing street pastors for city centres at weekends and providing food, drink and accommodation to those living on the streets amongst many, many other things. Christians are also involved in mission and relief projects across the globe. The day before writing this, my wife and I delivered 137 shoeboxes filled with such things as notebooks, pencils, hats, gloves and small toys that had been donated by many generous people to a Christian organisation based near Preston who will be taking them to disadvantaged children in Ukraine. It’s just one small expression of care among very many.

As far as both the ministry of Jesus and his church is concerned there is no distinction between what we might call the spiritual and the social. By way of a chance meeting in Nain Jesus brought both joy and a more certain future to a widow in a single act of compassion. Whilst global news coverage means that we are all keenly aware of an ocean of need in our less than perfect world, which can overwhelm us if we’re not careful, it is important that we all do something rather than nothing in response. The following words of the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr in the context of addressing issues of inequality and injustice particularly struck me when I read them the other day, ‘I believe that if we can do one or two things wholeheartedly in our life, that is all God expects.’ I think there is great wisdom here and it is in the ‘wholehearted’ nature of whatever we do in response to God’s call that the personal commitment and sacrifice lies. So what one or two things could you do?

Questions: Do you have difficult questions to ask God about things that have happened in your own life or those of people you care about? In what way is addressing poverty and inequality part of the mission of the church?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you gave the widow her son back, open us to your call and help us to share your gifts generously and wholeheartedly. Amen.

14th March - The one who is ‘for us’

The one who is ‘for us’: Mark 9 v 38-41: ‘…because he was not one of us.’

The 2020 presidential election emphasised the fault lines that now run through society in the United States of America. I read recently of one person cancelling Christmas plans and another moving her wedding date in order to avoid meeting family members on the other side of the increasingly wide political chasm that is causing such damaging division. The political question in an increasing number of countries seems to be, ‘are you with us or against us’?

This sort of exclusive mindset has been the cause of some of the deepest wounds of Christian history such as when, in 1054, the Roman Catholic Pope and the Eastern Orthodox Patriarch mutually excommunicated each other causing a tear in the body of Christ that remains unhealed to this day. In 1204, those who had embarked on the Fourth Crusade went even further and destroyed the Christian city of Constantinople, raping nuns and killing indiscriminately as they went about it. To the Crusaders, the people of Constantinople were not ‘their kind of Christians’, and were therefore fair game. An apology, from Pope John Paul II, in which he stated, ‘it is tragic that the assailants, who set out to secure free access for Christians to the Holy Land, turned against their brothers in the faith. The fact that they were Latin Christians fills Catholics with deep regret’, took 800 years to arrive.

In today’s reading Jesus himself is completely relaxed about the activities of the unnamed exorcist who is worrying John purely because he is, ‘not one of us’. Maybe the stranger had seen Jesus teaching, healing and casting out demons and been inspired to follow suit; we just don’t know. Neither do we know anything about his understanding of who Jesus was and what his ministry was all about. We’ll assume that it was even more limited than that of the disciples whose own grasp on things was pretty shaky at this stage. Yet Jesus doesn’t ask his disciples to grab him and bring him over for a grilling to see what he’s about neither does he seem at all interested in finding out more about him or regard him as any kind of threat.

The simple challenge to John is that if this exorcist is performing miracles in Jesus’ name how can he be an adversary and therefore why on earth should anybody try to stop him (v 39)? Yet still today Christians are looking at other Christians from different traditions and maintaining that they are not ‘one of us’. Within the Christian church there have always been different understandings of key elements of the faith such as the Bible, the Eucharist, the Church, the Mission of God in the world and the scope of salvation. It is very important that the conversations we continue to have about all these issues and many others remain friendly, mutually affirming and generous. All too often, however, they are rancorous, spiteful and lacking in any kind of warmth. What so often bedevils the conversations we need so much to keep going is the belief that ‘we’ (whichever part of the Christian tradition ‘we’ belong to) are absolutely right in what we believe which means that ‘they’ are necessarily entirely wrong. This often leads people to look on those who take a different view (which could even be a somewhat nuanced version of what they themselves believe) as not proper Christians at all. Now obviously all Christians believe things about Jesus Christ, his death and resurrection and the way in which his followers should behave in the world today but the misguided belief that you can have this faith thing completely buttoned up betrays a breathtaking arrogance entirely out of sympathy with the generosity of spirit Jesus extends to the unnamed exorcist that John disparages.

Of course, for Jesus, any belief is meaningless if your actions don’t stack up; as he says elsewhere, ‘by their fruits, you will recognise them’ (Mat 7 v 16). It is not necessarily those who prophesy, drive out demons or even say, ‘Lord, Lord’ who are getting it right. Rather it is those who demonstrate in the way they live their lives that they are attentive to the will of God (Mat 7 v 21-22) who are on a meaningful journey of faith. It is noteworthy that here and elsewhere, as in his dealings with the religious authorities of his day, Jesus reserves his harshest criticism for those who say one thing and do another (Mat 23 v 27-28). That is why the final verse of our short passage is so important; anyone who does something as seemingly insignificant as offering a thirsty person a drink of water in Jesus’ name is getting it right (v 41). The clear implication is that all of us who take the Christian life seriously should be prepared to work, worship and pray alongside those who, like the unknown exorcist for John, are not part of our Christian tradition and who may have different understandings, ways of worshipping and ways of doing mission to those we most readily relate to. Which begs the question of how well we know people who attend other churches in our community? So why not go along to a different church than your own from time to time and get to know some of your fellow Christians who do things differently. And do this with an open heart as one seeking to learn and grow rather than taking into that experience a sense of spiritual superiority.

There is an echo in this passage of the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats (Mat 25 v 31-46) in which those who minister to Jesus himself by feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty a drink, inviting in the stranger, clothing the naked and visiting the sick and those in prison are entirely unaware of what they are doing (Mat 25 v 37). In the light of this I’m tempted to push the envelope a bit further and suggest that anyone at all who offers a thirsty person a drink of water or offers any act of kindness to a fellow human being, whatever their beliefs might be (in other words, people of all faiths and none), are doing the compassionate work that is humanity’s shared vocation. What Jesus is implying here is that such people, who show themselves by their actions to be doing the work of God, are in an important sense our partners in mission; something implicitly acknowledged by the fact that, as well as Christian relief agencies such as Tear Fund, Christian Aid and CAFOD, the charities who work together on the Disasters Emergency Committee include the secular agency Oxfam and Islamic Relief. This means that when workers from Oxfam dig a bore hole in a village in Africa providing the residents with access to clean water, or when Islamic Relief feed those facing starvation because of the conflict in Yemen, Christians should rejoice because the thirsty are being given a drink and the hungry are being fed (Mat 25 v 35). 

None of this means that our own Christian beliefs are compromised; after all elsewhere in the Bible Paul quotes Greek philosophers Aratus and Epimenides as part of his presentation of the good news in Athens (Acts 17 v 28) and the compiler of the book of Proverbs includes a section based on an Egyptian wisdom book called The Instruction of Amenemope (Prov 22 v 17 – 24 v 22). The message seems to be that ‘even though these people don’t believe what we believe, when they are saying and doing good things God is at work’. God is working on a much bigger canvas than is often apparent to us with our limited perspective; something that should both challenge us and make us glad.

Questions: Where can you see, both around you and in your own heart, an ‘us and them’ mentality? How might you challenge this and be changed yourself in the process?

Prayer: Lord, give us generosity of spirit, an open heart and the vision to see what you are doing in the world and be part of it. Amen.

13th March - The woman subject to bleeding

The woman subject to bleeding: Mark 5  v 24b-34: ‘Your faith has healed you.’

In the days when you could just turn up at a football ground and pay to go through the turnstiles I went with some friends to Anfield, the home of Liverpool Football Club, to see them play Barcelona in the European Cup (which has since evolved into the cash cow known as the Champions League). In those days the Kop was a standing terrace behind one of the goals and I can vividly remember, whenever the play came down our end, being lifted off my feet in a great wave of people and carried in the air several yards down the terrace before being carried up and back to my starting point when play moved up the other end.

Today’s story describes a chaotic crowd of people trying desperately to get close to Jesus at a time when he had quite a reputation as a healer around the towns and villages of Galilee. He is on his way to the house of Jairus, a local synagogue official whose 12 year old daughter is close to death, when something quite strange happens. When Jesus heals people it is usually done intentionally and out of love and compassion yet here is an example of an inadvertent healing which Jesus only becomes aware of after the event in that ‘power had gone out from him’ (v 30). It feels a little impersonal; almost as if Jesus worked on a battery which lost a bit of its charge as its power caused the woman’s internal bleeding to cease instantaneously. Perhaps this is one reason why Jesus doesn’t allow the woman to scuttle away unnoticed after receiving the healing she desperately craved. As we reflect on this woman who now stands face to face with Jesus let’s think about the ramifications of her condition for a moment.

We need to consider firstly what it was doing to her body. She had been ‘subject to bleeding’ for twelve long years (v 25). Whether this was caused by heavy menstrual bleeding or some other medical condition isn’t clear but whereas in today’s NHS she would have been able to visit her local GP and be referred to a consultant if necessary, back then she was in the hands of doctors with very rudimentary knowledge who charged her for the privilege of consultations which only made matters worse (v 26). Her condition was not life threatening, unlike Jairus’s daughter she is not dying, but it was both painful and distressing on a daily basis. It meant that she and anything she touched was regarded as ritually unclean (see Lev 15 v 25-27) and as a result of this she was excluded from the life of the synagogue of which Jairus, whose daughter she was preventing Jesus from seeing, was an official. The effect of this ritual exclusion was that anybody else coming into contact with anything she had lain on, sat on or even just touched would also become unclean. It’s an ancient example of social distancing and the restrictions and lockdowns we have experienced during the pandemic give us an idea of the fear that lurked behind these beliefs and practises.

