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.  

 

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. 

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.

 

hunted down

First Osama bin Laden, then Ratko Mladic. What a month for hunting down the world’s most wanted. The A Team had better be afraid.

It must be an odd life living in the knowledge that one day everything might come crashing down around you. Secret hideaways, multi-million fortunes, armies of bodyguards… all this may well never be enough to shield you from being brought to justice. Because you are guilty we will hunt you down, even if it takes 10 years, 16 years, or more.

You will be found out.

Ratko Mladic. Image: BBC News

There are not many of us who are fugitive war criminals. Not that I know of anyway. But there are a lot of us who are terrified of being found out. Terrified that the protection we have built up around us will be breached. Terrified that God will see through our defenses and bring us to justice. Terrified that God is actually a hunter who seeks us out in order to expose us, humiliate us, and ultimately destroy us.

I think that is why many people avoid God. People in church and outside church the same. Because, we think, if God really knew us, he would not love us. If we were the 1 he left the 99 for, he would make his way back to the 99 disappointed. Like a blind-date that goes wrong because we look nothing like the photo, when God truly knows us he will reject us.

I am afraid of being found out. I am afraid I have been found out. I know I have been found out. For the mass of insecurities I am, for the prejudices I hold, for the thoughts I have and ultimately for the fact I do not love myself. As most of us don’t.

The thing is, God has found me out, and yet I have no fear of being put on trial. Not because I have bribed him with my good works, or held him hostage with the power of my dog collar. But because he has released me as a free man. No longer captive to my desires, my past, not held by karma; no longer a slave, no longer a king, no longer a nobody. Free.

We have many metaphors for this. We sometimes say Jesus has paid the price for us.  Sometimes we say we have been redeemed.  Sometimes we say we have been washed whiter than snow, although being ‘washed in the blood of the lamb’ never sounded very clean to me.

However we describe it, it means that we need not live in fear of being hunted down, found out, humiliated and punished.

What marks us out as followers of Jesus who have welcomed the Holy Spirit to dwell in us is that we no longer hide like fugitives; we no longer hang our heads in shame; we no longer hunch under the weight of who we really are and would rather not be. We are totally free and totally released. If only more of us in our churches and outside our churches would know this…!

Of course in reality I still don’t like the fact God sees everything. I cannot believe he sees it and still loves me, accepts me, welcomes me. I cannot understand how he see me as holy, pure, unblemished. But he does. He does.

Sometimes I want him to hunt me down because it makes more sense. Punishment is easier to accept than grace.  

And if you’re looking away now because you really can’t believe it for yourself, how much more is it true for you.

a ruthless bible

As we walk through the Bible in our little congregation tucked away on the forgotten borders of Sutton, Morden, Mitcham, Croydon and the sewage treatment works of Beddington, it can be easy to understand how the family of Abraham, who have become the tribes of Israel, became a little territorial. So easily we define ourselves by who we are not – we are not them, because ‘they’ are bad. It reminds me a bit of the M Night Shyamalan film “The Village”, where fear of the unknown is used to define and control. We read the dramatic stories of the Exodus, we flinched slightly at the drowning of the Egyptian soldiers in the Red Sea, passing briefly over the historical question of why in the Bible it is called the Sea of Reeds but popular imagination is such that we need to keep saying Red Sea…

We passed through the conquest of Jericho, to the book of Judges, and some of the most controversial stories contained in Scripture. Stories that seem to advocate a sort of genocide, certainly military conquest of a violent nature. This is where people get the idea of God – Yahweh – as a violent, bloodthirsty despot. I don’t believe he is, of course, though he is not a cuddly teddy bear either. Some of that comes down to how we believe the Bible was written. Is it God dictating his thoughts, or is it the people struggling to understand theologically what is happening geographically? Is the history re-written with subjective theological edits – such as, we won WWII because God was on our side, or people get STDs as a punishment from God for their sexual immorality – or did God really tell them to slaughter other armies?

These questions are hard for me. They are not easily explained. And so I cling to Ruth. A Bible without Ruth would be a darker place. Certainly the book of Judges would be a darker place. With all the extremes of characters tucked away, I feel in need of a bit of redemption by the end and there is Ruth, poised and ready. You see, for the all the anti-foreigner urges in Judges, and especially anti-Moabism, the book of Ruth tells a story of a family who break all the rules about mixing with foreigners, and are blessed through it; a story that doesn’t allow us to write God off as racist, as nationalist, as someone who wants the muggles, mudbloods and the magic-folk kept separate.

