Go away

Morning Prayer: Luke 5:1-11

‘Simon Peter...fell down at Jesus’ feet, saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” ... When they had brought their boats ashore, they left everything and followed him.’

Peter’s self-awareness as a sinful man is – in this context, at least – not to do with what he has done but what he has failed to do. Fishing all night without a catch, he has failed those who were dependent on him. This is only emphasised by Jesus’ grace, in the miraculous catch of fish.

But it does not end there. Jesus does, indeed, go away from him. Not abandoning him, but enabling him to follow. To move from the place of failure, through the forgiveness that disempowers fear, to a fresh start within restored relationship. (‘Leaving everything’ ought not to be understood as the abandonment of relational responsibility – Jesus strongly opposed such false piety – but as participating in this dynamic.)

Where do you and I need Jesus to go away from us today, that we might follow?

Lord, join me in the place of my failure,

of my frustration, of my disappointment.

Lord, join me in the place where

the Accuser whispers seeds of discouragement

and shouts out taunts against my vocation to

personhood.

Join me in that place;

and then Go away from me, Lord,

that I might follow you...

A prayer, after the prayer of Simon Peter.

Against

Acts 12:25-13:13 reading from Morning Prayer today, the Feast of St Mark.

I am struck that Paul informs the magus Elymas that ‘the hand of the Lord is against you’ – mirroring Paul’s own conversion experience on the road to Damascus. The hand of the Lord being against you is not lifted in anger, but as constraint, giving direction, preventing the one veering off the path from going over the edge by nudging them back towards the centre.

The language of God being against our enemies is common-place, expressing our lust for judgement, not our love for mercy. But where might we need – where might we hope for – God’s hand to be against us?

To be or not to be

Yesterday the Royal Shakespeare Company marked the day on which William Shakespeare was born, and died – 52 years later, and 400 years ago – with live performances from the Bard’s home-town, Stratford-upon-Avon. One of the highlights was this sketch, in which several actors argue over how to deliver arguably Shakespeare’s most famous words. Do yourself a favour and watch them.

The sketch revolves around the fact that Shakespeare was an incredibly generous playwright, whose work allows, invites, even depends on, genuine partnership with the players. ‘To be, or not to be. That is the question.’ can be delivered in a great many ways, the weight changing depending on which word or words are stressed, each offering providing its own invitation and challenge to the audience.

The writers of the works collected in the Bible were just as generous. That is why the Bible must be read aloud, not silently. Why it must be read aloud, in public, by as wide a selection of voices as possible; and why it ought to be read aloud even when reading it alone, turning the words over and over in search for the rendition that is best-fitting to the ‘player’ – the one who proclaims – and the production – or, context in which they are performing (by which I mean to refer to the work of the people and not a falsehood) for which they are rehearsing.

Notable among these performers of biblical works is God himself. Christianity does not teach Scripture as written by God (though in practice a great many Christians believe to the contrary, that it was). Rather, God is both inspiration – as Shakespeare was inspiration for the performances last night – and a player who breathes life into the work, making it come alive.

You don’t have to be a famous actor to deliver these lines. But it does help to be part of a company of players. And to rehearse together.

Bodies

God has given us bodies, with which to touch time (including our own aging) and space (which has its own physicality).

So many of the stories Jesus told have to do with bodies. A woman kneading dough, her arms muscular from the repeated action, an action that would have caused those arms to ache quicker when she first began kneading dough than they did now. A merchant travelling widely in search of pearls, feet sore, back sore, weary from his journey and yet driven onwards. A farmer hefting a bag of seed over his shoulder, throwing his arm out wide, again and again. Hired workers labouring under the midday sun in a vineyard, sweat running down the groove between their shoulder-blades, tickling where they can’t quite reach to scratch…

The point of the stories is not to extract some abstract dis-embodied truth from the messiness of life, but, rather, to demonstrate that God is to be found in the very ways in which the body touches time and space.

Again, there are so many accounts of Jesus’ body touching the bodies of other people – a woman with a fever, a dead boy, a leper. Touches that made him ritually unclean – understood by some to contaminate and therefore temporarily exclude from community; but perhaps better understood as gift, time out to reflect on the deep holiness of such connection, to return with refreshed appreciation of our bodies, and those of our neighbours.

This also is why we are given actions: water poured on the head (every time I step under the waterfall of my shower-head, I am reminded of my baptism, an event I cannot remember but am nonetheless shaped by); bread broken and shared; wine drank in company with others. Do this in remembrance of me. Do, not think, not believe – not divorced from our body, at any rate. We participate our way into relationship. We are shaped bodily to God, and neighbour. We can know our creator, and our fellow creatures, no other way.

Last June, I started running the weekly Parkrun – 5 kilometres, run in community at 9.00am on Saturday mornings – as often as I can make it. The run, followed by breakfast in a café, is an activity I have especially done with my son, Noah. Today I ran my 21^st Parkrun (I make it, on average, fortnightly rather than weekly). My time has come down from 00.32.47 to 00.23.41.

