cut off

When one of the older ladies shouted out ‘castrated man’ from the back row during my sermon, I got the feeling it was something she has wanted to do for ages. Thankfully it wasn’t her opinion of the vicar or a new feature from the liturgical commission, but an answer to the question ‘what is a eunuch?’ The eunuch story is one of my favourite passages. 

From a sanitised, wholesome and avoiding-awkward-rawness-of-life perspective, it’s inconvenient for church. If only it was the Ethiopian nobleman, or the Ethiopian king, or even the Ethiopian farmer. But no, it is the Ethiopian eunuch. The story of a castrated man. Why do we need to know that? It seems a little unfair that of the sparse details we are told about this man, this is the one we know. Maybe some of us can identify with being known only by our origin and our disabilities, where we are from and the way we look.

I had to be careful with pictures for this one

We are not told why this man was a eunuch. Castration was sometimes done to slaves as a punishment, to subjugate them, or to make them ‘safe’ so they could faithfully attend to the King’s women. Royalty could also promote them without fear of them producing children who might try to usurp the throne. Eunuchs were mocked, ridiculed and despised as sexless and pointless. This particular eunuch had risen in the ranks of his queen, become treasurer; but was still known by his willy. Or lack thereof. 

So why was this black African from what would have an exotic foreign land – actually modern-day Sudan – doing worshiping the God of the Jews in Jerusalem? He was probably a Jewish convert, or had been a born a Jew. He had come all this way, and when he got to the Temple, he would only have been allowed into the outer courts. The man was excluded from the covenant community, alienated from God’s household – and unable to produce a household of his own. Pretty desperate and lonely situation. 

 So we meet this man, on his way home, reading aloud from Isaiah. And he was reading this section:

 “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him… nothing in his appearance that we should desire him… he was despised and rejected by men…” (Isaiah 53)

 This man understood what it meant to despised, rejected.

Philip did not regard it as bad luck or socially dangerous to be seen talking with him. Instead, he saw how easy it would be for the eunuch to feel like a lamb with it wool cut off, humiliated. 

What would we do at this point? If we met someone who felt rejected by the community, cut off from society, seen as without usefulness or purpose?

Philip told him about Jesus. He told him that Jesus was despised, rejected, led like a lamb to the slaughter; the Jesus death was on behalf of us all. And that Jesus was raised up, exalted, resurrected, glorified. Shame replaced by honour. Rejection by glory. That we might all be welcomed into the family of God. 

It is an odd family, a family full of everyone, the ordinary and the oddballs. The poor, the disabled, the rejected; the wealthy, healthy and accepted. An odd family, but a wonderful family. Into this family the eunuch was introduced. He was so excited, he was baptised, there and then. Because for him this meant that the centuries-old divide that kept him out was gone. The man was in the covenant community, the family of God.

For what it’s worth, church is a family. We are a place where you will not (should not?!) be known by your origins or your disability, your looks or your circumstances. Being in God’s family means being a child of God, adopted and loved and chosen. 

 I wonder if the Ethiopian eunuch read on from Isaiah 53. If he did, he would have read this in Isaiah 56:

3 Let no foreigner who has bound himself to the LORD say, 

        “The LORD will surely exclude me from his people.”
        And let not any eunuch complain,
        “I am only a dry tree.” 

4 For this is what the LORD says:
       “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths,
       who choose what pleases me
       and hold fast to my covenant- 

5 to them I will give within my temple and its walls
       a memorial and a name
       better than sons and daughters;
       I will give them an everlasting name
       that will not be cut off. [pun intended]

This is the gospel. This is why it is good news. When people who are on the edge of the covenant community, who are excluded from society, in any of its various forms, discover the welcome of God. My hope is that the eunuch would find such a welcome in our covenant communities. That our politeness and religiosity and piety and genuine desire for holiness would not be the knife that cuts people off and marks them forever as being outside. 

