don’t call me good

I see dead people. Ok, mostly just their coffins, but I hear about a lot of dead people. And one thing I have learned is that anyone can be presented as someone who was lovely, and who loved everyone. Time and again I hear of people who would ‘do anything for anyone’, when really I think probably what they would actually do is anything for people they knew; anything for people they liked; anything for people they lived near; anything for people who were easy to get on with; anything for people when it doesn’t really cost a great deal. 

Like all of us, really. 

Image from www.asbojesus.wordpress.com

The love Jesus talks about in John 15 is greater, deeper, bolder than simply being good. We can all be good. Many people tell me they are good people. Mostly when the vicar they’ve never met comes round and they feel uncomfortable about not having set foot in church their daughter was ‘done’ in 1957. I am not interested in people being good. I have no time for good. It’s all very well, but it has no frame of reference, no benchmark except itself.

What I am interested in, and what Jesus is talking about, is love. Love that is more than a feeling or an emotion, more than something that wells up inside like when you’re watching a movie and the soundtrack swells and the slow-motion close-ups go out of focus and the world feels like an X-Factor backstory. Love, true love, involves cost, and a cost that doesn’t expect anything back in return. And to understand why, we need to look at Jesus. 

Jesus talks about love a bit like it is a river. Every river has a source, and for Jesus the source of love is the Father, that is, God. I have loved you, as my Father loved me. The Father loves, and his love is poured out into Jesus. So, Jesus loves. But he doesn’t do it all himself. He says remain faithful to me and obey my command that you love each other. The Father loves Jesus, Jesus loves us, and we in turn love each other. Love each other, as I have loved you.

My command is not to follow rules but to love. A love that begins and ends in self-giving, cost and sacrifice.  

Image from www.asbojesus.wordpress.com

So let’s not try to be good. Let’s try to be love. And not a blurry weepy weak and soppy love but love that stands up for the outcast, the untouchable and love that looks beyond me and my family and my club and my street, a love that isn’t just for the easy to love, the kind, the nearby, those who love us back, but a love that keeps on loving because it is a love that comes from Jesus, that comes from the Father.

With that love we can change the world. With that love we are changing the world. 

frustransformation

They say most preachers only have one sermon. You just hope it’s a good one as you’re gonna hear it week in week out. I think mine has changed over the years but at the moment it is about transformation. That when we invite God into our lives that is part of the great transformation of God’s creation, the reconciliation of all things to God, and the beginning of us living in the way God intended. Basically the kingdom coming. Transformation. With him, in him, by him, for him.

I've got a new sermon! Have you? No not really.

The trouble with a transformation message is that it can sound like triumphalism, or that terrible false promise that if you turn to God all your problems will go away. You will be ‘healed’, which I think means being turned into a squeaky clean smiley and annoying person, of the type we all wish we had more of only so we can fill the spaces in the rotas.

Transformation is very different from triumphalism; being in a relationship with God is very far from a self-help life-improving life-style choice, though of course the complication comes from the fact that hopefully our lives do change for the better. Now, I am sure that some people will be able to point to lives that have been totally transformed. And healed. Hooray! But the gritty and annoying reality is that for most of us, transformation is a bit more incremental. Small steps. No steps. Backward steps?

How do you keep believing that God is and will and wants to transform us and our communities when he doesn’t seem to do very much. Now we are getting somewhere. Because then we start to look.

We ask ourselves, am I dismissing the small changes in people (that are actually massive in their context) because we want to see changes we can write books about and impress people with our stories? Am I dismissing a new openness from someone previously closed to God’s message; am I dismissing the value of being a part of the church community to those with fledgeling faith but lonely hearts; am I mistaking transformation for ticking the boxes of quantitative, measurable change?

It is true that sometimes I get disheartened. Call it transformation-frustration. Or frustransformation, if you will.  Don’t get me wrong – not because I don’t think God is doing amazing things. But because I want more! I don’t want a sort of ‘transformation-lite’, in which a few people feel a bit better and the congregation grows a bit because we’re all lovely. No!

I want to see this community and this church changing in a big way – I want to see depression banished, alcoholism defeated, domestic situations calmer, husbands coming to faith.

I want to see tired old ladies glowing with the Spirit, I want to see men who have never grown up suddenly realising their responsibilities and their potential; I want to see young people smiling and laughing and confident in who they are without needing drugs or sex the thrill of being annoying to get them through.

I want to see the ill healed (and not just made comfortable), I want to see debts got rid off and I want to see people really and actually and everyday believing and knowing that they are treasured and loved by their creator God. And that that informs how we all live and speak. That we may all do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.

There’s me and my one sermon again.

So, God. In the words of Coldplay, this is a comma not a full stop, so where’s your answer?

reputation

When I saw the offensive graffiti written on the house, in 2 ft high letters, I though to myself, here goes. This is one of those situations you read about in the papers and hope to never see. The bad spelling said a lot – if you can’t spell ‘paedo’, it’s probably best not to write it on a wall – but that’s not the point.

So where does Jesus send us when this happens in our street? As far away as possible, I hoped. Probably best not to get involved. But Jesus was never really a ‘don’t get involved’ kind of person.  Instead he said go and knock on the door and see if the guy is ok. And if he wants help cleaning it off. Actually it was Fran who said that, but Jesus tends to use her like this.

But people might see, I thought. And the man might be grumpy? It’s probably best not to get involved. Keep my head down.

So I knocked on the door. There was no-one in. Phew… But a man called through the window from a house opposite. He warned to me stay away. Why? Because I didn’t want to give the church a bad reputation hanging round with people like that. The church already has a bad reputation, I replied, which may not have been the best response. I am not worried about that, I said.

