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Do we need Jesus to be perfect?

Snakeshead lilies and daffodils in the Forest of Dean, made famous by the brilliant TV series The Change.

Last week the wonderful Pray as You Go app invited me to reflect on the significance of Jesus’s actions in John 7. By this point in the Gospel narrative Jesus was keeping well away from Judea, since his life was under threat. Despite this, his brothers encouraged him to go to Jerusalem for the festival of Booths, but Jesus point blank refused. Shortly afterwards, he went to the festival after all, but in secret. By the middle of the festival, Jesus stopped hiding and started to teach openly in the temple.

What are we to make of this chain of events? Surely since Jesus was fully God, he must have known that he needed to teach in the temple. And if that were the case, how is it that he appears to have misled or lied to his brothers? Something else must be going on here and the most obvious answer is that we see Jesus changing his mind. We see him working things out as he goes along.

As well as being fully God, Jesus was fully human, and I believe this story is a lovely expression of that humanity. This is not the only example, we also see his humanity in the ‘disobedient’ child hanging around the temple when he should have been on his way home, and in the episode with the Canaanite woman where he learned a thing or two. After all, what is more human than to change our mind? To learn, to grow and to develop?

Which brings me to the question of perfection. If Jesus had been ‘perfect’ he would have known all along that he needed to teach in the temple and would have found a way to do that. Instead, he needed the gentle encouragement of the Spirit to move him from staying in Galilee, to going secretly to Jerusalem, to coming out of hiding. If Jesus needed some help, then so do we, which means that we needn’t be so concerned about making ‘wrong’ decisions. We too can be guided into new directions as the spirit leads and calls us. Fumbling our way forward and taking apparent blind alleys is not failure to adhere to God’s predestined path for our life, but is rather taking steps in a dance into an unformed future; a dance that requires both partners to move together.

And since Jesus wasn’t perfect, God certainly isn’t asking that of us. Instead of striving to ‘get it right’ the whole time, we are called to seek the kingdom of God – a messy, spontaneous, beautiful, ramshackle place that is easy for ‘prostitutes and sinners’ to find a home in – not sterile perfection. Were we ever to attain ‘perfection’ in any area of our lives, then we would have a reached a static point and, since one of the criteria for being alive is the capacity to move, we would effectively have died.

The people most committed to perfection in the Gospel stories were the Pharisees, and Jesus made it clear that they were going down the wrong track. Striving for perfection, and even excellence, can be toxic. Of course, there is a place for expertise, but at this point in history we urgently need people of wisdom and compassion, and such people have rarely led a ‘perfect’ life.

So, Pray As You, here is my reflection, heavily influenced by my own struggle with perfectionism.

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Speaking to the audience

Baby tomato plants!

Mtt 5:31-32
‘It was also said, “Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.” But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.

I was listening to the excellent podcast Nomad the other day, and found myself increasingly uncomfortable with the interviewee’s critique of Jesus’ teaching on divorce and remarriage. At the time, it was very easy for a man to divorce his wife for no particular reason, all he had to do was hand her a certificate of divorce. In that patriarchal society, this practise could be devastating for women, as they would have potentially had to remarry (which wouldn’t have solved the long-term security issue) or take up prostitution to survive. As we might expect, Jesus speaks out against easy divorce for trivial reasons. However, the interviewee was, to say the least, disappointed that the reason Jesus gave for his opposition was that divorce pushed people into adultery rather than because it had negative impacts on women. While I don’t want to make excuses for what Jesus said, I do think it is unwise to read a first century passage with 21st century eyes and expect it to make total sense in our context.

What strikes me is that Jesus was speaking to his audience. This was a people who were deeply concerned about obeying the law, and so I imagine that breaking the seventh commandment (Do not commit adultery) would have hit home much more powerfully than expressing a concern for women’s rights – maybe Jesus was being highly pragmatic in that he found an effective way to advocate for women in a culture that had not yet developed an understanding of the equality of the sexes. A discourse about equal opportunities and women’s empowerment would probably gone over people’s heads, blinding them with the light rather than giving them enough light to guide them forward. I see it as a reflection of the imperfect reality of engaging with people where they are at and moving them incrementally forward.