So what was it doing to her mind? Because she was shunned and excluded she must have led an incredibly lonely life. For many vulnerable people the pandemic has meant many months of not being able to see family and friends and they will have an understanding of what her feelings were. However she did not have access to zoom, social media or a telephone; she was to all intents and purposes alone in the world. If the pandemic has taught us one thing it is the value of friendship; we were certainly not made to be alone. Hence the desperation of this woman who puts herself at the heart of something akin to an enormous rugby scrum to get close to Jesus. She is physically healed, something she realises instantly, but she still needs Jesus – he isn’t a magician dispensing healings without engaging with the people he comes into contact with. It isn’t battery power but God’s loving, life giving power that has healed this woman and there needs to be a conversation. That’s why Jesus keeps looking (v 32); he isn’t going to let her slip away.

There are two important things their conversation achieves. Firstly because her healing now becomes public knowledge it makes it much easier for her to be accepted back into the community. Jesus is taking a risk here with his own reputation because according to the letter of the law he himself has been rendered unclean simply by having her touch his garment (even though his disciples make the valid point that in the chaos nobody would have had a clue who had touched his clothes - v 31). But her healing and restoration have to be public; Jesus is not just concerned with her physical healing, he wants to heal the whole person. He wants her to be able to be close to any family she may have, he wants her to be able to go to the synagogue, he wants her to feel valued, wanted, loved and cared for.

Secondly it clarifies the role that her faith played in her healing, as Jesus puts it; ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you (v 34). It may not have been fully formed, but a desperate kind of hope that touching the healer’s cloak might just deliver her was enough. She was only at the beginning of her journey of faith but she was free (v 34). Not just free from the pain and discomfort of her medical condition but from the experience of waking up each day knowing that she would spend that day alone and as an object of fear. We can only imagine what that had been doing to her sense of self-esteem.

We might well feel that our faith is a fragile flower and very much prey to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. As we look at other Christians whose faith seems so much stronger and who seem to know so much more about the Bible than we do we can sometimes feel like giving up. Apart from the fact that those we regard in that way almost certainly have issues of their own we can see in this story that even a ‘last resort’ kind of faith with very little knowledge and understanding but with a deep longing for a different kind of life – whatever might mean for us in the context of our own lives – evinces a response from Jesus. And the fact that, for us, our engagement with Jesus might or might not result in physical healing, doesn’t mean that our faith and walk with Jesus is any the less meaningful and significant. Jesus’ wider concern for the mental, emotional and spiritual scars that this unknown woman would have potentially carried with her long after her physical healing is a very significant part of the story.

It is our understanding of how Jesus accepts us with all our doubts, questions, hang-ups, fears and uncertainties that will help us as Christians to offer a non-judgemental welcome to others who come searching even as they are not quite sure what they are looking for. Jesus takes anyone and everyone as they are and where they are and invites them on a journey of faith. Just like Rome, that cannot be built in a day and the Christian life is not a beauty contest in which we are endlessly comparing ourselves to others. We are all broken in one way or another and the acknowledgement of this is an essential prerequisite for growth in spiritual life and faith. As we embark on, continue or re-engage with the life of faith we will always be encountering the love of God who forgives what is past, accepts who we are today and shapes and guides our future. Even in the chaos that sometimes constitutes our daily lives, it’s all rather wonderful!

Questions: Have you ever experienced chaos in your spiritual life? How has living through that shaped your walk with Jesus today and how might it shape where you go from here?

Prayer: Lord, accept us as we are and lead and guide us into the future you have prepared for us. Amen.

12th March -The Paralytic

The paralytic: ‘Mark 2 v 1-12: …get up, take your mat and go home’

I cannot imagine a world without friends. Our experience of a time when self-isolating and social distancing became part and parcel of daily life has made us realise just what a precious gift friendship is. The paralysed man in today’s reading was very blessed to have some brilliant mates without whom he would never have met Jesus. Having just arrived back home (v 1) and no doubt in need of some peace and quiet Jesus is besieged with locals who surround his home meaning that these indefatigable friends have to carry the paralysed man up onto the flat roof of the house in which Jesus was staying, dig through the packed clay and lower him to ground level.

The response of Jesus is to the faith of the friends rather than the paralysed man himself yet it is to him that he address the words, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’, (v 5) that lie at the heart of the story. At that time it was assumed that there was a causal link between sin and suffering yet, in a radical departure from received wisdom, we know that Jesus didn’t buy into this (see John 9 v 1-3). Jesus is not saying to the man, ‘you’ve got this condition because you are a particularly bad person’, he is simply meeting a fundamental need, shared by every single one of us, for forgiveness.

The legal experts looking on know (rightly!) that only God can forgive sins but fail to recognise the divine authority of Jesus. Exactly what Jesus meant with his self-designation as the ‘Son of Man’ (v 10) has been debated exhaustively but most obviously is an allusion to a figure described in the book of Daniel (Dan 7 v 13-14) who is given authority and is an object of worship which can only mean he shares the divine nature. What seemed impossible to the teachers of the law was that this authority was being made visible in a residential house in Capernaum that’s just had an enormous hole gouged in its roof. But that is exactly what is happening.

What Jesus does by healing the man is make visible a profound depth of love and care for one vulnerable and sick person that sits alongside the authority he is claiming for himself. The paralysed man himself speaks with actions rather than words in this story; he just gets up, picks up the mat that he is no longer imprisoned on and walks out in a very public demonstration of the authority of Jesus over sin and sickness (v 12).

So there were two very significant things that Jesus did for the paralysed man. Firstly, he healed him, thereby delivering him from total dependency and opening new opportunities to him such as being able to work, to be free to go exactly where he wanted to, to build new relationships, to marry and have children or even to make a mess of things. Whilst his healing ministry was central to Jesus’ vocation and the Christian healing ministry has continued more or less (quite often less) over the centuries, Paul’s thorn in the flesh (2 Cor 12 v 7-9) and Timothy’s frequent illnesses (1 Tim 5 v 23) resonate with our own lived experience that many people of deep Christian faith and commitment are not healed from sicknesses and disabilities. One thing worth throwing in here, of course, is that health care provision is now off the scale better than it was in Jesus’ day and that there is a miraculous element to that which is often overlooked. God is as much at work (and far more frequently!) through surgeons and other health professionals as he is through those involved in the church’s healing ministry. I wonder if God’s response to Paul’s pleading regarding his ‘thorn’ helps us to understand why suffering is as much a part of life for Christians as it is for everybody else; ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Cor 12 v 9). So much learning and transformation takes place in the crucible of suffering. I have experienced that as will many reading these words. There are times when we know in our innermost being that, ‘when I am weak, then I am strong’ (2 Cor 12 v 10).

This, of course, leads us away from any thought that sickness or disabilities of any kind are judgements of God. The idea of redemptive suffering, as we see in the suffering and death of Jesus, allows no place for this kind of thinking (which has proved remarkably enduring). Whilst we can sometimes see, for instance in the context of drug and alcohol abuse, that suffering is a consequence of (for want of a better term) sinful behaviour, that does not mean that an illness or disability or any other kind of particular problem any of us struggle with means that we are receiving a specific punishment from God. My experience of pastoral ministry over the years informs me that this is something people do worry about.

A corollary of this is that we are often unable to explain the reasons for specific suffering. There are times when gut wrenching anguish such as that associated with a distressing long term illness means that the search for any kind of meaning is lost in the pain. The French Catholic poet Paul Claudel wrote that, ‘Jesus did not come to explain suffering or remove it. He came to fill it with his presence.’ Many of those who knew and loved Jesus similarly found themselves unable to come to terms with his suffering and death. It was only in the light of the empty tomb that a hope that reached into and went beyond suffering became real.

The second significant thing Jesus did was to offer the paralysed man the forgiveness of sins, (which is what got him into hot water with the legal experts looking on - v 6-7). It is very clear that, to state the obvious, this man is not alive today which means that at some point in the future he got sick and died. So whereas his physical healing was wonderful, increased his quality of life dramatically and filled him with faith and hope, it was of temporal significance. His experience of forgiveness, however, was of eternal significance and reminds us that healing is about more than bodies temporarily being made to work properly again but encompasses our mental, emotional and spiritual lives. Many of us, Christians very much included, carry guilt around with us – I look back even to mistakes made decades ago and still wince every now and again. Sometimes these memories can chain us to the past meaning that we are unable to apprehend the extraordinary beauty of the love that God offers to us today. There is nothing you or I have done or could ever do that will stop God from loving and forgiving us. That doesn’t mean that acts of selfishness, cruelty or thoughtlessness don’t matter and there are times in life when we will need to face the consequences of our actions. Yet God’s love is persistent and addresses us and all of humanity every moment of our lives did we but know it. In receiving God’s forgiveness the paralysed man discovered, probably much to his surprise, the deepest truth about himself; that he was loved by God. That is our deepest truth also.

Questions: Do you still feel guilty for things you thought, said or did in the past? Imagine yourself to be face to face with Jesus; what do you think he would say to you?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, thank you for your healing love. Help us to open our hearts and minds to you to receive all that you offer to us and to share it with others. Amen.

11th March -The Samaritan woman

The Samaritan woman: John 4 v 1-26: ‘I who speak to you am he’

Many car satellite navigation systems provide a number of alternative ways of getting from A to B including the shortest route, the fastest route and the most eco-friendly route. They also warn of hazards ahead such as roadworks and accidents and route us around them. Because of the entrenched antipathy between Jews and Samaritans, rooted in events of past centuries which had not been forgotten, Jewish people wishing to travel north to Galilee often had to take a major detour to avoid the hazardous journey through Samaria (where a racially motivated attack was always a danger) which added considerable time and distance to the journey.

Jesus and his disciples took no such detour but had managed to reach the town of Sychar, not a safe place for a group of Jews to be, without incident. The local well is the setting for an encounter that demonstrates just how radical is the Messiah who the Samaritan woman finds sitting on the well she has come to use. In addressing her and asking her for a drink Jesus is effectively driving a coach and horses through time honoured and deeply ingrained prejudices of his time and culture relating to morality, gender and race. To our minds there is nothing particularly unusual in this encounter; but at that time and in that place Jesus’ actions were dynamite.