No-one is a dry tree here. 

lampposts and landrovers

I was out with my running club the other night. It’s something I do from time to time to confirm the stereotype that skinny people are good at long-distance running. Anyway, we were doing this horrible training run where you run hard up a steep hill, then turn round and jog back slowly to a fixed point. And repeat it as many times as you can in 30 minutes.

I say fixed point. You see, often with these runs we use lampposts as markers but the pavement was being dug up so we used a parked car as a landmark. A Land Rover. Which was fine. And very appropriate.

Trouble is, on the 2nd repetition the Land Rover (predictably) disappeared. It threw me momentarily. It reminded me of the time I was walking over Kinder Scout in the Peak District, lost my way and took a compass bearing on the only fixed point I could see. A cloud. I know, not good. But we survived. 

Following fixed points when following Jesus sometimes feels like he has got in the landmark and driven it away. Jesus refuses to be pigeon-holed or boxed. Which we deny, time and time again by making him into fixed point. Turning a parked car into a lamppost is fine if you want to light up a tiny area but not go anywhere.  

I mean, there are fixed points. I’m not saying there aren’t. But the Word of God is person not a book; a personality and not a sentence. Being dogmatic about Jesus is like catching a cloud in a jar to ensure your compass reading is accurate. We don’t really know where Jesus really stands on contemporary conundrums from banking to sex to fig trees to being gay. Ok, we know about fig trees.

We think we know; we make leaps from principles to practice which we may well absolutely believe are true to Jesus. And they may well be. But… Sometimes he drives the landmark away. 

So when we obsess over fixed points, be they about homosexuality and marriage or about anger or adultery or fig trees (and other gardening issues) let’s try and remember that Jesus always – always – saw the person, and the bigger picture; always put loving people first. 

He operated on fixed points. Of course he did, he was a devout Jew. But he also moved them. Redefined them. And to steal from Rob Bell, Jesus didn’t say get out of the box. Because there is no box. This doesn’t get us off the hook when it comes to living well. It doesn’t mean we don’t aim for holiness.

But it does mean we don’t just stand still and admire the small pool of light the lamppost makes around us. Because Jesus has just driven away.  

why i still believe we can change the world

I was talking to someone yesterday about changing the world. Changing the world is something that  I believe we are called to do; or at least, it is a consequence of doing what we are called to do. Which is to follow Jesus.

When we follow Jesus, the world changes. Not all at once. Because the world isn’t a big mass of ‘all at once’, but is made of up people in families and communities. So, as we change, so our world changes. Like a virus, but a good one.

Is it still called a virus if it’s good? 

The conversation began about being angry. My friend was angry about the situations adults can create for kids. Grrrr. It is enough to make you angry. But what do you do with that anger? Suppress it, ignore it, release it on the running track? Or do you allow your anger to show you your passion; and do you turn your passion into action.

If homelessness makes you angry, you’ve found you passion for the poor. If the treatment of people with mental health problem makes you angry, you’ve found your passion for the marginalised. If football makes you angry you need to get out more.

And so on. 

But what’s the point? I can’t change the world. I am just me. Better to live my life, to be calm, to keep quiet. And if necessary, channel the anger into my running. Or my music. Or whatever. 

But who does that benefit? Just me. Not the world. In this conversation I realised that I still believe we can change the world. Which is not a doe-eyed optimism that if we all stand in front of Bambi we’ll save her. But that being the change we want to see in the world (Ghandi said that, I wish it was Jesus) is a theological imperative. That means we absolutely have to. Because if God cares for me and wants to turn my life around then he cares for everyone. We are not meant to be saved and gather dust like an old piece of furniture. 

If we follow Jesus and allow the Holy Spirit to grow fruit in us then we cannot be blind to the world around us. We cannot give more than God has already given. We cannot sit on our laurels (what are they?) and complain it’s too big a problem. 

And I don’t believe this is a specialist branch of the Jesus movement called ‘activist Christianity’ which can be opted out of, any more than repentance or grace or being slightly fed up with Church can be opted out of. 