The Christian faith is amazingly dynamic. We aren’t locked into a religion that was delivered fully baked in the first century, the Holy Spirit has been revealing the ways of God through the ages, moving us forward, sometimes despite ourselves, bringing us to the point of understanding women and men as being of equal value. Were Jesus born in the 21st century, I imagine he would speak to us in a way that we could understand, pragmatically guiding us forward, in an albeit incomplete way, since we seem only able to hear the truth in small doses.

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Is it time for a benevolent dictator?

It’s been a while… but Spring has sprung and it’s time to write again.

Luke 4:1-13 The temptation of Jesus

Over the years, we have had the odd discussion over the dinner table about the best form of government. Given the results of the most recent democratic process across the pond, the question feels even more pertinent – rather than being governed by politicians who inevitably have at least half an eye on how to stay in power, wouldn’t it be better to have a benevolent dictator? Practicalities apart, if there were a totally good person who was wise enough to make the best decisions for everyone – wouldn’t we want them to govern us unchallenged?

The other morning, as I was musing on Luke’s account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, it occurred to me that the second temptation was exactly that: to have authority over the nations, to be a benevolent dictator.

Similarly, the other two temptations seem to be good ideas. Why wouldn’t you want to provide for people’s physical needs by ensuring the food supply? And wouldn’t proving that Jesus was the son of God have prevented a lot of religious conflict, as well as much individual existential angst over the centuries?

Just like the first and third temptations, becoming a benevolent dictator would have been a way to solve humanity’s problems – but perhaps just at a superficial level. The message of the cross seems to be that our deepest need is for God to identify with our pain and suffering, rather than to prevent it.

This perplexing state of affairs leaves us with the responsibility of ensuring that our neighbours have enough to eat, of holding those who govern us to account, and of keeping faith despite the odds, while living peaceably with those who don’t.

Perhaps the desert experience was in part about letting humanity grow up, like a good parent who patiently teaches the child rather than doing the task for them? I easily fall into believing that struggle and pain is something externally imposed upon us that we need to resist or at least endure. It might make more sense to consider it the very work of being human, and that this is why God joined us in it rather than saved us from it.

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Unintended consequences

Nothing from my garden today, but a thing of beauty all the same: sweets from Tunisia!

My reading for this morning was Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23: the obvious question is, what about verses 16 to 18? This is the often-overlooked story of the slaughter of the innocents, which, while it doesn’t fit so nicely with our cosy Christmas vibe, is a powerful example of unintended consequences.

The wise men knew that a king was about to be born and so, within their operational paradigm (kings are born in places of human power), they did the obvious thing and headed straight for King Herod’s palace. This set off a chain of events that resulted in the massacre of all the toddlers and babies under two years old in the greater Bethlehem area.

Had the wise men realised that God’s power doesn’t work like that, that it is made perfect in weakness and is given away in humility to serve others, then they might have avoided the palace and found Jesus some other way. Such a change in the paradigm shift of their thinking could have avoided the tragic unintended consequences.

We are aware of our impending environmental crisis and that we must do something about it, but since we are still functioning within the same paradigm that got us into our current predicament, our ‘solutions’ often seem to end up making things worse. For example, we are aware that petrol-driven cars are problematic, but rather than radically rethinking our mobility and the factors that ‘drive’ it, we have found a solution that allows us to carry on as usual, albeit avoiding fossil fuels. However, one of the problems with electric cars is that their batteries require metals such as cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements, whose extraction comes with grave consequences for the environment and human rights.

Like the three wise men, we (myself most definitely included) need a paradigm shift in our thinking, if we are to avoid the terrible unintended consequences of our otherwise well-meaning actions.

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Embodiment and faith

A fish from my pond that was a victim of fluctuating temperatures.

I wrote this before my father passed away, it was supposed to be a reflection for the 4th Sunday in Advent, on Luke 1:39-56. It has taken on a deeper meaning for me since my father’s death because I have been so distracted that I have struggled to pray or even be silent, but I have managed to calm my body a little through yoga.