At the moment, my right thigh aches. Not when I run, but between runs. I can feel my body, in a very particular way. In a way that brings to mind Jacob, wrestling with God all night long, an encounter that left him with a permanent limp. That reminds me that the God who gave me a body took on a body of his own, and gives my body an unfolding story of its own, through which I might know and be known.

My thigh aches. And I am deeply grateful for it.

mid-week eucharist

mid-week eucharist (thanks-giving)

or, taking time in the midst of the ordinary and every-day to be thankful for all God has done for us…

Bruised reeds

‘The A Word’ (BBC) continues to prove compelling viewing, hard viewing, as brutal as the Cumbrian fells against which the drama is set. You really do have to watch very attentively to find anything likeable about Morven Christie’s character, Alison. But all the characters are bruised and hurting.

Mid-way through the Gospel According to Matthew, the narrator draws on the words of the prophet Isaiah to describe Jesus’ manner of relating to those he encounters:

“He will not break a bruised reed…” (Matthew 12:20)

A bruised reed is a crushed and fragile thing. But it is also precious; bruised reeds were used as writing implements. And so this is a play on words:

those who are bruised and hurting are those whose stories need to be told.

There are so many bruised and hurting people, in need of a compassionate narrator. Some of whom are unreasonable, ungrateful, deeply unlikeable, or downright hostile.

Thanks-giving

‘In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness...as it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah, “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low...”’ (Luke 3:1-5)

Jesus’ relative John demonstrates the true human calling to be king and priest over and for creation within the world by enabling the wilderness to rise up in praise and bow down in worship of its God.

This is what happens when we take grain and grape and transform them into bread and wine; or iron and transform it into a gate; or wool and transform it into a garment; or wilderness and transform it into a garden; or...

How will you fashion the world and offer it back to God as its own act of worship today?

For me, one way will be to take ingredients and prepare them into a meal.

Love

Strictly speaking, there is no such ‘thing’ as evil. For as darkness is the absence of something – light – so evil is the absence of something – love.

This is not to say that evil is an illusion: the withholding of love has real and terrible impact on those from whom it is with-held, and upon those who choose to withhold. It does mean, however, that we cannot allow ourselves the easy luxury of calling our enemies evil. Firstly, because they are something, having substance – substance, moreover, created in the image of God – and evil has no substance. And secondly, because by passing judgement in calling them evil, it is ‘our’ freely-chosen inaction of withholding love that allows evil to eclipse good.

Instead, we are called to love our enemies, and in so doing to participate in Love, which is the greatest thing of all.

Gentleness

I am sitting in the Minster waiting for my lunch appointment to arrive. The walls of the Bede Chapel lift and fall lighter and darker as clouds pass in front of the sun. It is as if the very building is breathing...

The person I am meeting is late. After a while, I go back over our email correspondence and discover that I had agreed to meet them tomorrow but put it in my diary for today. I am 24 hours early. And yet, were it not for my mistake, I would have missed this grace-filled moment.

God is more gentle with us in our frailty than we are with ourselves...

Wounds

In Eastertide, we are reminded that Jesus’ resurrected body bears the wounds inflicted upon him by other people – wounds which cost him his very life – and yet is wonderfully given life back by the Spirit of God, who breathes life into every living thing.

This body, then, is both deeply wounded and enlivened by the very Spirit of God.

It is so deeply wounded and so enlivened by the very Spirit of God that one of Jesus’ closest friends, John, would describe Jesus as looking like a Lamb that was slaughtered, yet alive and considered worthy of equal recognition with God by all creation (Revelation 5).

Another of Jesus’ followers, Paul, described the Church as ‘the body of Christ’ (Romans 12; 1 Corinthians 12; Ephesians 3, 4, 5). What kind of a body would that be? One that is undeniably wounded, and yet honoured by God and worthy of honour.

When we gather with other people for the purpose of coming together before God’s throne, to glimpse with wonder something of God’s purposes which stretch beyond our imagining, we come as a body corporate that is both wounded and worthy of honour.

And yet it is so easy to fail to recognise that those around me are wounded, as I am (those wounds are most often not immediately visible, not least given the masks we wear in front of others), and to fail to remember that they are worthy of honour, as I am. It is easy to assume that those around me are less wounded than I am, and to conclude that they are less worthy of honour. It is easy to assume the worst about others, without a second- and more generous thought regarding their actions or motives. Wisdom tells me that most people I meet are doing the very best they can today (which might be a little more, or a little less, than yesterday or tomorrow; but in any case is almost certainly more than I see) and want to do so most of the time (though we all have bad days).

I am increasingly concerned by how much church-bashing I see Christians partake in on social media. We are a body, and it is a form of self-harm.

Jesus gave Thomas the opportunity to see for himself the extent of his [Jesus’] wounds; and Thomas responded by giving due honour. Perhaps if we took the time to truly recognise one another, we would – to our great surprise – discover that we are an Easter people.

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