So I do believe that we can change the world. Not on our own. The ‘we’ very much begins with God, revealed in Jesus and present by the Spirit. Present in us, whom he called his body. Of course it is a stupid idea and of course I don’t REALLY believe that me, I, Kevin Lewis, can change the world. On my own. But together we can. One starfish at a time.

Do I always feel it? No. Do I always want to be a part of it? No. Is it frustrating? Yes. Do I see changes? Yes.

Sometimes.

Mostly importantly, is it true? Yes.  

beware of the dog

Look into my eyes...

My fear of dogs comes from when I was attacked by a German Shepherd when I was a kid. As in the big scary dog. Not a Bavarian farmer. That incident has lived long in my mind. It sets my default reaction to all dogs that they will, this time or another, attack me.

Because that is what dogs do.

As a runner who likes the solitude of cross-country or woods, this pre-determined fear of canine treachery does not bode well. But my experience tells me I am right. So when I hear stories of dog attacks, it backs up my theory. No matter the hundreds of dogs I pass who do me no harm. No matter my old flame Sasha, the borrowed black labrador I used to take to Tilgate forest to run with me. Dogs like that don’t fit my prejudice, so I can ignore them.

But here comes the rub. Maybe it’s a confession. The dog attack I mentioned earlier. Did I mention it was a dream? A nightmare really, but it wasn’t real. I was a child, and I had a bad dream about my leg being bitten by an Alsatian. But it wasn’t real, although my leg did hurt.

But the fear of dog it gave me was very real. From an imaginary event. Backed up by prejudice and conjecture. 

It got me thinking. About people’s experiences of god. Their fear of him. The very real fear that he is out to get them. That he will find them out and punish them. That he might look all friendly but maybe this time, maybe the next. He will attack.

Because that is what gods do.

I would love to shatter the myth of the attack-god, to show people when their perceptions of God are created from dreams or fantasies or things they’ve heard from someone who once said that God will burn everyone who doesn’t behave themselves and sing falsetto in the choir. A sort of Dante-esque horror story of eternal punishment that some Christians get off on. Backed up by prejudice and conjecture. And, of course, fear. 

The myths we carry in our minds about God can be so dangerous because they block us from experiencing the real thing. Like a fear of dogs that forever blocks us from relaxing in the presence of the friendliest of canines, the misplaced fear of God can forever block us from relaxing in the presence of God.

Who, as CS Lewis famously said of Aslan (not a dog), is of course not safe. But he is good.

I can't believe I have used this cliche. But it seemed to fit.

 

yellow book

So, how was school today?
Fine.

Probably for most people picking kids up from school that’s the most you can hope for. They’ll talk endlessly about anything else, but anything useful about school…?!  

But we’ve got the yellow book. Ah, the yellow book. The yellow book that tells the truth, the yellow book in which the teachers write their own answer to the same question: how was school today? The yellow book never lies. 

I think a lot of people think that God has a yellow book. In which he keeps records of our behaviour, in which he can look to check whether or not we had really been as good and respectable and well-behaved as we may claim to have been. And of course he keeps the books as they pile up. He logs and catalogues all our misdemeanours. And boy does he hold them against us. He keeps the book in church, in the vestry behind the big dusty Bible that used to be on the altar but no-one knows what to do with now. 

I don’t think God thinks like that at all. He knows all that we do, of course. But there’s no need for a yellow book. Because there’s no need to pretend everything is fine when it’s not. So there’s no need for a yellow book that tells the real truth. The truth is out there already. He knows everything.

Trust that there is no secret yellow book in which God stores up things to hold against us. Learning to embrace that may well be the beginning of wisdom and the foundation of a healthy relationship with God. 

Amazing what you can learn from a simple yellow book. And today was a good day at school, by the way.  

 

the weakness in [christmas] love

Have I been good enough?

Have I been good enough this year? To receive some presents? I wonder what scale I will use to decide. Maybe comparing myself to others. That usually works well in my favour. I’m no Mother Teresa but I’m no Kim Jong Il either… therefore I am good.

Have I been good enough?