As Jesus reached across the chasm that separated his people from her people the conversation included the complexities of her own personal life but focused mainly on the offer of living water and the nature of true worship. It’s clear that she was someone who found relationships difficult. She has been married five times and presumably divorced five times which would have given her a certain reputation locally (which is why she avoids coming to the well with the rest of the local women in the cooler conditions in the early morning or late evening). Jesus knows all this but starts by asking for her help because he is thirsty; an act in itself culturally scandalous. But it is important in the context of the conversation that Jesus subsequently has with this woman that she has just done something to help him.

As Christians we very properly put a lot of emphasis on what we can do for others both in terms of meeting the needs we see around us and sharing the Christian message. But being able to receive is also important and often undervalued. Back in the early 1990s I was involved in a project that provided finance and resources for a project to help orphan children in the city of Timişoara in Romania not long after the fall of the communist regime. Whilst we were ostensibly there to help it was extremely important that we also allowed people to give to us. We were invited to meals on many occasions and were very much aware that our hosts were giving to us sacrificially; there really wasn’t all that much food to go round and a lot of queueing was sometimes required to get it. Yet if we had refused hospitality and effectively said (not necessarily in words but communicated nonetheless), ‘we’ve come here to give to you and you have nothing of value to give to us’ it would have reflected an attitude of superiority which, whether we meant it to or not, would have undermined the self-esteem and offended the hospitable nature of those who simply wanted to give something back.  

So Jesus talks about water to one who has given him water to satisfy his thirst in the burning heat of the noonday sun; the conversation could not have taken place without his willingness to receive from her. Of course he is talking about a different kind of water and just as Nicodemus, when he hears the phrase ‘you must be born again’, can only see a ridiculous mental image of people entering their mother’s womb a second time (John 3 v 4), so the Samaritan woman finds it hard to think that Jesus is offering anything other than a supply of drinkable water that will obviate the need to keep visiting the well (v 15). Yet this living or running water is a metaphor for the life and presence of God within the human heart. Jesus is saying that because God is spirit (v 24), worshippers do not have to travel to a specific location to get near to him, whether that be Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim (where the Samaritan Temple stood), instead he longs to find a home in the human heart (John 14 v 23).

This truth has had great relevance for Christians during lockdown as churches have been closed and the only way to access worship is online. For those without internet access the estrangement from public worship has been all the more painful. To know that Jesus lives in our hearts wherever we are and that we can pray, read our Bibles, sing songs of worship and praise and thank him for his love at home or wherever we happen to be has been of paramount importance. However this doesn’t mean that going to church is relegated to being an optional extra; the writer to the Hebrews specifically encourages his readers not to neglect the act of worshipping with others (Heb 10 v 25). So, for example, remembering the sacrifice of Jesus as we celebrate Holy Communion together in church is a hugely formative experience for those who follow him, which is why he commands us to do it (Luke 22 v 19). Yet many clergy also take Holy Communion to members of the church who are housebound, in hospital or in care emphasising that ‘place’, whilst significant (bearing in mind that Jesus does attach an importance to the Jerusalem Temple in what he says - v 22) is not the be all and end all.

The most important thing about worship, says Jesus, is that it is ‘in spirit and in truth’ (v 24). When we worship God, whether we are physically in church, watching a service online or reading our Bibles and praying at home, what really matters is that it is a transformative encounter with the living God. We can go to church all our lives and say and sing all the right words but still not have our hearts touched or set on fire. Worship, giving to God what he is worth, is about being open to change; when we truly find room in our hearts for him it will transform us. The Samaritan woman with the complex love life and terrible reputation locally becomes an evangelist, telling those who shun her in the street and snigger behind her back that she may well have found the Messiah (John 4 v 29). She isn’t sure but the bravery with which she turns to the community that spurned her and opens her heart to them suggests that real transformation has taken place.

She doesn’t understand everything and there is still a journey ahead (which we know nothing about). As we worship, not just with our lips but in our hearts and minds in spirit and in truth, we too know that we are only part way there. Worship is more than lip service, it has to be real and reflect a genuine desire to put God at the heart of our lives. Only when we consciously and intentionally place ourselves in the presence of God can the living water flow. We might feel that, having once known that spring within, the water has become somewhat stagnant and we are somewhat becalmed. The Samaritan woman can inspire us to find who we really are once again. If we feel we are walking through a spiritual desert, this passage offers us living water to drink that will well up to eternal life (v 14). It is by drinking deep that the thirst for God that all humans possess, whether they are conscious of it or not, can be satisfied forever.

Questions: What does mean to you to worship ‘in spirit and in truth’? How can we prevent our Christian lives from becoming dry and running into the sand?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, as we worship you in spirit and in truth, touch our hearts, open us to the streams of living water you offer us, and enable us to share the water of life with others. Amen.

10th March -Simeon

Simeon: Luke 2 v 25-35: ‘My eyes have seen your salvation’

Waiting can be a real pain! It’s something that we are less and less used to when it’s now possible to order something from the internet and have it delivered within the hour. We tend to regard time spent waiting as time wasted. However the writer Sue Monk Kidd offers us a very different perspective when she says, ‘I had tended to view waiting as mere passivity. When I looked it up in my dictionary however, I found that the words passive and passion come from the same Latin root. Waiting is both passive and passionate. It’s a vibrant, contemplative work.’ Her words are particularly helpful as we consider Simeon. Having understood that his life would not end until he had seen the promised Messiah, are we to think that he spent his time twiddling his thumbs until he showed up? I think not.

His was a passionate, vibrant kind of waiting rather than the kind of waiting that ends up with us losing the will to live. His life was defined by his openness to the Holy Spirit (v 25-26) and when the Spirit is at work life is rarely boring. It’s not stated explicitly, but his act of blessing Joseph, Mary and Jesus (v 34) suggests that Simeon was a Temple priest, further emphasising that his was an active rather than a passive waiting. His was a patient hope which endured as he lived day to day life with all its light and shade, times of busyness and rest, of health and sickness, of stress and calm. 

Not only did his passionate waiting shape his own life; his ardent hope and openness to the Spirit would have touched the lives of many others in the course of his ministry at the Temple. For Simeon waiting was joyous and expectant. It would, of course, be wrong to think that all this joy was unalloyed; there would have been times when the vision grew dim and he wondered whether the Messiah would ever come. But his life’s work came to fruition as he held the child in his arms. We too can embrace passionate and active waiting. We are not called, as we wait for the return of Christ, to gaze upward and be no earthly use. Instead, we need to have a passion for God’s kingdom to grow, for justice and peace to fill the earth, for the binding up of the broken hearted and for deep peace to transform a fractured world.

Over the Christian centuries people have popped up from time to time convinced of the imminence of the return of Christ; they have all been wrong. In order to see the focus of all our hopes it would be better for us to look back to the child in Simeon’s arms. There are two Greek words for the English word ‘time’. ‘Chronos’ means chronological time. I happen to be writing this at 11.15am on a Tuesday morning and will soon be popping downstairs to make a cup of coffee. It’s just another day. ‘Kairos’ is much more about the right time or the opportune moment that lends significance to an event far beyond its place in series of events that took place on a certain day, week, month or year. For us that might be our wedding day, the day we heard that we passed our driving test or the day our child or grandchild was born. In the New Testament kairos moments at those at which God says or does something profoundly significant that reveals, fulfils or transforms. When John the Baptist cries, ‘The time has come…the kingdom of God is near, Repent and believe the good news!’ (Mark 1 v 15), it is the word kairos that is used. The moment is now, says John, it’s time to get off your backsides and do something about it.

As Simeon holds Jesus in his arms we can see that this also is a kairos moment; one that was meant to be. Two people, one at the very end of his life and the other at the very beginning were meant to meet at this precious moment. The text suggests that Simeon wasn’t actually on duty when Jesus was brought in to the Temple but that the Spirit gave him a nudge (v 27) to make sure he did not miss the divine appointment. In poetic words that have been known to generations of Anglicans as the ‘Nunc Dimittis’, sung at evensong week by week, this helpless infant is revealed as the one who has come not just for the people of Israel but the whole world  (v 29-32). Simeon, steeped in the traditions of Israel, was able to see a new and further horizon as he gazed at the child who was born for all of humanity.

And then a more sombre note is sounded. Mary has to be prepared for the sword that will pierce her soul as a sword is plunged into the side of her son as he dies on the cross. The child’s relationship with the people of Israel will be ambivalent (v 34) and costly. Not everybody was as open to the Holy Spirit as Simeon, not everyone saw the further horizon he descried. Whilst Jesus certainly is the Messiah he is not going to lead a war of liberation against the Roman occupiers. He will save, reveal and bring glory but only by walking the way of the cross.

Perhaps it is time for us to become more open to the Holy Spirit. We live in a distracted age and we need to give ourselves time to sit, rest, be open and receive. This cannot be done in a quick couple of seconds in the middle of a busy day. There needs to be intentionality, a definite decision that God will be at the heart of our lives rather than an added extra when can find a bit of time. Think of Simeon who waited and waited, and then saw. If we follow his example we will find that our hearts and minds will be more open to God’s presence and his love. We spend so much time skittering along the surface without ever taking the inner journey to uncover the Christ who lives in the deep places of our hearts where the Holy Spirit is present. As we take that journey it will be, as it was for Simeon, a journey of revelation. It won’t always be easy and swords may pierce our souls from time to time. But as we wait on the Lord with expectancy and commitment we might want to spend some time reflecting on the picture before us of Simeon holding the precious child and open our hearts to receive the love revealed at that most wonderful of moments.

Questions: What does ‘active waiting’ mean to you? Have you ever found your faith growing dim? How can we open ourselves more fully to the Holy Spirit?

Prayer: Lord, give us an openness to the Holy Spirit that we may both wait patiently and work actively for the coming of your kingdom. Amen.