I was a very clumsy child, covered in cuts and bruises, dashing from one activity to the next without taking much notice of my body. I still have this tendency, and earlier this summer I cut my hand on a glass while rushing to clear it away. My friend made a big fuss of the blood slowly seeping out of my hand, while I was trying to ignore it. She insisted on getting me a plaster, saying that my bodily integrity really mattered. Her genuine concern for my flesh deeply touched me – I tend to view my body as an unwelcome necessity that carries around the really important parts of me: my mind and my spirit – but I am coming to realise that it is important to integrate all three, and today’s Gospel story can help us with that.

One of the earliest Christian heresies was gnosticism, which considered material existence to be flawed or evil, and got around the incarnation by saying that Christ only temporarily occupied a human body but was not fully one with it. This position is understandable, it’s hard to believe that a messy human body like ours with its conflicting impulses could ever have been one with perfect divinity. But this is a mystery of our faith.

Although gnosticism was rejected as heresy, it, and other philosophies that hold to a strict division between matter and spirit, continues to influence us. This is not helped by Paul’s use of the word sarx which can mean both flesh and sinful human nature, contributing to the impression that the body is inherently sinful and that sins committed with our bodies are much worse than other sorts of sins. But 1 Corinthians 6:19 tells us that our bodies are a temple of the holy spirit.

This encounter between Mary and Elizabeth is remarkable for a number of reasons. For one thing, it is one of those rare instances in scripture where we overhear two named women talking about something other than a man. It is also interesting because of the focus on these women’s pregnant bodies.

In the culture of the time, women’s bodies were deeply problematic. Mary could have been killed if her virginity was even called into question while Elizabeth would have lived as a pariah for failing her one purpose in life: providing her husband with a son. With the news of their respective pregnancies, their lives were turned upside down and their bodies would never be the same.

Incarnation means taking on flesh, and Mary’s body was essential for the enfleshment of Christ; she sheltered him in her womb, fed him through her placenta, and comforted him with the sound of her voice and the movements of her body. But as well as giving her body as a place for God to be made man, Mary’s mind and her spirit were also part of this experience; Mary said yes with every part of her being – she became the mother of God with her body, mind and spirit.

And then there is the second pregnancy in this narrative, Elizabeth’s. An older woman, well-past her sell-by date, who assumed that she’d go to the grave barren, suddenly finds herself pregnant after an angel visits her husband. I wonder how that felt? On the one hand, she must have been overjoyed to become pregnant, the shame of her childlessness finally taken away, but on the other hand it must have been overwhelming to contemplate pregnancy at this late stage of life.

After being visited by the Angel Gabriel and overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, Mary rushes off to visit her relative Elizabeth. When Mary greets Elizabeth, the holy spirit fills her too, and she gushes forth words of blessing. Just note that both these women’s bodies had become the Spirit’s dwelling place, while the official dwelling place of the spirit – the central area of the Jerusalem temple – was strictly off-limits to women.

Elizabeth exclaimed that upon hearing Mary’s voice, the child in her womb leapt for joy. The unborn John already responded to the barely formed Jesus – what a remarkable connection. I wonder what it was like for the four of them during those three months they spent waiting together. I imagine it was a precious, blessed time that resourced both women for what was to come. How hard it must have been for Mary when Elizabeth came to term, and she had to return to Nazareth to face the music over her increasingly visible pregnancy.

Mary could easily have become ashamed of her body, as people made insinuations and assumptions, but the annunciation was unequivocal, and I imagine she held on tight to that during the weeks and months ahead. And, of course, it helped that her fiancé Joseph, with a little angelic help, had decided to believe her story.

At the time, female bodies were considered inferior and frequently ritually unclean. Yet we see the value that God puts on the female body in that he was willing to be incarnated in one. We also see the value that God puts on older women’s bodies, menopausal and otherwise on the scrap heap – he chose one of these bodies to birth John the Baptist, a pivotal figure in the life of Christ and the story of the church. Female bodies, older bodies and by extrapolation all bodies – irrespective of ethnicity, disability, or any other category we might like to think of – are precious to God.

The value of bodies is taken up in the Magnificat, the song of praise that Mary sings in response to Elizabeth’s blessing:

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

The powerful tend to rise to great heights by crushing the bodies of the lowly. In the most blatant expression of power over others, slavery, human bodies are bought and sold as commodities – think of the wealthy elite of the Roman Empire, the enrichment of Colonial Europe at Africa’s expense or modern-day slavery in the form of human trafficking, and bonded and forced labour. In the Magnificat, we see a reversal of fortunes: the powerful are brought down and the lowly are lifted up – the well-fed bodies of the rich are sent away empty, while the hungry bodies of the poor are filled with good things. These vulnerable bodies matter to God and they should matter to us too.