Sometimes to make sure we have been good enough to receive good things we draw up charts and lists. Most of these are good things, or at least they start off that way. We might think of the 10 commandments or the law of the land. I haven’t broken any laws, so I’ve been good. Maybe a little speeding, the odd tax dodge and a Blackberry from the back of a lorry but apart from that I’ve been good.

Have I been good enough?

If that is the question we believe that God is asking us – and for many it will be – then can I reassure you that he is not.  God is not interested in whether or not you have been good. What?!? But surely being a Christian is the same as being a good person, isn’t it? Aren’t Christians goody-goodies? Isn’t that what the 10 commandments are all about?

The Christmas story shows us year after tinsel-covered year that God is not interested in whether we are good. Which is lucky because although we might feel we have ‘kept the 10 commandments’, which a lot of people tell me they do because they haven’t killed anyone or been jealous of their neighbours ass we all fall down at the very first one.

When God came into the world taking the form of a human being, demeaning himself and coming down to our fragile, human level, God was saying the rules and the laws are not working and though I love it when you live well and do good the most important thing is not that you are good but that you are love.

Have I been good enough?

To receive from God? You think you need to be good to receive?

If you are carrying guilt that it has been a bad year and you think you haven’t been good enough to receive from God, then think again. The story of Jesus birth and of his life show us that God consistently surprises and gives to people who least expect it and who represent what the world sees as ‘bad people’ – shepherds, tax collectors, prostitutes, unclean people.

It is not too late to receive from God, to turn ourselves to face him and to receive from him.

If you are carrying pride that it has been a good year and that you have done pretty well, so should expect to receive from God some sort of reward, then think again. The story of Jesus life and birth show us that God consistently surprises people who call themselves ‘good’ and humbles them – King Herod, the Pharisees, the religious scholars, the rich.

It is not too late though to humble ourselves and receive from God, to turn ourselves to face him and to receive from him.

John’s gospel talks of Jesus as being the light that gives life,  a light that changes us because it shines into our darkest places and transforms them from darkness to light, whether our greatest darkness is pride or addiction or self-loathing or apathy or fear or abuse or doubt… Christmas is a time to remember God broke into our world in a surprising and reckless way  not that we might be good but that we might love and be loved.

The sting in the tail is that it is much easier to be good than it is to give and receive love, especially God’s love. Which is why so many of us default to trying to be good, instead of allowing ourselves to be loved. Allowing ourselves to be loved is perhaps the hardest thing of all.  That love transforms us and turns us into the best you and me we can be, but it is not a quick fix and it is not easy. But it is worth it.

The weakness in love is it’s greatest strength.

May we be people of the light, people who love and know love, who give and receive love that comes from God the Father revealed in Jesus Christ and living on through the Holy Spirit, people who turn and face God and receive openly from him; may we be people who truly and openly pray O come to us, Abide with us, our Lord Immanuel.

…

**this is an edited version of my Christmas Eve Midnight Communion talk**

stuck

Stuck. Stuck in a scene of judgement, stuck with the finger pointed at you. Caught in the act and waiting for punishment. Stuck.

The woman was brought him. Caught. Bound, bleeding, shamed. Shamed. The price for quick sex, dirty sex. Or for being caught in the religious power play. It is the temple courtyard, the Pharisees’ turf. The woman is brought, crawling, bound and struggling, fearing for her life. The Romans look on, ready to pounce on any disturbance. The people look on, knowing that yesterday they were cheering Jesus and today… who knows.

This is a scene of judgement. This is a scene where those in power are using their position to emphasise their authority. The woman is just a pawn in their power game. The crowd watch as the leader of the Pharisees accuses her before Jesus: this woman was caught in adultery. Moses commands us to stone such women. What do you say?

The woman trembles. Jesus pauses. He writes something in the sand. The people clamour to see. Luke doesn‘t tell us what he says, but from what happens next, we can guess: stone her. Panic reaches the woman’s face as she realises her last chance is gone. The angry mob get twitchy fingers and begin to search for stones.

Stuck. Stuck in a scene of judgement, stuck with the finger pointed at you. Caught in the act and waiting for punishment. Stuck.