9th March -Joseph

Joseph: Mat 1 v 18-25: ‘Joseph her husband was a righteous man’

In the course of parish ministry I attended many nativity plays in schools and churches. Understandably they don’t tend to focus on the apparently scandalous event at the heart of the story – that Mary is pregnant and Joseph is not the father. It would be fair to say that while Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus portrays Mary’s perspective, Matthew gives us more than a hint of what might have been going through Joseph’s mind as he experiences the roller coaster ride of Mary’s pregnancy.

When Joseph discovered that Mary was expecting a child, Matthew tell us that he ‘considered this’ (v 19). We might well ask what this actually involved. The Greek word used, ‘enthymeomai’, suggests that he did this with not a little emotional force. To start with, the penalty for what he understood Mary’s actions to be in being unfaithful to him as her betrothed was death by stoning (Deut 22 v 23-24) – according to the Law of Moses, her life was forfeit. Added to this, of course, was his personal sense of betrayal; how could Mary have done this? We can imagine the anger, the confusion and disappointment circling around in his mind endlessly coalescing into the same thought; ‘I just don’t understand!” Joseph was not some kind of super hero able to rise above such thoughts; he was a flesh and blood human being whose life at this precise moment was falling apart at the seams because of a scandal he would never live down. It is to his enormous credit that his intuitive thought is not about how he might take revenge according to the letter of the law but how he can save Mary’s life and reputation (v 19).

This begs the question as to why the angel came to see Mary alone rather than with Joseph. Why was he excluded from the decision making process? There isn’t a definitive answer to this question yet I would tentatively suggest that in a stiflingly patriarchal society in which all important decisions were taken by men, there is a divine marker being put down in that this most significant of choices was Mary’s to make. If we consider another Mary standing outside the tomb of Jesus and being the first the meet the risen Lord we can see that the life of Jesus is bookended with stories about the emancipation of women. For the church this profoundly challenges the exclusion of women from ordained ministry that is only now being meaningfully addressed and is still not a reality in every church tradition two thousand years later.

Joseph really comes into his own after he has his own angelic encounter in the course of a dream in which the situation is explained to him (v 20-23). He will have realised firstly that Mary, against all the odds, has not betrayed him but also that absolutely nobody else is going to believe that. ‘Do not be afraid’, says the angel to Joseph. There will be misunderstanding, ribaldry even (I wonder if and how long ‘Joseph and Mary’ jokes did the rounds in Nazareth) and a very uncertain future but Joseph is prepared to do the right thing rather than the expected thing. We can imagine comments along the lines of, ‘Joseph, what are you doing, you’re out of your mind!’ coming his way. But he knows the will of God and responds obediently. It’s why he and Mary end up on the road to Bethlehem together.

Whilst Joseph’s call to obedience in being loyal to a woman with child by the Holy Spirit (v 20) is pretty unique, our walk with Christ will sometimes involve doing the right thing rather the expected thing because there are times when they clash. St Francis was born into a family of wealthy cloth merchants who lived a life of luxury. Indeed in his youth he had something of a reputation as a party animal. Yet a period of imprisonment following a battle he was involved in wrought a complete change in him and he embraced poverty and simplicity in a way that still inspires people today (highlighted by the decision made in 2013 by Jorge Mario Bergoglio to adopt Francis as his papal name). Yet at the time Francis’s actions seemed inexplicable to those around him and, indeed, at one point he was dragged home by his father and locked in a storeroom.

There will be times when, as Christians, we are called to do things that will involve both a challenge to our own received wisdom and the possibility of us being seriously misunderstood by others. Perhaps that’s why Jesus rather ruefully reflected that ‘prophets are not accepted in their home towns’ (Luke 4 v 24). The first of these is a reminder that we will never have more than a provisional understanding of who God is and what his will for our lives might be. Just as the disciples needed to undergo a major cultural shift in embracing Gentiles as part of the Christian community, so our Christian pilgrimage sometimes involves putting what we think we know about ourselves and God to one side. The Christian life is not comfy - seeing faith with new eyes means being open to previously unimagined ways of serving Christ. The second is a reminder that when we do follow Christ with all our hearts we may speak and act in ways that don’t sit comfortably with everybody. I’m not talking here about deliberately winding people up or the kind of nonsensical and dangerous conspiracy theories that too many Christians in the United States have been taken in by in recent years. It might just be that our thoughts, our words and our actions won’t always be fully comprehensible to everyone who adopts the cultural mores of early twenty first century society and therefore following Jesus may be costly in terms of reputation and relationships (bearing in mind as we have in earlier studies that the act of following Christ in some countries means putting your life at risk).

The relationship between Joseph and his peers would never have been quite the same after his decision to stick with the woman who had apparently humiliated him in the most public way possible. Yet, although he has only a couple of brief appearances in the Bible, Joseph had a hugely formative role in the life of his adopted son Jesus. I first visited the ancient ruins of the town of Sepphoris, seven miles from Nazareth, back in 2013 on my first pilgrimage to the Holy Land. At first I wondered what we were doing there as the town makes no appearance in the New Testament. Yet there is a road, dating from the first century, running through the ruins that Joseph and Jesus would have walked along many times together. As the nearest town to the village of Nazareth Joseph and Jesus would have gone there together often in order to buy supplies and very possibly to do jobs as part of their carpentry business. It may be that the first time they went together Joseph carried his small boy on his back showing him the sights and sounds. We know that Joseph was still living when Jesus was twelve years old (Luke 2 v 41-52) but had died by the time Jesus began his ministry. God entrusted his Son to this loyal, generous, thoughtful and just man who helped lay the foundations of Jesus’ ministry by his commitment to following God’s will whatever the cost. We don’t have to be centre stage to make a difference. Even the smallest act of service can lead to unimagined healing and hope. Whilst not everyone will always ‘get’ our motives as followers of Jesus, we can take Joseph as an example of what it means to put our faith first and foremost and to live it out day by day.

Questions: Why do we sometimes struggle to do God’s will? How do we respond when our loyalty to Christ causes complications or misunderstandings in some area of our lives?

Prayer: Lord, thank you for Joseph’s ability to accept your will for his life. Help us in our daily lives to do what is right even when we don’t understand what’s going on. Amen.

8th March -Haggai

Haggai: Haggai 1 v 1-11: ‘Because of my house, which remains a ruin’

Have you ever looked forward to something which turned out to be a bit of a disappointment? It may have been a holiday that wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, a show that didn’t quite have the spark you were expecting or a new job that promised more than it delivered. Imagine the people of Judah returning to Jerusalem after many decades of exile during which they dreamed about but saw no possibility of going home. Even those who were born and grew up in exile would have had the city and its Temple as it was before the exile described to them vividly by their elders. As those making the journey set out for Jerusalem there would have been a certain amount of trepidation but also great anticipation; even though many of them had never been there, they were going home. The reality when they got there, of course, was a ruined Temple, a destroyed city and broken down walls. It would have been a scene of devastation and there was much hard and laborious work to be done before any glory could return!

The short book of the prophet Haggai can be dated precisely to 520 BC, a little less than 20 years after the return from exile. From the start there were major challenges exacerbated by local opposition (described in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah) and I suspect there were many moments when, rather like the Israelites of Moses’ time dreaming of the flesh pots of Egypt in the heat of the desert, the returnees ached to be back in Babylon.

Haggai’s problem was with the priorities of those rebuilding the city. Whilst people had been rebuilding their homes and actually making them very comfortable (v 4), work on building the Temple, the symbol of the nation’s identity as the people of God, had not begun (v 2). Now in one sense it seems perfectly understandable that the need to house people was made a priority; Jerusalem is a hill city and can be cold in winter. But it seems that a situation had been reached where it kept on being kicked into the long grass. From this perspective Haggai’s words are a call to action and a challenge to the people to get their priorities sorted out. One result of the fact that people are looking first and foremost to their own wants is that they are spending considerable amounts of money on unnecessary items (v 6b). Haggai pronounces that this self-orientated lifestyle will have consequences (10-11); economic disaster is on the horizon because the people have still not learned their lesson in spite of all their years in exile.

I’m writing this in lockdown during the Coronavirus pandemic soon after news that a number of vaccines will soon be available. We spent most of 2020 exiled from much of what makes up our day to day lives. We have been separated from our families and friends for weeks at a time and many families are mourning the loss of loved ones and suffering acute distress that they were not able to see or say goodbye to them before they died. Many people have been unable to go to work and have either been working from home or placed on furlough. Many have lost their jobs altogether and are facing acute financial hardship. As I write restaurants, pubs and cafes are once again closed (except for take away outlets) so it is not possible to do something as ordinary and everyday as meet friends for coffee and a catch up. Many of us have spent the vast majority if not all our time at home.

So life returning to some kind of normality, as it will little by little in 2021, is going to be a big change and it will feel a little bit like a return from exile. We may feel that, whilst the exile in Babylon described in the Bible was a result of major errors on the part of the people of Judah, the pandemic was just ‘something that happened’. Yet there is a clear link between the pandemic and the continued destruction of wildlife habitats which is placing humans and animals in closer proximity than they were intended to be thereby creating a far higher possibility of the transference of ‘zoonotic’ diseases (diseases existing in animals that can evolve to affect humans) such as COVID-19. Whilst I certainly wouldn’t call the pandemic a judgement from God (it would be very strange to think of a loving God deliberately targeting the elderly and most vulnerable), it may well be a consequence of the careless way that we are draining the earth’s resources and destroying habitats in our relentless desire to have more of everything. Haggai’s words about consuming but never being satisfied (v 6) seem awfully relevant to our situation.

Haggai’s words are remarkably applicable to our consumer orientated world; we also have holes in our purses (v 6b) yet our profligacy and love of things we want but don’t need threaten the future of the planet. You simply cannot have unlimited growth on a planet with limited resources. That is why I am hoping that as the pandemic recedes we don’t just go back to ‘normal’ but start to move on to a new normal in which the planet is not threatened by climate change, habitat destruction and global consumerism. That will require a profound change of mind for us all.