Do we value the bodies of the people who work for us? Cleaners and construction workers, migrant fruit pickers, child labourers on cocoa farms, and the people who mine the conflict minerals in our smartphones? If we care for their bodies, we will take an interest in where the things we buy come from and how they are produced.

Christ’s body was knitted together in Mary’s womb out of atoms most recently incarnated in plants and animals, and before that they were found in soil and minerals. In the incarnation of Christ, all forms of matter are thus sanctified and so all these bodies in their different forms deserve our respect and honour. So when we inevitably take the life from other beings to sustain our own lives, I believe we should do so with respect and gratitude, rather than over-consuming or wasting them.

Christmas is a time of feasting, and this is as it should be – but as we celebrate the incarnation of Christ, let’s be mindful of what our celebrations cost the bodies of other people, plants, and animals and make efforts to reduce that cost.

Christianity has been called a religion of the flesh, and this is most explicit in Christ’s command to eat his flesh and drink his blood at the communion table. Beyond this, it is no accident that our two most important sacraments, baptism and communion, are whole being experiences – with body, mind and spirit agreeing together to turn to God. And think of the comfort we can gain by lighting a candle to pray when words fail us. Our bodies can help us when our minds and spirits are exhausted – a friend of mine who feels this way is building a labyrinth in her garden, so that at least her body can pray as she walks around it.

Christ taking up residence in Mary is an archetype of incarnation – and although it was a one-off event, it also gives a pattern for us to follow. We receive the same call as Mary to incarnate Christ with all of our being: body, mind and spirit. To bring him forth into the world.

I wonder what practise might help us with this? Perhaps at the times when we are most aware of our bodies – when they fail us or when they bring us joy – at those times, perhaps, we might pause and thank God for dwelling in us, and ask him to take up more space in our being.

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Will we faint with fear and foreboding?

I wrote this post just before my precious dad died. He was an inspiration; passionate about justice and a brilliant gardener. Here he is with his magnificent onion harvest.

Luke 21:25-28 ‘There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud” with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.’

When I read this passage this morning, I couldn’t help noticing the parallels with our current situation. Although this passage is part of the ‘mini-apocalypse’, which refers to the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, it resonates today in its description of a world falling apart and people’s reactions to it. In addition to the seas roaring, the sun, moon and stars, whose patterns are so reliable that they were used for calculating the calendar and for navigation, would be shaken. People’s distress over these environmental convulsions and fear for the future would lead to paralysis.

If we take the data seriously, what is coming upon the world over 2000 years later is to be feared. The description of people ‘fainting with fear’ rings true in our time and I am sure is a factor in the mental health crisis amongst the young. But Christ calls us to ‘stand up and raise [y]our heads’, standing up is contrasted with fainting, it implies action to be taken, an engagement with the situation, facing into what is to come rather than retreating from it.

Of course, there are more possible responses than the two mentioned here, and a multitude of motivating factors, but we cannot hope for the continued ‘success’ of consumer capitalism, which is built on injustice, extraction and oppression. Our ultimate hope cannot be in calm seas and predictable waves, we are far too far along for that.

So where will we find strength to stand up and face what is coming? We are to ‘raise our heads’, a symbolic looking to ‘heaven’ where God is, which we might understand as seeking union with the Divine. We are to do this because our ‘redemption is drawing near’ – I understand this as the moment of full union with God in Christ as we leave the physical body at our death. This is no pie in the sky when you die, no escapism from everyday reality, rather, with this as our ultimate destination, we draw strength to live our daily lives as Christ as calls us to, being engaged for the good of others: animal, vegetable and mineral.

Excitedly looking forward to the end of the world because this is when Christ will return (‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’) is a twisted way of reading this. Any end of the world that we might envisage is going to come at a terrible cost to the whole of creation, and is something to be grieved (blessed are those who mourn, Matthew 5:4) and alleviated as far as possible (for I was hungry and you gave me food, Matthew 25:31-46).