How many of us live our lives there. We are stuck there. Our relationship with and understanding of God is based on feeling like we have been caught and will be – or are being – punished. We are the woman. God is the angry mob.

Then Jesus cuts through all of it with a stroke of revolutionary genius. This is the method of execution:  Let him who is without sin cast the first stone. Would you be the first? You will be arrested for inciting a riot and maybe for murder. But more than that, you will break the very law you are abusing the woman with to test Jesus. Because the law says none of us are without sin. Clever.

The people look to the Pharisees for what to do. The eldest was always the most important – and the eldest walked away. One by one they followed. Humiliated. The whole scene has changed. The stage is empty except for the woman and he who is without sin. When Jesus bends down to write again she probably thinks he is going to get a stone.

Stuck. Stuck in a scene of judgement, stuck with the finger pointed at you. Caught in the act and waiting for punishment. Stuck.

Instead Jesus walks on the knife-edge between condemning her on one hand, and overlooking her destructive lifestyle on the other. “Neither do I condemn you”, he says. “Go, and do not sin again.” The key here is that Jesus recognises her sin, and he holds her to account – but he removes the penalty for that sin. She is guilty, but she will not be killed. He did not condemn, but neither did he condone. The challenge to her was to change. For how many of us is changing harder than being punished. We want to be punished. We do not want to change. 

In our little church we are beginning a series on grace. Why? Because I think so many of us are stuck with this idea of God as the harsh religious leader who must enforce the law; but Jesus shows us a grace which see the person to be embraced not a problem to be erased.

The abused woman in this story we hope was able to find healing. We hope the community was as ready for repentance and forgiveness and new beginnings as Jesus was. Jesus did not get stuck at condemnation.

Let’s pray we don’t get stuck there either.

…

This story can be found in full in John 8.1-11. 

not a failure

I was praying about church and life and stuff and wanted God to give me something for the church but he seemed to want to talk about me. I didn’t want to talk about me. Especially with my penchant for melancholy and my fear of failure. Anyway, he won and this is what I think he said to me and about me. I am supposed to say it to myself.

I cannot keep everyone happy.
I cannot keep everyone.
Especially as our congregation gets bigger.
So to not do that is not a failure.

I cannot be consistently innovative and creative.
Sometimes ordinary is good.
Simple is fine.
So to not do that is not a failure.

I cannot visit everyone.
I cannot be everyone’s pastor and friend.
Especially as our congregation gets bigger.
So to not do that is not a failure.

I cannot be a spiritual guru to all.
I cannot always be wise.
I will not always be right.
So to not do that is not a failure.

I cannot build a strong and vibrant and self-sustaining church.
Not on St Helier, not of St Helier.
It will always be beautifully and wonderfully fragile.
So to not do that is not a failure.

I cannot give everyone a vibrant, enthusiastic and dynamic living faith in Jesus.
I am just me. I do not always have it.
God is God. That is his job.
So to not do that is not a failure.

I cannot not fail. 
But the best thing about failing with God is that it doesn’t make me a failure.
He will never label me a failure.
I am just the vicar, I am.
But really I am just me.
And I will get things wrong, I will fail, but I will never be a failure.

jelly

I am not a ‘cat person’. By that I don’t mean that some mistake me for being half-man and half-cat, though Lion-O from the Thundercats was one of my childhood heroes. But having had Smokey the Cat for about a year, I am beginning to see that if cats don’t actually rule the world, they are certainly in charge of the home. At least in their own heads.