Actually I am. Not so much the church’s, but mine. Jesus may well have hung out with people of dubious reputation and survived but… hang on, he didn’t survive. Jesus may have had the confidence to ride social shame – even violence – but I don‘t know if I do. I don’t think I am so good at slipping away unnoticed. I certainly have no 3 day rising plans. What if the church was targeted in a ‘guilty by association’ way; what if my house was, or my family?  And… and… and…

There are always excuses. Always reasons. But kingdom values are different values. And this is where it shows. I do not believe scrawling on people’s houses is any sort of justice. I do not believe destroying people’s reputation publicly is any sort of trial. And this is true whether or not the person is guilty or innocent. I believe in justice. I believe in grace. I believe in a love beyond all compare. Which means that even those guilty of the most grievous crimes are still worthy of love. As are those publicly accused by the mob. 

As are those who do the accusing.

Not everyone can love like that. I don’t know if I can. But perfect love drives out fear. The light overcomes the darkness. And there are more important things than reputation.

…

(And credit to the council – graffiti removed within 36 hours)

knock knock

Who’s there? Lord only knows. Living in a vicarage is a somewhat unique experience.  You never know what the knock on the door will bring. We have found ourselves becoming something of a local resource, a cross between Wilkos, a youth drop-in, a community café and just occasionally a house where people live. To give something of an insight and hopefully to bring a chuckle to your day, here follows a list of some of the things we have been asked for over the last few months…

string for conkers  / stamps /  broadband /  cookies / postman’s wee-stop  /   trampoline storage /  trampoline usage / duct tape /  brownies / a football /  puncture repair /  advocacy / fixing up a gate post /  cushions /  banter /  first aid /  Facebook /  umbrella /  a step ladder /  laundry /  a garden fork /  oranges /  downloading Enrique Iglesias / telephoning social services  /  a shower /  odd jobs / water /  a lift in the rain  / a youth club / Nesquik  / time

Living here is different from what we expected… unpredictability and spontaneity and risk-taking amidst the normal routines of life and the job. Truth be told I love it, though I don’t always love it at the time. I get grumpy! Believe it or not.

Still, I look forward to the next unpredictable request from the Wigmore Rd massive. Hang on, is that the doorbell…

knock knock

look up look down

Colossians 1.15-23 tells us about a massive big creator Jesus who was there at the beginning or even before the beginning and set stuff in motion with a nod or a blink or a wave of his sandal straps. It tells us he is the image of the invisible god which means that he looks like what an invisible god would look like if he were visible and that he holds all things together and that he brings all things together and all things will be reconciled which sounds to me like good new big news huge news. It tells us that Jesus is not an add-on or an optional extra to some kind of spirituality that gazes up and calls some unknown thing God or worships the abstract or the gaseous or the simply unknowable. It tells us this Jesus way big and way up there before and after the alpha and omega or the a to z and that this has been proclaimed to every creature under heaven. Wow!

look up

And so we Look Up. We look up because something in us tells us that Big God is up there. Church is often a place where we look up. We remember how big god is, we remember with awe and wonder and occasionally we allow ourselves to be moved on the inside and even more occasionally maybe we actually move and raise our hands or get on our knees.

But let‘s not get a crick in our necks.

Luke 10.38-42 tells us about an earthy everyday Jesus who comes round Martha’s house and eats food. This Jesus engages not with the heavenly things but with stools and plates and food and dirt and clothes and toilets and women and men and children and doors and hair and bicycles. Ok, not bicycles. It tells us about a radically life-changing and dangerous Jesus who is involved on the ground. Dangerous? This little story carries way more weight than I thought. It follows the Good Samaritan. We know that challenges approaches to neighbours foreigners immigrants mixed-heritage people and so on. This story is not simply a weak challenge to ‘activist vs contemplative’ faith which I have heard so often.  In those days men sat at Rabbi’s feet to learn, in order that they could teach. Women worked in the home, doing the every day stuff. Here Jesus welcomes a woman to sit and learn at his feet, and when another woman complains, he gently says no, this is good. Later we hear Paul say there is no longer Jew or Greek or male or female or slave or free, we may add immigrant or national. This is hugely radical stuff. On the ground challenge to cultural norms.

look down

Our good news is radical challenge to cultural norms. No offence Cameron but we‘ve had Big Society long before you. We mustn’t get so distracted looking up to the Big God that we forget to look down and see where he is at work, challenging, provoking, changing, Down Here in our communities. It is why on Sunday at our little church we didn’t just clear out our own church garden, we cleaned the graffiti off the road sign as part of our worship; we clean the pavement as part of our worship. We pick up dog poo as part of our worship. This is how Jesus is involved ‘down here’.

At my licensing in St Helier one year ago  Bishop Nick reminded us all that vicars are not chaplains to congregations but vicars of the parish. There’s 20 in our church, 20,000 in our parish. We do not exist to help a few Look Up on a Sunday and remember that God is Up There; we exist in order to support and encourage us all in being Jesus and recognising Jesus every day when we are Looking Down, and discover Looking Down and Looking Up happen at the same time.

My purpose as vicar to support all of us  in our purpose – which is to see people’s lives changed by Jesus. Not just to do ‘Sunday church’. That isn’t easy because he challenges every aspect of our lives. Whether it is our pride or our behaviour or our lifestyle or what we think of ourselves. At Martha’s house he challenged the gender separation and showed his radical new way of open, generous love; here, we challenge culture by cleaning the road signs, picking up dog poo; by loving people when they do not ‘deserve’ it, by starting with the fact that all people are loved and created by God; by being loving and patient and forgiving in practice as well as theory.

And most of all, by committing to Jesus. Because without him all the rest is just nice stuff. This is not nice stuff, it is hard stuff. Counter-cultural stuff. We do it because he loves us. At least, that’s my reason…

Look up:

Look down:

……………………………….