the jesus rant

Somehow in his public image  Jesus is often reduced to a weak, feeble meek-and-mild do-gooder. Somehow when we talk about him as a friend he can lose his edge, his bite.  Jesus was not weak, and Jesus was not an easy friend. He wasn’t then, and he isn’t now. 

Where ever he went he would so something embarrassing. Talk to the wrong people. Do the wrong thing. Worst of all he offended and offended and offended the Jewish authorities. In Matthew 23 we read one of the worst. If Jesus rounded on someone like this  when you were with him, where would you put yourself. Hypocrites, blind guides, greedy, self-important, blocking the kingdom from those who seek it. White-washed tombs full of the bones of the dead? For Jews for whom the dead were seriously unclean, this was seriously bad form.

So why did he do it? Is this carte blanche for us to be rude and offensive to those we don’t like?  No. Sorry.

Jesus did it because there was nothing that wound up and offended Jesus more than when people made faith into a formula. Changed people’s motivation from love to do this and you will be in. Follow these rules. God’s grace is not enough. We had better make sure.

What Jesus wants is our hearts. And that doesn’t mean just our feelings and emotions. It means all that we do and all that we are. There’s no cameo roles or bit-part characters within us. He wants our motivation for our actions to be love – loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. If our motivation becomes anything other than love, then we place ourselves at the mercy of his rant. 

So we do not read this rant to laugh at the hapless Pharisees getting a rollicking. Again. We read this to see if he could say these things of us. Of me. We read this so that we can learn what it is that Jesus was all about. So that we can learn how to be friends with this awkward and cantankerous and generous and loving and demanding friend. For he is a good friend. But never an easy one. 

george’s [one holy catholic] marvellous medicine

I am an accidental Anglican, by virture of a beautiful lady I fancied who I followed to church back in the 90′s. I’ve now been married to the beautiful lady for 10 years and an undercover Baptist (erm, Anglican) vicar for 6. I don’t mean I’m married twice. I’m the vicar.

Accidentally and reluctantly, I was drawn into the strange concoction of personalities and traditions that is the Anglican church. A bit like George’s Marvellous medicine, it often feels like someone was having a laugh when they decided to put us all together. Po-faced cassock-wearing catholics / cords-and-shirt-wearing evangelicals * [* delete as applicable], too-trendy-jean-and-hoody wearing young upstarts and a whole load of [insert adjective] people across the board.

See what I have just done. Succumbed to the basic human desire to categorise according to prejudice. You are like me, you are not. You are different, so I will stereotype and ridicule, thereby reinforcing my own belief in my innate superiority.

I have just been to a licensing of a vicar in the neighbouring parish, and there could not be a more different church experience. From our low-church mostly evangelical working-class urban thing, to a cathedral-like exposure to choirs and cassocks and incense and posh people in suits and hats and a word called ‘Mass’ and someone called the Mother of God. This can bring out the worst in me. I look around and see so much that seems wrong. 

God seems to be worshiped from such a distance, people seem to need to wear fancy haberdashery and look all solemn to approach their Saviour who bled and died and rose through shit and death so we didn’t need to do just that; where the church seems to say ‘over there, look, God!’ rather than ‘in here? God? amazing!’ Where the incarnation seems to be restricted to the sacrament, like God is bound into some contractual agreement not to cause too many problems by running around like a naughty schoolboy, but only to appear when the priest is there to maintain order…

There I go again. Sometimes prejudice just flops out. The way to challenge prejudice? People. Simple, really.

Image from ASBO Jesus

The way we structure our relationship with God is so precious to us. So it can dominate our thinking. But I meet people from the breadth of church traditions and, mysteriously (and occasionally disappointingly), find them to be genuine. Genuine followers of Jesus. In a very different way, and often in a way I do not understand. And some ways I cannot agree with. And me also for them. I know what I look like. Disrespectful of tradition, casual with the Eucharist,  slouchy with the liturgy and lazy with the proper order of the church. Offensive, even.

But I follow Jesus. And people who fundamentally disagree with me can see that. Mostly.

One of the beauties of the Anglican Church is that we rub up against each others differences all the time. In charitable moments, this feels like a beauty and a gift. In less charitable moments it is frustrating and annoying, because so often we go for the lowest common denominator, bore ourselves to death and it makes me want to leave.

Image from ASBO Jesus

But we follow a subversive rabbi who included in his inner circle Matthew the collaborator and Simon the insurgent and used a Pharisee to build the church so I feel it must be right to try and find our common ground and purpose and try and see each other as people and not representatives of ‘tradition’ or any other kind of label. So I promise to keep trying. Maybe you will too.

That being said, please don’t put me in a cassock, sit me in a straight-line and make me enunciate every word to old hymns like I’m teaching a toddler to lip-read.

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. 

house of cards

It’s terrifying when it all comes tumbling down. The world so carefully crafted around you, a world built around friendships and favours, shared interests and mutual fears. A world carefully controlled by the interlocking spiderwebs of self-interest and self-preservation. A world in which the original reason you built  your house of cards is long-forgotten amidst the task of maintaining your current position.

Maybe this is News International. Maybe this is the continuing revelations about deep corruption at the heart of our free press, elected politicians and our Police force. That is certainly a house of cards that is tumbling, tumbling, tumbling. How far will it fall?

It’s made me think about, well, me. Us. About how easy it is to get drawn in, to take a simple and firm foundation and begin to build on it with cards. After all, we are called to influence the world we live in; so it is important to know people to be able to do that. So how do we choose those worth knowing? Card 1. We cannot know everyone, so who do we ditch? Card 2. It is important to have the press onside. Card 3. Better the devil you know. Card 4.

Jesus had an unusual relationship with the ruling elite. They wanted him as one of them, but they couldn’t have him. The Pharisees saw his qualities and some of them saw his truth – see Nicodemus – but he was too risky for them. They had a house of cards they did not want the Spirit to blow through. Position, favour, reputation. White-washed tombs, Jesus called them. Looks great on the outside, but contains only death within. Harsh?

It’s easy to knock those in the public eye. As the webs of deceit and corruption surrounding surrounding News International and our ruling elite are exposed, it is easy to look in righteous anger. And rightly so. Yet in that old cliche from the 90′s, What Would Jesus Do?

Remove the plank from your own eye before you point out the speck in your brother’s.

I know the church has friends in high places. Not just the ‘established‘ church, though of course we probably go as high as it’s possible, what with the Queen being the Supreme Governor of the church and our Bishop’s sitting in the House of Lord’s. There’s also many Christian lobbying groups and think-tanks, from Theos to Ekklesia to CARE to Faithworks and Charities Parliament; there’s well-known and unknown Christians at the heart of our decision-making, like Steve Chalke to Rowan Williams and many others from across the spectrum of evangelical to Catholic, conservative to liberal.

We must pray for them. We must help in holding them all to account, whether we support them or not. Do they get too close, or not close enough? Are they blowing on the house of cards, or helping build one? We’re in it together. We’re about Jesus, not reputation. Kingdom, not personal empire, whether we mix with Prime Ministers or local councillors or the local gang leader.

There’s a lot of houses of cards out there. It’s good to blow on them. It’s not good to sit on them.

Though we cannot help it. After all, what is faith, if not a house of cards?