This is a vast topic and so it would perhaps be best to offer a few specific thoughts about food, drink and clothes, the aspects of careless consumerism that Haggai focuses on in verse 6 of our passage. We should be prepared to ask difficult questions about how what we eat, drink or wear has been produced all the way down the supply chain to those who grew, harvested, picked and packaged what we buy. Are those at the bottom of the chain working in a safe, clean and fair environment (bearing in mind the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka in 2013 which killed 1,134 clothing workers working for a company with links to a significant number of British clothing retailers who had been ordered to come to work on pain of losing a month’s wages even though it was known the building was unsafe)? Are they being paid a fair wage for their labour? Are farmers and other suppliers being paid a fair price for what they produce (whether they live in developing countries or the U.K.)? Is the purchase we are making contributing to the destruction of rainforests and/or animal habitats? What is the carbon footprint of what we buy (some producers are beginning to introduce carbon footprint labelling)? Do we already have enough of what we are purchasing and how much does impulse buying play a part in our consumption? Are we reusing plastic bags and trying to reduce the goods we buy with unnecessary plastic wrapping?

If you (or a family member or friend) have internet access ‘Ethical Consumer’ (www.ethicalconsumer.org), an independent not-for-profit website which works with a number of organisations including Christian Aid, provides a lots of helpful information on the moral implications of purchases across a wide range of goods and services that we use as consumers.

One thing we can say for sure is that Haggai is seriously challenging us, along with his contemporaries, to purchase less and give more in order to arrive at a new normal. For him, prioritising personal comfort at the expense of rebuilding the Temple symbolised the uncomfortable reality that the people had yet again turned away from God. In the same way prioritising personal comfort in a needy world today cannot be right; Haggai would certainly have a word or two to say about that! Profound change is required and Christians need to be at the heart of it.

Questions: As Christians what changes do we need to make in the way we use the earth’s limited resources? How do you think future generations will assess us as custodians of the planet?

Prayer: Lord, open our hearts that we may reflect a spirit of generosity in all aspects of our lives including in the way we consume the precious resources of the earth that you have created and asked us to care for. Amen. 

7th March -Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah

Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah: Daniel 3 v 1-30: ‘Look! I see four men…’

Who are these three guys, you may well ask? Whilst Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were their Jewish birth names, we know them more familiarly by their Babylonian names of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Along with Daniel they were born in Judah but after Jerusalem fell to the Babylonians in 587 BC, along with many of the great and good, they were forced into exile. They quickly found that there were opportunities in King Nebuchadnezzar’s court at Babylon for bright young men and they undertook training which opened doors to highly influential positions in the king’s service (Daniel 1 v 5; 19-20).

However given that Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah were faithful Jews living and working in an alien culture with very different religious beliefs it was pretty much inevitable that they would come across a roadblock. It arrived in the shape of a ninety feet high golden image which, whilst it may or may not have been of the king himself, was designed as a very visible object of worship. Here the unstoppable force of absolute royal power meets the immovable object of a strongly held faith; every single person assembled on the plain of Dura that day, Jewish exiles included, was instructed to bow down to the statue.

From time to time in our own day, on the news or in a documentary, we see members of ruling assemblies in totalitarian states on their feet giving the dictator a standing ovation. What we are not able to see is what these acolytes are thinking privately; they all know they have no choice but to play the part of sycophants to protect their jobs and their lives. So it was for Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah – they were caught between a rock and hard place whereby they had to choose between betraying their Jewish beliefs and disobeying the king’s command.

Their loyalty to God led them to a fiery furnace blazing even hotter than the king’s anger at their disobedience. The story of their deliverance from the fire which didn’t burn a hair of their heads and the presence of a fourth (presumably angelic) human figure in the fire with them vindicates the stand they have taken and leads to profound change in Neduchanezzar. He, of course, goes the whole hog with dire consequences promised now for anybody uttering a word against ‘the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’ (v 29). It is worth noting in passing that the king has not become a convert as a result of this remarkable deliverance, God is still ‘their own God’ (v28).

In the list of heroes of faith in Hebrews 11, the reference to those who ‘quenched the fury of the flames’ (v 34) is very likely a nod to this story. However whilst much of that chapter is about those delivered by God from all kinds of trials and tribulations, it goes on to list those whose struggles did not have such a happy outcome (v 35-38) and where there was no miraculous divine intervention to save people from prison, persecution, isolation and death.

This inconsistency of fate for those whose faith leads to conflict with religious and political leaders continues in the New Testament. Whilst James is put to death by the sword (Acts 12 v 2), Peter is subsequently rescued from incarceration by an angel (Acts 12 v 6-10). This surely does not mean that Peter mattered more than James. Testimonies from the 260 million Christians persecuted for their faith today suggest the same pattern (or lack of it). Whilst some, either through their own efforts or with help from organisations supporting them such as Open Doors (www.opendoorsuk.org), have been able to support themselves and live in safety, others have suffered less happy outcomes. The week before these words were written 39 people were murdered in the Democratic Republic of Congo just because they were Christians. It is estimated that between 50,000 and 70,000 Christians are being held in appalling conditions in labour camps in North Korea because of their faith.

Whilst there are many wonderful stories of answers to prayers and an enormous amount of prayerful work continues to be done in support of Christians who live day by day with the threats of losing their jobs, families or even their lives, not everybody can be brought into a safe place.

Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, were denounced by their colleagues out of jealousy (v 8), no doubt, at their rise through the ranks of the government administration. Their answer after they were hauled before the king speaks volumes. They did have faith that God will deliver them from the fiery furnace and yet, ‘…even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods…’ (v 18). They were fully prepared to pay the price if on this occasion there is no divine intervention. There is an implicit acknowledgement here that God is not always at hand with a ‘get out of jail free’ card but there is a loyalty to God that will face the consequences, whatever they may be.

In our own lives there may well be moments when the situation we find ourselves in leads to a potential conflict with our faith. We may not be taken off to prison or murdered for our beliefs but we might be ostracised, laughed at, marginalised, scorned or misunderstood. In our working life we may be asked to collude with a decision that, for instance, unnecessarily threatens people’s livelihoods here or overseas or that involves, at the very least, being economical with the truth. It might be that saying no to something we know to be wrong costs a friendship or carries a financial penalty. There are some tough choices to be made sometimes and the consequences of doing the right thing (or not doing the wrong thing) can be unpredictable.

Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah remind us that loyalty to God has to come first and that our lives need to be shaped around our faith rather than the other way round.  This will sometimes require much prayerful thinking; knowing what is the right course of action can be difficult to fathom and there may well be subtle nuances to take into account. There may be problems whichever way we look! Faith can be costly. Jesus not only gave up the joy of heaven but lived a life of service that took him inevitably to the cross (Phil 2 v 6-8). Whilst Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah emerged unharmed from the heat of the fire, there was no divine rescue from the agony of crucifixion for Jesus; no legions of angels appeared to carry him to safety as he was arrested, tried, mocked, sentenced, flogged and killed.

Yet that was not where the story ended; if it was then all those who have suffered for doing the right thing, including Jesus, would have suffered in vain. It is the resurrection that points us to a hope that takes us beyond such things as fiery furnaces to the righting of all wrongs and injustices as God’s kingdom of love, peace and fullness of life prevails. The writer of Hebrews has a vision of Christ at the right hand of God and exhorts us to ‘not grow weary and lose heart’ (Heb 12 v 3). Whatever difficulties, contradictions and costly decision making we may have to endure, our living hope is focused on an inheritance that, as Peter puts it, ‘can never perish, spoil or fade, (1 Peter 1 v 4).

Questions: Have you ever experienced conflict at work or in any other context between what you have asked to do and what you knew to be right? How did you resolve the dilemma?

Prayer: Lord, guide us when we have difficult decisions to make and need to know the right course of action. Give us the strength to do what we know is right and to be the people you want us to be. Amen.

5th March -The Widow at Zarephath

The Widow at Zarephath: 1 Kings 17 v 7-24: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up’

I have never found myself in a situation in which I didn’t know where my next meal was coming from. When I go shopping the supermarket shelves are full and there is an abundance of everything. Yet all it needs is the suggestion that food might run short and panic buying quickly ensues; just as it did at the beginning of the pandemic. It demonstrates just how much we take things like food for granted. The World Bank estimates that there are 135 million people in the world who are facing acute food insecurity with the consequences of COVID-19 potentially almost doubling that total.

In our reading today the people of Israel are suffering from a lethal combination of famine and bad leadership. Ahab, the Israelite king, aided and abetted by his wife Jezebel, is one of the Old Testament’s premier bad guys who seems to have pursued a policy of keeping his religious options open by promoting the worship of the Canaanite fertility god Baal (1 Kings 16 v 32). Whilst the climactic confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal is still some way off, the narrative is already building towards it by demonstrating that it is God rather than Baal who can both cause and bring relief from famine (v 1).

Poor leadership at a time of crisis can be very costly and Ahab’s deficiencies as a king are exacerbating the suffering of his subjects.  Elijah himself is miraculously kept alive (rather ironically by ravens, who are more often thought of as scavengers) and is then sent very specifically by God to Zarephath (beyond Israel’s borders; today it is the Lebanese city of Sarepta) on the understanding that a local widow would supply him with food. But is it the provider and who ends up being the one provided for. With her breadwinner dead the widow is down to her last few grains of flour and her last vestige of hope.

The miraculous provision of food whereby stocks of flour and oil remain at the same level however much is used is meant to remind us that whilst the effects of famine fall disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable, they are disproportionately closer to the kingdom of God; a community that great wealth makes it difficult to be part of (Mat 19 v 24). Ahab and Jezebel, back in their palace in Samaria, would not have been going short but they were getting it very wrong and the storyteller has some very harsh words for them (1 Kings 16 v 30-33). The principle that in times of economic crisis the most vulnerable bear the brunt whilst the wealthy grow wealthier holds as true today as it ever did. There is an uncompromising challenge for those of us living in an ostentatiously prosperous society which includes an exponentially rising group of people who are having, often for the first time in their lives, to worry about where their next meal is coming from.