Smokey the Cat teaches me many lessons. Some which involve a certain feline dexterity that I have no intention of learning. That is what the shower is for. But more usefully, we turn to jelly. Jelly is that stuff that chunks of cat food are coated in, that Smokey is far more interested in eating than the actual food. If desperate, if she hasn’t caught enough moths and flies to complement her jelly diet, she will deem it necessary to eat the actual tuna, duck, salmon or whatever else the chunks claims to have once been waved at on their way from sheep brain to sachet.

how very dare you

The jelly is obviously the best. But you can’t survive on just jelly. It’s one of those lessons we teach children. You can’t just eat the nice bits and leave the peas. Cats are harder to teach. If Smokey the Cat teaches me any lessons about following Jesus, she reminds me that we all like to pick and choose the parts of our faith we like, the chunks of the Bible we like, the churches we like,  and ignore the rest. I like the part of our faith that bangs on and on about grace and hope and transformation and heaven coming to earth and all that exciting and dynamic stuff; I am less inclined to feast on passages that talk more about judgements and laws and things all a little more Pharisaical. But those things are there. I prefer to preach about Jesus than Samson. But Samson is there. 

We all have our jelly. The things we lap up. But a mature faith is able to take the whole plate, and somehow hold it together; or, to hold parts of it, at least recognising there are other parts but that I cannot hold them. I can see where high-church Anglo-Catholics are coming from, I can see where low-church free-church evangelicals are coming from; I can see the grace, I can see the judgement, I can see the social action, I can see the personal commitment to faith that is needed. I can see the importance of string-free relationships in the community, and the importance of evangelism and challenging people to faith.

I can see that actually the world is more nuanced than polarised opposites, however easy it might be to assume otherwise.

moth balled

It’s the same in politics. We have our mantras, our favourite narratives, our ideologies, but if we take only the good bits from our politics and leave aside the flipsides we are kidding ourselves. 

I wish everyone’s jelly was the same as mine. My jelly is to preach hope, to lead towards Jesus, and to hope for the best that God will understand if I have got it wrong.  The rest of the food is there, and I promise I will get to it.

Unless I find a moth to eat instead.

 

pause

Feral, evil, savage, immoral, callous, lost causes. Those who do violence to others in the name of quick profit are called many things. Be they hoodies ransacking Debenhams and taking what isn’t theirs or bankers gambling our money and taking what isn’t theirs.

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But name-calling is so easy. It starts in the playground and continues into adulthood.

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What we need to do is pause.

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Pausing is that thing you do when you count to 10 before you yell at your child or slap a cyclist or swear at a Policeman or call people names.

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Pausing before speaking or acting means that we have a chance to think. Because what this country really needs is space to think. Deeply.

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Deep thought will lead to deep justice. For the rioters, for the rioted; for the looters, for the looted. For bad bankers and for those trampled underfoot.

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Without a pause, there is only revenge, knee-jerk reactions, spite. We don’t need spite. We need justice.

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Justice is good. Justice is enough.We believe in deep justice not cheap spite because of our God.

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People often fear God‘s justice, but we welcome it. We do not go beyond that to spite because to do that is to ignore the Jesus we claim to follow. If we do follow him we must rise above that. To do that, we live differently, love differently. God’s justice is fair. God’s justice has unfailing love as its core. That seems a good place to start.

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It’s why the Torah said to a violent and warring tribal community an eye for an eye is enough and not a life for an eye like everyone else said. It’s why Jesus said love your neighbour and pray for those who persecute you instead of hating them and returning violence with violence like everyone did. It’s why Jesus told radical and offensive stories of good Samaritans and bad priests, or good chavs and bad toffs. Or whoever your feared ‘other’ is.

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There have been many fascinating debates over the last week. We have seen the surface of many deep issues scratched – about families, about community, about fatherhood, about gangs, about stories, about underlying moral codes – and this has been brilliant. It is about time. We in the church are always talking about these things, as Nick Baines wrote about the apparent silence of Rowan Williams.

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As followers of Jesus we need to be the ones who carry on with this. Because we believe in pausing, and then acting. We believe in being embedded in our communities. We believe in crossing the road to the injured and the wounded, however ‘other’ they are. We do this all the time. This is our chance for others to see it. Like here, in Wolverhampton. Like here, across the country. Like on CNN, with Patrick Regan of XLP. Like in the Guardian, with Martin Saunders.

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But we do not do this to score points. We do not do this for eternal reward or a pat on the back.  We do it because we believe in deep justice, not cheap spite.

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It’s that simple. And that hard.