In any case, if we look a bit more carefully, the son of Man is coming with power and great glory, and when was Christ glorified? On the cross (John 12:20-26)! This is not power and glory as usual. I don’t know what ‘the son of Man coming in a cloud’ means but, at the very least, it sounds like Christ hasn’t forgotten us, that somehow he is still with us, and that through his suffering on the cross will be with us even in our very darkest moments.

We are facing the end of the world as we know it
And we are terrified.
This is the moment to look to God
Resisting paralysis, by standing up to act
Strengthened by our hope of union with God.
Let us follow Christ in compassion, justice and peace
The rest we leave in God’s hands.
Great is the mystery of faith.
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How to survive Easter Saturday

A splash of colour on a not-so-recent walk.

I recently gave a reflection at a weekend retreat, the theme of which was Jeremiah 29:11: ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope’. The passage for the day was Mark 15:42-47, the women watching as Joseph of Arimathea takes Jesus’ dead body and places it in a tomb. With thanks to Ched Myers for his interpretation of the text.

On this second day of your retreat, you will journey with the disciples through Easter Saturday. This is not an easy day to manage well, as somehow we must hold together the horror of Good Friday with the joyful hope to come on Easter Sunday. For us, this is a time for expectant waiting, but for the women in the reading we just heard, there was no sense of waiting or hoping at all; for them it was just grief, confusion and disappointment.

They had just witnessed one of the most barbaric methods of torture ever devised. Their dear friend Jesus had been subject to mockery, brutality, humiliation and death. They had hoped he was going to set their people free from their Roman oppressors – but Rome, in collaboration with the Jewish ruling elite, seemed to have had the last word.

There was, at least, one mercy: Jesus died rapidly. Crucifixions could last for several days, but as the centurion confirmed, Jesus died after just six hours. But now the clock was ticking – there were only three hours until the beginning of sabbath, three short hours until no more work could be done. Three hours to pay Jesus’ body the proper respect and to give it a decent burial.

We don’t know what the women were planning to do or hoping would happen, but I’m sure that at least one of them must have given some thought to how to care for the body. And then Joseph of Arimathea steps in. He was a member of the council, one of those who were complicit in Jesus’s death. The gospel writer Mark fills in some detail about him being respected and waiting for the kingdom, but as far as the women were concerned, he was probably an enemy.

Whatever tentative plans they may have made were dashed to pieces when Joseph took control of Jesus’ body. He was in a position of sufficient power to make the request of Pilate, while the women could only look on.

However, despite their lack of power, the women weren’t mere bystanders, they took the initiative and did what they could. They watched what Joseph was doing, and they had the courage and stamina to follow behind him and discover the final resting place of Jesus’ body.

Rather than properly preparing Jesus’s body for burial, Joseph hastily bundled him up in linen cloth and deposited him in a tomb. We know the process was inadequate, because the women came back on the third day to attend to the body properly.

Perhaps the burial was rushed because time was running out before the sabbath. Or perhaps this council member wasn’t interested in giving Jesus the proper last rites – he just wanted the body safely out of the way. Mark leaves this ambiguous.

Whatever the reason, he then rolled a stone over the entrance, dusk fell and that was it. There was no hope, no triumph. Jesus, their leader, teacher and friend was dead and buried. The women must have been both devastated and confused; despite Jesus’s warnings, this was unexpected. It must have felt like the end of their world.

I wonder what they would have said at this point about our theme for the weekend ‘”For I know the plans that I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope”’? In that moment these words would probably have felt empty.

And I wonder about us? How do we respond to this promise when we go through dark times. When our hope seems gone, life is too hard and God feels absent. Because, as we all know, baptism doesn’t grant us immunity from the struggles of life.

We know this was not the end of the story, but the women had no idea that there would be another chapter. Yet in that dark moment, they were not entirely defenceless, they had at least three things that helped them.

First of all, they took the initiative and did what they could. They located Jesus’s body and prepared to tend to it properly on the third day. There was no grand plan, they just kept going, putting one foot in front of another. In times when we risk becoming completely overwhelmed by a situation, sometimes we too must content ourselves with just taking the next step, one thing at a time.