The second half of the story, the healing of the widow’s son, continues the theme of vulnerability. We are not told how old her son was but he was clearly not of an age where he could support her financially. Both the woman herself (v 18) and Elijah (v 20) articulate the widespread belief that a death of this nature represented a judgement of God. But it is made clear in the fact that life returns to her son following Elijah’s impassioned and physically manifested prayer that this is emphatically not the case. Her son represented, perhaps, her last best hope of being able to have enough money to put food on the table in future and his death turns out to be no more and no less than the kind of random tragedy which we in our own day find so difficult to understand. I have found myself in numerous pastoral situations where people have expressed the belief that something very bad that was happening to them constitutes a divine punishment for some misdemeanour. It can very much feel like that, as it did for the widow at Zarephath, but Jesus came to show us that God’s way of doing things does not involve dishing out random acts of retribution to those who displease him. When Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus a window is opened onto the heart of a God who feels for, weeps with and cares passionately for those who suffer.

The widow had reached the point where she felt her life was over and that she wanted to die (v 12) – she had just had enough. Later on in Elijah’s story he himself, following his victory on Mount Carmel and his subsequent flight from the murderous rage of Jezebel, reached his own nadir in the silence of the desert as he implores God to, ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.’ (1 Kings 19 v 4). For the widow it was grinding poverty that made her life seem worthless, for Elijah it was the sensibility that it was ‘me against the world’ (1 Kings 19 v 10). There are many other reasons why a human being might feel that life is not worth the bother; the loss of a loved one, a struggle with mental health issues, living with a disability, addiction to drink or drugs or the isolation forced on many vulnerable people as a result of COVID-19 (to name just a few). Responding to this acute despair isn’t easy and pious platitudes do more harm than good. Much more helpful for Elijah was that his urgent need for sleep and food was met (1 Kings 19 v 5).

Whilst many reach a tipping point, sometimes driven by circumstances and sometimes by their own failures, at which they feel that they are worthless and their lives are meaningless, that is not how God sees it. This woman was not just poor; she was an outsider as far as the Jews were concerned, living in a part of the world where Baal was the main focus of worship. Indeed when Jesus makes reference to this story in the synagogue in Nazareth implicitly suggesting his ministry, rejected at home, will embrace Gentiles, he barely escapes with his life (Luke 4 v 25-26, 28-30). Jesus’s reference to her affirms that God cared about her, which is why Elijah arrived at her door. Whilst there is much about life in the twenty first century that eats away at our self-esteem and makes us feel devalued, our Christian faith insists that God cares for us too. If any one of us was the only person in the world who needed a saviour, Jesus would have died on the cross for us. He didn’t just give his life for us as an anonymous member of the human race; he knows our name, he knows about our struggles, he knows the things that trouble us and offers us all a sacrificial love that is personal, cleansing, renewing and never ending. This helps us to see our lives, whatever our circumstances may be, from a new place and assures us that we are and always will be beloved children of God.

Questions: Have you or somebody close to you ever felt that life just wasn’t worth living? Is there something practical we can do for a friend or family member today to express God’s love for them?

Prayer: Lord, though we find it hard to love ourselves sometimes, thank you that you love us more than we could dare to hope. Amen.

4th March - Omri

Omri: 1 Kings 16 v 15-28: ‘But Omri did evil’

Today’s passage briefly describes, in not much more than a footnote, the historically pretty spectacular reign of King Omri. He became king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel a little less than 50 years after the split with the Southern Kingdom (which continued to be ruled by descendants of David) and reigned for about 12 years. In terms of the wider history of the time he was an extremely significant figure who was militarily successful and established a powerful dynasty. He also founded Samaria, the capital city of his kingdom (1 Kings 16 v 24). The “Moabite stone”, discovered in 1868 at Dibon in Jordan by German missionary Frederick Augustus Klein (who became an Anglican priest and worked for what is now the Church Mission Society), contains these references to King Omri from a later Moabite leader, King Mesha:

‘Omri was king of Israel, and oppressed Moab during many days, and Chemosh [the Moabite deity] was angry with his aggressions. His son succeeded him, and he also said, I will oppress Moab.’

Other Assyrian inscriptions reveal that the northern kingdom of Israel was referred to as the ‘Land of Omri’ and the royal dynasty as the ‘House of Omri’ for over a century after his death. Yet the reign of this towering historical figure is given just 14 verses in 1 Kings 16, nearly half of which recount how he came to power. The reason for this is that the history writers of the Old Testament aren’t all that impressed by his successes (you could find out about them elsewhere if you were interested - see v 27). Their assessment of the kings of Israel is based entirely on their faithfulness, or lack of it, to God and it’s clear that from their point of view the most significant thing about Omri is that he repeated the mistakes of Jeroboam, first king of the Northern Kingdom, in deliberately turning aside from his vocation to lead a people loyal to God by fostering the worship of idols.

If we check out the only other reference to him in the Old Testament it’s clear that his name remained a byword for the evils of idolatry for many years after his reign. Micah, prophesying to the Southern Kingdom of Judah about 150 years later, does not mince his words and foresees ruinous consequences as he accuses the people of following the ‘statutes of Omri’ (Micah 6 v 16), clearly in context a reference to the worship of false idols. In a twist of irony, ruin did eventually overtake the Northern Kingdom during Micah’s lifetime as it was conquered by the Assyrians who deported many of its people and brought its history to a close.

The story of Omri reminds us of the perennial relevance of Lord Acton’s aphorism that, ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. Omri seems to have been a leader who was extremely capable but morally and spiritually bankrupt. We live at a time when populist and autocratic leaders have come to power in many countries with their divisive messages often carried via social media. Some of these leaders have cemented their power effectively for life; Presidents Putin of Russia and Xi of China being two examples. I have never understood the obsession with power but it seems to work like a drug, once you have had a fix you just can’t get enough of it. But it doesn’t need to be so. Nelson Mandela showed us that it is possible to lead a country whilst retaining your humanity and maintaining an attitude of public service.

Jesus never really bothered much with those in power (until he had to) preferring to spend much of his time with the ‘ptochos’, the poorest of the poor, made up of those were excluded from the rest of society, often reduced to begging. It was here that he nurtured the good seed of the coming kingdom. In an age where it seems that certain people have an entitlement to a lifestyle beyond the dreams of the vast majority we need to shift our gaze away from the trappings of power and address, in whatever way we are able, however small that might be, the appalling injustices that scar this beautiful world in which all were meant to be able to live without want.

Part of the problem relates very specifically to Omri; the tendency of humanity to worship idols rather than the Lord of heaven and earth. In Omri’s time it was the gods of the surrounding nations that subverted the vocation of his people to worship and serve God. As we see in the writings of the prophets this wasn’t just an end in itself as in; ‘serve me and not them or else’. Turning away from the one who had liberated the people and created a covenant with them had disastrous consequences for the moral and spiritual life of the nation. Micah, referred to earlier,  addresses a community which has lost its moral compass because it has lost touch with its foundational calling to be the people of God, ‘Her leaders judge for a bribe, her priests teach for a bribe, and her prophets tell fortunes for money’ (Micah 3 v 11). Money is talking so loudly it is drowning out the voice of God.

The idols of money, sex and power, which all figure prominently in the Old Testament narrative, are still extremely voluble today demanding our attention and claiming our allegiance. As human beings we have a God given need to worship but we too often look in the wrong place which means that, whether we mean to or not, we set up idols that sometimes hide in plain sight. We live in a culture in which rock stars, sports stars, soap stars, film stars and reality stars are placed on idolatrous pedestals meaning that even the most intimate details of their lives are dissected in the kind of gossip magazines people glance through while waiting for a haircut. These are lent a significance that enables their worshippers to get vicarious thrills (the lives of many celebrities are rarely their own) before returning to the seemingly mundane and unimportant matters that make up their own daily lives back at ground level. We have become worshippers with an increasing addiction to and reliance on such things as social media which too often mean we spend much of our lives with our attention focused on stuff that either doesn’t matter or is even positively harmful, such as the conspiracy theories of QAnon that are engaging certain mindsets in the United States (including some evangelical Christian communities) in very worrying ways.

What Christians are being called to do; what you and I are being called to do is to worship the Lord our God. This means that we put him first and define ourselves as those whose lives are focused on prayer, engagement with scripture, worship and service. This does not mean that we have to throw our phones and tablets away (although it might mean that we use them less) but it does mean that we make space in our lives and in our hearts to hear the voice of God addressing our distracted hearts and minds with a gentle whisper and a call to serve.

Questions: What does it mean to worship God every day of our lives? What are the marks of a life focused on serving Christ?

Prayer: Lord, we live in a society distracted by so many things that do not matter. Help us to shape our lives around our relationship with you. Amen.

3rd March - Bathsheba and Uriah

Bathsheba and Uriah: 2 Samuel 11 v 1-17; 12 v 1-13: ‘You are the man!’

It has been said that if you place someone in a position of high authority you see both the very best and the very worst of them. Having yesterday considered a remarkable act of royal kindness, we come back down to earth with a very big bump today as we consider David’s use and abuse of Uriah the Hittite and his wife Bathsheba.

This story takes place at the start of the fighting season after David’s army has left to go into battle while he himself has stayed in Jerusalem. From the roof of his palace, up the hill from the residential areas below, David sees a woman bathing. The series of events that flow from his lustful gaze involve adultery, skulduggery and murder and the storyteller accepts no excuses for David’s behaviour.

Uriah the Hittite was one of David’s most trusted soldiers, part of an elite force listed at the end of 2 Samuel (23 v 39). The designation ‘Hittite’ meant that he was descended from one of the Canaanite tribes that occupied the land before the people of Israel arrived from Egypt but given that ‘Uriah’ is a Hebrew name he was obviously very much an assimilated Israelite. His wife Bathsheba was the daughter of Eliam (11 v 3) who also appears to have been a member of David’s S.A.S. equivalent (2 Sam 23 v 24) meaning that they were members of a military family. So here the royal predator is having his way with a woman whose husband and father are away fighting his wars. The story does not say whether Bathsheba went to the palace willingly or unwillingly; the bottom line is that she would have had no choice in the matter anyway.