Naomi and Elimelech and their 2 sons move from Bethlehem – ring any bells? – to Moab to escape a famine. MOAB! Naughty people. What would the neighbours say. Suffice to say things go from bad to worse: Elimelech dies, both sons marry MOAB women… and then die. Naomi, who’s name meant ‘pleasant’, is left alone in MOAB with two MOABITE daughters-in-law. She decides to move home, and Ruth, bravely, goes with her. Namoi changes her name to Mara, meaning ‘bitter’. So far, those who would say God judges by the book and shows no grace may have a point.

they looked just like this

Then everything changes. Boaz, a local land-owner, falls for the MOABITE woman Ruth. He first allows her to glean his field (no euphemism intended); and then (and this is romantic), allows her to gather barley from the sheaves and not the floor. He was way ahead of his time. She woos him with a bit of perfume and a subtle blanket manoevre, and the rest, as they say, is her-story. He marries her – he a faithful Hebrew and she a MOAB WOMAN. And the local people bless her by saying “May she be like Rachel and Leah…”; hang on, as in Jacob’s wives, who founded the nation of Israel? This foreign – no, MOAB - woman?

The Bible keeps us this emphasis on her MOABITE origins, and her welcome into the family. As if the writers are proud of this. Really?! The book then ends with this wonderful promise prayed over Ruth and Boaz’s son. Who was called Obed. Who became the father of Jesse. Who became the father of David. Yes, that David.

This story does not make some of the other stories in Judges go away. It does not make some of them any easier to stomach. But this story, this beautiful, unexpected gem of a story, does show our God in a completely different light. Maybe next time we are feeling a bit jingoistic, a bit nationalist, a bit racist or a bit anti-immigrant – and we seek to justify this Bibilically, as some do – then maybe we need to be a little less Ruthless in our criticism, a little less Ruthless in our judgment; and next we feel bogged down in stories of tribal war and ethnic conflict as we read out family history, maybe this little love-story with epic repercussions for Jesus and his family tree will balance our view of god, as we discover a Ruthless Bible – and indeed a Ruthless God – would be a different story altogether.

in the beginning…

…was a vast expanse of something because there had to be something but it was just around and there and not doing a lot and all messy and chaotic and out of that God – our god, you know god, God, Yahweh – he brought life from this amorphous mass of stuff not that he was a part of it – he was definitely apart from it – because he wasn’t made and always was and he was there and it was there and he was all mixed up in it and we know that he is in charge and so from that mass of something we don’t understand he made life which we understand a bit more though it is still a mystery and in a way it is like he

b r e a t h e d

and s p o k e

and is like the way a garden comes together after it has been left untended for ages and ages and the weeds grow and you think it can’t possibly be fruitful and then the farmer comes and works on it with a lot of breathing and creating and some resting and at the end of the day (or week) (or season) something beautiful has become of the chaotic mess and we like to tell stories about all that and about the people who were first here and we like to reflect on their lives and how they started so

close to God

and ended up so

far                                       away

and when we read the story we realise that the story isn’t about those people though we give them names like Adam and Eve  or about the places they found themselves like Eden or erm, Ur, or the things they built like the babble tower in Babylon or the floating square box full of animals and it isn’t about how God made all of these things and places and people and real-time 24-style history the story is ultimately and mainly and superbly and undeniably and historically about

god

God

Yahweh

and his character, his ability to plan and for the plans to go wrong and for him to get huffy but not so huffy that he throws it all away because his character as we learn is that there is always another chance another way there is always a blessing to replace and overthrow a curse there is always grace to find and blessing to pour and there is always another human to choose to be a part of the plan and not apart from the plan

tower of babble

and what a wonderful beginning and what crazy stories and what interesting archetypes of people from the good to the bad the farming to the urban the faithful to the sex-crazed the clothed to the naked the punished and the punishing to the blessed and the continually blessing and and the ever-faithful and the

curiously creative

and the immoral and the right-thinking and the stubborn and the hurt and the desperate and the slave and the master and the mother of the murderer and the murdered and the hopeless and the hopeful  and the warrior and the peacemaker and the friend and the enemy and the loyalty of family and good decisions and bad decisions and the promises fulfilled from generation to generation

 

and I have only got to chapter 15 of Genesis.

Phew.

judging.unjudging

I remember soon after the tragic murder of Jo Yeates in December
that the media wanted it to end as quickly as an episode of
Midsomer Murders
so in true journalistic style I remember them seizing upon the arrest of the landlord
who by all accounts fitted the TV detective show model
a quiet, shy and retiring bearded academic
ergo loner, a mysterious recluse, definite murderer material

so i remember them seizing upon him and doing such a good job of
a character assassination
that it nearly jeopardised the whole courts process
and now it strikes me that as he was released on bail
and we never heard of him again
and that now they have arrested and charged someone else
that says something about the whole judging another person thing

and we can‘t just blame the media for because we lap it up
we love a good murder mystery
and forget there’s real people involved
and this seems a good example of why Jesus said that in this new world called the

kingdom of heaven

we try not to judge others unfairly
or even at all

because we also will be judged in the same way
and I don’t think we would much like that
and once we have judged it is very hard to unjudge
and every now and then we need a timely reminder.

i know I do.

barbed wire and trampolines

I wonder what is is that makes you smile. I wonder what it is that makes you belly laugh. Ministry in St Helier provides plenty of those opportunities, once you learn to bend and flex and go with the flow and understand that unpredictability is the new predictable and bewildered is the new normal.