Secondly, they had each other. This tragedy did not tear them apart, instead the women and the other disciples met together in the dark hours that followed the crucifixion to support each other. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews (10:25) encourages us to keep on meeting together when times get hard, because this is an important part of our faith; wider culture is driving us to ever greater individuality and isolation, but the truth is that we need each other. When we are feeling strong, Christ calls us to encourage others, and in turn He calls others to encourage us when we need it.

And finally, the women had their trust in God. They knew that Jesus had a special relationship with God the father, and that surely helped them to trust in God, despite the facts of their circumstances. The future God had in store for the early church was both amazing and difficult, and we too, can expect our futures to be a mixed bag of experiences.

Like the women, may we trust God for who he is, rather than for what he might do for us.

Even in the darkest, almost unbearable moments, there is hope for a future with God.

Keep going, support each other, and trust in God.

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The Day of the Lord

This used to be a Hügelkultur bed, but that didn’t really work, so I’ve taken it apart and turned it inside out. I imagine this is what a Hobbit’s vegetable patch might look like.

This is a reflection on the readings for the penultimate Sunday before Advent: Hebrews 10:11-25, Mark 13:1-8 and Daniel 12:1-3.

I confess to having something of a morbid fascination with post-apocalyptic fiction. I think it has to do with growing up in the shadow of the cold war fearful of nuclear annihilation, and then there was the hole in the ozone layer, acid rain and now climate change. Perhaps a subconscious part of me needs to face the worst possible outcomes in a safe, contained way in order for me to feel able to cope with an uncertain future.

Our three readings for today fit nicely into the apocalyptic genre. The prophet Daniel describes a time of great anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence. Then in the Gospel, Jesus talks of the destruction of the temple, of wars and rumours of wars, of famines and earthquakes. The passage from Hebrews ends with a cryptic comment about the Day (with a capital D) which is approaching. It is this concept of the Day, the Day of the Lord, that can help us find meaning in these passages and seek a constructive way forward.

In the Jewish imagination, in Biblical times, the Day of the Lord was the moment when God would break into history and take charge, bringing justice and restoring God’s chosen people to their proper place in the world. But before that Day, there would be a time of terror and trouble when the world would be shaken to its foundations and judgment would come.

The Old Testament prophets warned about this great suffering, we’ve already heard from Daniel, so let’s hear from Isaiah, who is no less terrifying:

See, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation, and to destroy its sinners from it.

This so-called apocalyptic literature, is a blend of terror and ultimate hope, driven along by God’s purposes.

Probably the most famous apocalyptic writing in the Bible is the book of Revelation, found at the very end of the New Testament. As with the rest of the genre, its imagery is not meant to be taken literally, it is symbolic language that gives hope that suffering isn’t entirely pointless, that somehow, something good will come out of it.

Our gospel reading today is part of what has been called the mini apocalypse, which takes up most of the rest of Mark 13. It makes for disturbing and perplexing reading. Jesus uses the familiar apocalyptic style to warn his disciples against being led astray by false teachers, he tells them not to be alarmed but to be patient until the end.

He warns that there will be wars and rumours of wars, that nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; that there will be earthquakes in various places and famines. And not only that, but this is just the beginning of the birth pangs. The disciples would have understood this as the build up to the glorious Day of the Lord and the defeat of their enemies. But Jesus subverts this idea by talking about birth pangs – this is an image not of vengeance and victory, but of the hope of new birth!

I wonder how you feel when you hear these words about liars rising to prominence and leading many astray? About wars and rumours of wars, conflict, earthquakes and famines? Does this seem pertinent to you? It certainly does to me, and why not add droughts, floods, hurricanes and forest fires to the mix. I find it interesting that Jesus promised us such terrible things and then counselled us not to be alarmed about them.

Let’s rewind a minute and look back at what prompted Jesus to speak these words. The disciples had been admiring the temple and trying to get Jesus to share in their wonder. The temple was a vast structure, with some of the stones being as big as 40 by 12 by 18 feet, no wonder the disciples were impressed by them. This incredibly imposing structure was not only the focus of religious ritual, but held the Holy Scriptures, the highest court of Jewish law and the presence of God himself.