The story paints a picture of Uriah as decent and loyal and in no way deserving of the appalling treatment he receives. When news of Bathsheba’s pregnancy reaches David his first thought is to get Uriah  back from the war to sleep with his wife (for which David’s instruction to ‘wash your feet’ - 11 v 8 - is a euphemism) so that the child can be passed off as his. However Uriah, a professional soldier adhering to a code of conduct which he expresses in words tantamount to, ‘I can’t be sleeping with my wife while my mates are putting their lives on the line in battle’ (v 11) is a man of honour and even when David plies him with drink (v 13) he refuses to play ball. His integrity costs him his life; he is sent back to war and instruction is given to Joab, the commander of David’s forces (via a letter carried to him by Uriah himself who is unaware that it contains his death sentence!), to make 100% sure he is killed in battle.

This is very much a story of a king doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants to whoever he wants with no thought or regard for the fierce loyalty of those he is harming. It’s hard to see it any other way than a disgrace from start to finish. The only mitigating factor is that when Nathan the prophet, using a parable with pin point accuracy, tells David to his face what God thinks of his behaviour, he crumples in a heap, mortified by the sudden realisation of exactly what he has done (12 v 13). His penitence is movingly expressed in Psalm 51 although even there, as he says to God, ‘against you, you only, have I sinned’ (v 4), we might want to add that Uriah, Bathsheba and the child that subsequently dies  (2 Sam 12 v 18) were also sinned against as victims of David’s shocking behaviour.

It’s very significant that this episode is included in the ‘warts and all’ Old Testament story and it acts as a reminder that whilst human beings are capable of great generosity, love and selflessness, they are also deeply flawed. In the New Testament we see this highlighted by the thoroughly self-centred power play made by James and John (Mark 10 v 37), the betrayal of Judas (Mark 14 v 43-47) and the complete moral failure of Peter (Mark 14 v 66-72). It is only in the entirely generous, loving and selfless life of Jesus that we see what a perfect human life looks like.

There are a couple of particular lessons for us to take from this story. Firstly it is a prime example of the universal tendency for one sin to lead to another. Bathsheba becomes pregnant so David, to get himself off the hook, decides to try and fool Uriah into to thinking it’s his child. When that didn’t work he took the nuclear option and had innocent, loyal Uriah done away with. Sometimes it is in covering our tracks after mistake number one that the really bad stuff happens as we try to move the pieces around the board to make it seem as if nothing happened. It’s partly because we don’t want to admit our weaknesses to ourselves or to others – we’re often afraid to be seen for who we really are, warts and all. We’re also afraid of the cost that we may need to pay in terms of our personal relationships, our reputation at work, in the communities to which we belong (both in the real world and online) or at church. However some words of Henri Nouwen seem very pertinent,

‘Mostly we are so afraid of our weaknesses that we hide them at all cost and thus make them unavailable to others and also often to ourselves…..I became aware of the fact that in the sharing of my weaknesses with others, the real depths of my human brokenness and weakness and sinfulness started to reveal themselves to me, not as a source of despair but as a source of hope’.’

It is in acknowledging the gap between who we seem to be and who we really are that true repentance and new life flows. It is the experience of our failures (common to us all) and the recognition of them (which others around us can often see so much more clearly than we can) that healing and authentic humanity can germinate and flower both in our own lives and in the wider world of which we are all an integral part.

Secondly we live in a society where the frantic need to have everything we want is driving us to a dead end. Bathsheba and Uriah were victims of somebody who had far more than they did but still hadn’t gratified his desires. The parable of Nathan concerning the rich man with huge numbers of sheep and cattle who steals the poor man’s one single ewe (12 v 1-4) is pertinent both to David’s appalling behaviour all those years ago and the vast inequalities that disfigure the world in which we live. Consumerism is self-perpetuating; those who have much will always want more and never be satisfied. Given the fact that the world’s resources are finite that will inevitably mean that this will be at the expense of the many who have little or nothing. None of us live in isolation; our choices will have consequences not just for ourselves but for others. They may be people we have never met or know nothing of, but we still have a responsibility to order our lives in such a way that our choices do not cost them the earth.

Questions: Can you think back to any major mistakes you have made in life? Have you been able to experience God’s forgiveness? Have you and those affected been able to move on?

Prayer: Lord, forgive us for our mistakes, especially those we repeat again and again. Help us to acknowledge them, learn from them and be more properly formed in your image. Amen.

2nd March - Mephilbosheth

Mephibosheth: 2 Samuel 9 v 1-13: ‘For I will surely show you kindness’.

There is a long political history of those assuming power ruthlessly eliminating anybody who might pose even a potential threat to their new found authority. It was this mindset that sealed the fate of Tsar Nicholas II and his family following the Russian revolution of 1917 (noting in passing that, although it certainly doesn’t justify the slaughter of his entire family, Tsar Nicholas was himself no stranger to this kind of behaviour). There is more than a whiff of this in the air following David’s accession to the throne. Saul’s death whilst fighting Israel’s perennial opponents the Philistines on Mount Galboa exacerbated political instability and David only became king following a drawn out civil war between his supporters and members of Saul’s family (2 Sam 3 v 1). Jonathan, who died in battle beside his father, was not Saul’s only son and his remaining brothers were not going to go quietly, which is why David, once his throne is secure, arranges for several members of Saul’s family to meet a nasty end courtesy of a group of old enemies thirsty for revenge (2 Sam 21 v 7-9).

Before the killing begins there is a note indicating that Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth (who, as a grandson of Saul could have been seen as a potential threat) had been allowed to live by David because of the covenant of friendship with Jonathan we were considering yesterday. It’s an unusual offer to say the least - covenants of friendship notwithstanding, he was still a descendant of Saul and if David had followed the standard operating procedures of kings in the ancient world he would have had him killed without compunction.

But he doesn’t. Mephibosheth is brought into the king’s household and given the honour, usually reserved for royal sons, of eating at the king’s table. A cynic might suggest that this made it easier for David to keep an eye on him but it does appear more than likely that this is a genuine expression of the importance to him of the dear friendship he had had with Jonathan. This is underlined following the slight wobble later in the story when Ziba, Mephibosheth’s steward, accuses Mephibosheth of plotting to usurp the throne at a time of national emergency with Absalom’s revolt in full swing (2 Sam 16 v 1-4). When David arrives in Jerusalem and meets him his demeanour and willingness to let go of property that was his by right suggests that Ziba has been less than truthful in his accusation. Through it all David holds remarkably true to his commitment to his late and much lamented friend Jonathan.

David’s treatment of the other members of Saul’s family reminds us that when we read the Old Testament narrative we need to be realistic about the dog eat dog world in which it is set. The brutality we encounter, sometimes understood to be at the behest of God, tells us more about their culture (to my mind, at least) then it does about what God is really like. It is in reading the Gospels and reflecting on events from Jesus’ ministry, such as the healing of another disabled man at the pool of Bethsaida (John 5 v 1-9), that we see the divine nature much more clearly. Yet this episode with Mephibosheth seems to offer a ray of light and anticipate this clearer vision of God in the kindness that is offered, the loyalty it represents and the gracious way it is received.

An important aspect of this story is the disability of Mephibosheth; a result of him having been accidentally dropped by his nurse in the rush to get him to safety during the chaos following Saul’s death (2 Sam 4 v 4). It is a major reason why it is unlikely that Mephibosheth would actually have betrayed the one who had offered him home, hospitality and respect as he would have been all too aware that his disability meant that he would never have been accepted as king of Israel. This echoes, albeit in a different context, teaching in the book of Leviticus which lists a whole string of disabilities barring any individual, notwithstanding the fact that he could claim descent from Aaron, from undertaking priestly ministry (Lev 21 v 16-23). Afflictions in the ancient world tended to be understood as punishments from God which explains the whole force of the book of Job in which he maintains his innocence while his friends peddle the official line and try to get him to ‘fess up’.

Let’s return to the man born blind healed by Jesus who we were thinking about in connection with Hagar and Ishmael. Jesus says very plainly that his blindness is not a punishment from God for something he or his parents had done wrong (John 9 v 1-3). Whilst Jesus seizes this opportunity to demonstrate the power of God, when we segue across to the letters of St Paul, we find a man who is himself carrying a ‘thorn in the flesh’, very probably a disability and thought by some to be a problem with his eyes; a thought backed up by his words at the end of Galatians, ‘See what large letters I use as I write to you with my own hand’ (Gal 6 v 11). Paul is characteristically open and honest about the distress this thorn caused him but came to understand (after much pleading with God) that his call was to live and work with the pain. The bottom line is expressed in God’s reply to his cry for deliverance, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness’ (2 Corinthians 12 v 9). I find an echo here of my own struggles with mental health (very much a thorn in the flesh), something that reshaped life and ministry in unforeseen ways. Similarly this was not a visitation of divine wrath and I feel enormously grateful for the unconditional and loving acceptance of me and my struggles by the congregation I served, through which God’s ongoing call to ministry, complete with thorn, was affirmed.

The Church of England has committed itself to fully enabling the participation of disabled people in the life and ministry of the church. That includes those with any kind of physical disability as well as those, like myself, who have had mental health issues. Being church should be about enabling all to feel that they can be absolutely who they are without feeling excluded or discriminated against in any way and understanding that God speaks with a unique voice through every human being.

Questions: Do you have a ‘thorn in the flesh’? Have you ever spoken to God about it?

Prayer: Lord, thank you that you made us as we are and love us unconditionally. Help your church to offer a welcome to all as we live out that love in our common life. Amen.