Mrs Vicarage and Marigold the Lodger were sitting in the lounge last week when an 8ft trampoline came walking down the drive and plonked itself outside our front door. Along with about 8 teenagers.

“We brought you this”
“Oh. What for?”
“For the youth club.”
“We don’t have a youth club.”
“Where will we put it?”
“In your garden.”

hello, I'm your new trampoline

I came home from the running club to find 8 kids bouncing on a trampoline outside my front door. Some rapid thinking ensued (which is tricky after doing 7 steep hill repeats) and we lugged it over our fence into our back garden. You have to laugh!  These are the same kids we have had problems with broken windows, broken vents and broken trust. Every day since then they have knocked on our door and asked to have a bounce. Some quickly drawn up rules and safeguarding meant this was fine, and we have loved seeing them behave like the children they so often aren’t able to be, and I  have enjoyed being given permission to bounce like a loon and pretend I’m in Glee. Even Mrs Vicarage had a go.

This is ministry, this is being church, this is being love, by God’s grace being able to flex like a trampoline even and especially when unexpected things happen. Because Jesus calls us to be a part of people’s lives and not apart of people’s lives, so when good things happen we relax into it and thank God that we see glimpses of the kingdom.

Yesterday things unexpectedly went belly up and some were extremely rude to our Scout leaders and obnoxious to me and the neighbours. It all ended in the church door being kicked and broken and the Police called. Sometimes the unexpected is the trampoline walking down the drive, and we laugh and enjoy it and share their laughter. Sometimes the unexpected is the anger and pain and the frustration at life which seems to end in the building suffering and the Police earning their stripes. And the trampoline of our grace being flexed to the end of its elasticity.

This is ministry, this is being church, this is being love, by God’s grace being able to flex like a trampoline even and especially when unexpected things happen. Because Jesus calls us to be a part of people’s lives and not apart of people’s lives, so when bad things happen we relax into it and thank God that we see glimpses of the kingdom.

When I saw this sunflower pushing through the barbed wire of our garden fence it seemed to me like a picture of the beauty and the pain of ministry, of living and working on St Helier, and of life for so many. The beckoning smile of the sunflower and the cruel sharpness of the wire. So there we are. Barbed wire and trampolines. An unusual combination for another unusual week…

fearday the thirteenth

Fate led me to accidentally walk under a ladder, but touch wood everything was fine – my star sign said it was going to be a difficult day, but I’m a good guy so I figured what goes around comes around and karma would treat me well. Anyway, as luck would have it I was wearing my cross and I took communion yesterday so I pretty much knew God would protect me. Even it had all ended in tears I know I would be ok because I was baptised so I’ll got to heaven. Touch wood.

be afraid

Superstition is everywhere. Beliefs that denote a wish, a desire for something; a hope that there is a higher power that looks out for us. Touch wood  – many say it, but does anyone actually believe that wood has special powers? Fate – a fear that there is some power that directs us like 2 blobs on a GPS into situations that we have no control over. Luck – an entity with a quota we might use up. Superstition comes from fear, fear that something somehow somewhere is going to make bad things happen. Fear that someone is out there trying to trip us up.

Religion often acts in the same way. It also stems from fear, fear that God looks on us badly, fear that we need punishing, fear that in the end he will make bad things happen or send us to hell. We bargain with God in the hope that he won’t trip us up; we look busy doing our best to please him; and if that is a bit much, we try to win him over (or con him) with some superstitious beliefs in the power of church attendance or the eucharist or baptism or confession or jewellery or money or quiet times or piety.  I know I haven’t given you much time over the years, Mr God, but here is my baptism certificate and my lucky cross to show I hadn’t forgotten you.

Should we be more afraid of the very real and tangible Mr God?

I am afraid but I am not afraid. I am afraid because God is God – beyond our comprehension and understanding, beyond planets and universes and full to the brim of creative wonderment and overflowing with so much love we could not look upon his face. I am afraid because I am human and he is God.

I am not afraid because God is not like a holy Subbuteo player ready to flick us from this world. I am not afraid because God does not demand endless superstitious acts to keep him onside, acts that I might get wrong and muck it all up and have to start again. He is remarkably irreligious. I am not afraid because Jesus asks for our whole lives and when we give him everything it would be totally out of character for him to turn round and say thanks for this but you forgot to touch the wood. And by the way, its Friday the 13th so you’re out of luck…

I am not afraid because he bursts through and breaks and shatters all ideas of luck and karma and fate with his wonderful, endless grace, grace we cannot earn or bargain for but grace which is given and which we can receive.  As the prophet Bono says: Grace travels outside of karma. Grace makes beauty out of ugly things. Grace is the thought that changed the world. Grace is real and tangible and is called Jesus. I said that last one.

Update – Fran points out that Mumford & Sons talk about grace in Roll Away Your Stone – so here it is too!

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