1st March - Jonathan

Jonathan: 1 Samuel 18 v 1-4; 23 v 15-18 ; 2 Sam 1 v 26: ‘You were very dear to me’

The nature of the relationship between David and Jonathan has been the subject of much speculation. The statement that Jonathan ‘became one in spirit with David, and loved him as himself (1 Sam 18 v 1) and David’s words, in his lament for Jonathan following his death in battle, testifying to a love that was, ‘more wonderful than that of women’ (2 Sam 1 v 26) have led some, but not all, to conclude that their relationship was more than platonic being, in reality, a consummated same-sex relationship. Various aspects of the text have been adduced by commentators on either side of the debate and the reality is that it isn’t clear one way or the other. What we can say without doubt was that there was a powerful bond between them that, whatever its precise nature, remains a beautiful example of love and loyalty between two people of the same sex.

Given the context, their friendship was an unlikely one. One might have expected Jonathan, as the eldest son of Saul and therefore next in line to the throne, to have seen David, especially after his spectacular triumph over Goliath, as a major threat; an upstart with every chance of supplanting him as the heir apparent. As it happens that is exactly how his father King Saul viewed David. Yet Jonathan’s act of divesting himself of his military uniform and handing it to David (1 Sam 18 v 4) and his explicit statement to his soul mate that, ‘I will be second to you’ (23 v 17) suggest that he saw David as the man to lead the nation and was more than happy to accept a demotion.

There’s a resonance here with John the Baptist. When Jesus appeared at the River Jordan with a  request for baptism, he was completely unknown whilst John, the greatest preacher of his day attracted thousands of people who came out into the desert to hang on his every word. Yet John intuitively recognised Jesus as the one, ‘whose sandals I am not fit to carry’ (Mat 3 v 11). Here was somebody who hadn’t let it all go to his head and who understood that his role was to support rather than to be the main attraction.

Our contemporary world could do with a few more Jonathans (and a few more John the Baptists, come to think of it)! Modern culture has become celebrity obsessed to an unhealthy degree as fame and wealth are sought after as the way to a happy, fulfilled and significant life; one that gives you apparent significance. The Hollywood actor Denzel Washington wrote of his successful career, ‘Success? I don’t know what that word means. I’m happy. But success, that goes back to what in somebody’s eyes success means. For me, success is inner peace. That’s a good day for me’. Washington is reflecting on what is most important in his life and for him being a successful human being is much more about the disposition of his soul than fame or the number of people who went to see his latest film.

Jonathan comes across as somebody who cared little for status and the trappings of power and was very happy to give way to David and do without them. What does this have to say to the person who didn’t get that promotion at work they wanted or to those, in whatever walk of life, need to feel that they are in charge. The humble ability not to be endlessly self-promoting, to be happy not being number one, is critical in every part of society including in the life of Christian communities. In his letter to the church at Philippi, Paul encourages his friends to, ‘Do nothing out of vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others (Phil 2 v 3-4). This is actually quite hard to do as we are all subject to a very human tendency to see the world as revolving around ourselves and our interests, something that the culture we live in greatly encourages.

Being a Christian is not just about filling our own lives with meaning, although that is certainly part of it. It is also about taking up the cross and following Jesus. Jonathan’s apparent willingness to hand over all the symbols of his status as next in line to the throne (robe, tunic, sword, bow and belt) to David is an encouragement for us to sit very light to those things which may appear to give us status including the size of our house, car and bank balance; our seniority at work, at the club or at church and the temptation to look down on those we feel to be less clever or able than ourselves.

Jonathan was clearly both loyal and humble. The covenant he made with David was one in which he gave away the political power he had been brought up to understand belonged only to him. He was a steadfast, reliable and loving friend who cared less for himself and more for others. Jesus himself was the divine Son of God who, as Paul puts it, ‘…made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant (Phil 2 v 7) and in doing so gives us an example to follow. His temptations in the wilderness focused in turn on using his divine power to meet his own needs, making himself invulnerable and grabbing power. He rejects all three and chooses the road of humble service; a decision that will take him all the way to the cross.

At the end of the day it doesn’t matter whether we are top of the class, head of the department, chairperson of the society or running that project at church. None of those, of course, are bad things in themselves as such but they are not meant to define us. It is being made in the image of God that does that. It is in embracing this fundamental truth about ourselves that, wherever we stand on the greasy pole, we become truth bearers and truth sharers.

Questions: Why is friendship so important? In a society so concerned about status, how can we practice humility?

Prayer: Lord, as we reflect on Jonathan’s loyalty and humility, help us to see others as better than ourselves and to take the opportunities we have to serve. Amen.

28th February - Ruth

Ruth: Ruth 1 v 1-18: ‘Your people will be my people’

A few years ago one of my brothers sent off a DNA swab to get an idea of our family’s ethnic origins. The result showed that while just over 80% of our origins are ‘British and Irish’; we are apparently 8.8% Iberian, 6.2% Eastern European, 3.6% Ashkenazi Jewish and 0.8% Finnish. The Iberian ethnicity is explained by the fact that between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago, a time when there were only a few thousand inhabitants in the British Isles, Iberian fishermen migrated from what is now Spain across the Bay of Biscay and are now thought of as the indigenous inhabitants of Britain. It is a reminder that every single one of us is descended from people who migrated here from somewhere else. Some of these migrations were for economic reasons (the Windrush generation), others came as invaders (Romans, Vikings and Normans) and others came as refugees, fleeing persecution and poverty (Huguenots). This perspective should profoundly inform and shape our response to migration today. The fact that migrants, many of whom never wanted to leave their homes but were compelled to do so by conflict and poverty, often find themselves confronted by barbed wire and the message, ‘you are not welcome here, go back home’ is both unbiblical and a denial of our own ethnic origins.

I write this just days after yet another family doing exactly what Ruth did lost their lives. Rasoul Iran-Nejad, his wife Shiva Mohammad Panahi and their children Anita, Armin and Artin, having fled Iranian Kurdistan, drowned in the English Channel trying to join family in the UK. Ethnic Kurds are a minority group in a number of Middle Eastern countries including Iran. Every day they face discriminatory underfunding and those who protest about their situation are liable to find themselves facing arrest, torture and death. Rasoul and Shiva wanted to reach Britain and put their lives in the hands of one of the many criminal gangs who put people in overcrowded, unsafe boats to cross the Channel and don’t give them another thought. They were desperate to find somewhere to bring up their children without the constant threat of violence.

We have all been made aware the dreadful conditions in which many migrants live, whether they have taken the decision to flee their home countries or, like the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar, been forced out at the point of a gun. If we want to read the book of Ruth and hear God speak to us through it, we will find ourselves unable to close our hearts to the urgency of the need. Naomi, Ruth’s mother-in-law and her family were themselves economic migrants as desperate as their contemporary counterparts to flee famine and poverty.

The opening verse of the book of Ruth provides us with its setting in ‘the days when the Judges ruled’ (v 1). We already know that this was a time of instability and fairly constant conflict. Well, it was if we consider the stories of Israel’s leaders anything to go by. The movingly beautiful story of Ruth reminds us that we mustn’t overlook, in any society at any time, the stories of ordinary people trying to live their lives and do the right thing in difficult circumstances; another perspective to take into account in considering migration today. The picture of Bethlehem reflected in this story is of a place where people can find a home, look out for one another and talk to one another when issues, such as who will take the responsibility of a ‘kinsman-redeemer’ in marrying Ruth, come up.

One important detail easy to miss as we read between the lines is that at the beginning of the book they found hospitality and shelter in Moab (a traditional enemy of Israel), so much so that Naomi’s sons both married Moabite wives. And following the tragic deaths of all of their husbands Naomi and her two daughters-in-law share a moving conversation that takes up the second half of our reading. It is framed around the ‘hesed’, the loving kindness of God that Naomi wishes both Ruth and Orpah to experience. Whilst Orpah decides that she belongs back with her own people (and is not in any way judged for this), Ruth feels that she belongs with Naomi and her people. This sense of belonging goes beyond just living in a particular community. When Ruth says to Naomi that, ‘your people will be my people and your God my God.’ (v 16), she is expressing her total commitment to her new community. This is not saying that she would have been judged if she had not committed herself to Israel’s God and is not therefore a proof text telling us that when today’s refugees arrive at our shores they should immediately adopt our cultural norms.

What it is saying is that there is something beautiful about Ruth’s loyalty to her mother-in-law and the deep love that existed between them. They are two women who both know what it is like to lose loved ones and leave their homes and in this conversation we see them exploring personal loyalty and what it means to belong in ways that change their lives. In the case of Ruth it brings her to Boaz who goes the extra mile to protect her and eventually marries her. So from what perspective do we see those who have had to leave their homes and communities? How can we seek to protect and provide hospitality to the most vulnerable members of the communities in which we live and the wider world we are part of? How can we express the ‘hesed’, the loving kindness of God, to those who find themselves grieving for the loss of home and family? Our response could involve giving, campaigning and action. We might want to support an organisation such as the aptly named Boaz Trust (www.boaztrust.org.uk) working with destitute asylum seekers in Greater Manchester. Christian Aid (www.christian aid.org.uk) works with refugees around the world.

 Many people today, for all sorts of reasons, turn their back on refugees and migrants as if it’s ‘nothing to do with me’. Followers of Jesus cannot do that because that is not what he did. He stopped at the gate of Jericho for Bartimaeus (who we will meet again later), a blind man who had been excluded from his community and was begging on the streets. In doing so he cut right across those who were telling him to shut up and go away and, in loving him and healing him, demonstrated exactly the loving kindness we see in the book of Ruth. Jesus stopped; think about that. He stopped when he could have acceded to the crowd’s wishes and carried on out of the city. We too need to stop and hear the voices of those who are leaving home because their homes have been destroyed, who are drowning trying to cross the English Channel and who feel that nobody wants to offer them hospitality, welcome and a place to belong. In doing that we may need to think through how far we have come in overcoming our own inborn prejudices because those who end up far from home are, in an important sense, as much family as our own loved ones.

Questions: How have we responded to the needs of those who have become refugees? What more could we do?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, you yourself were a refugee in Egypt and know what it is like to have to leave home. Help us to open our hearts to the victims of war and poverty and help them, through the compassion and loving kindness of strangers like us, find, like Ruth, a place to belong. Amen.