But rather than join in their admiration of the temple, Jesus prophesies its destruction, and, in less than 50 years, this astonishing prophecy came tragically true. The temple was destroyed during the siege of Jerusalem in which over a million people perished by famine and the sword, and between 60 and 100 thousand people were enslaved, taken to Rome and forced to build the Colosseum – that theater of terror where as many as 400,000 people died in bloody spectacles.

The catastrophic collapse of the city and its temple must have felt like the end of the world. And yet, somehow, life went on. It was an end, but not the end, it was but the beginning of the birth pangs that Jesus talked about.

Zooming outwards, we can see that other ends of the world have happened throughout history, for example, the fall of the Roman empire which plunged Western Europe into turmoil, the industrial revolution, which despite its many advantages has wrought untold ecological damage, and the discovery of the ‘New World’, which was a total catastrophe for the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

These experiences of political, social and ecological collapse are so painful and difficult, it’s as if the body of history has been wracked with waves of intense pain over and over again. These are the birth pangs.

Since the end of 2nd world war, those of us in the global north have had something of a reprieve, and we can be incredibly grateful for the peace, prosperity and security and that we have known in our time, but we cannot imagine that it will last forever. Our status quo is declining and falling. Another birth pang.

Like all good midwives, Jesus tells us not to be alarmed when the birth pangs come – don’t panic, just breathe. Like a labouring mother who is driven along by forces within her body that she cannot control – we are living within systems and structures that we cannot control. Like an expectant mother, perhaps the best thing we can do is decide to keep breathing, to not be alarmed, but to be islands of peace in a world reeling from the pain.

When alarming news comes in from all over the globe and when the things we thought were as stable and certain as the Jerusalem temple start to unravel, how are we to respond?

The writer of the letter to the Hebrews has some clear advice.

His readers were living through persecution and trials, and he encourages them not to give up – he tells them (and us) to hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. He doesn’t tell us to keep going because everything will be OK in the end, but encourages us to keep faith in God because of who God is. He talks of a true heart in full assurance of faith, this speaks to our attitude – that we don’t let ourselves be destroyed by the awfulness of what is going on around us, that we don’t become cynical and depressed, but rather we choose to keep believing in the goodness of God.

He challenges us to consider how we might provoke each another to love and good deeds, it makes me think back to our auction the other week, where we drove up the prices by bidding against each other. I wonder who has inspired you to grow in your faith, to live better or simply to keep going when things are difficult?

The author recognises that in the face of the pressures of life, some had given up and stopped meeting together, but he stresses how important it is for us to keep meeting up to encourage each other, and all the more as we see the Day approaching. We are part of each other, and we cannot afford to give up on our community. The worse things get on a social, economic and ecological level, the more important it will be to draw together, not drift apart.

Birth pangs start off gently, a minor irritation, but soon build in strength and frequency until the body is overwhelmed by waves of increasingly unbearable pain. And yet, the pain is just about bearable because you know it won’t last and that there will new life at the end of it.

But what will the labour of our suffering world bring to birth?

There’s no easy answer to this, we might just have to refer back to the Hebrews passage that encourages us to trust that God is faithful. Or we might look to Romans 8, which talks about creation groaning in the pain of labour, and points towards a time of future redemption.

But we can’t afford to let that make us complacent. Christ calls us to love our neighbour, to feed the hungry, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit those in prison.

In the face of calamity, we are to respond with neither paralysing despair nor a false hope that relieves us of the responsibility to act, but with a virtuous cycle of meeting together to encourage and provoke each other to love and good deeds. By following the way of Christ, we will impact our collective well-being as well as the well-being of those around us, bringing positive change in a myriad of small and not so small ways. And for those things beyond the scope of our influence, we will just have to learn to leave them in the hands of our faithful God.

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Green tomatoes and mutual encouragement

Compare these to the tomatoes of a few weeks ago back, click here

The slugs in my garden have had a spectacularly good year, so good that even the tomatoes, which usually get away unscathed, have suffered their assault, and so I eventually decided to salvage the remaining green ones and bring them inside. I am not a fan of fried green tomatoes and had a bad experience with an over-heated green tomato curry last year, so I was determined to get them to ripen indoors this time around.

Tomato ripening is triggered by the gas ethene, which causes the conversion of starches into sugar and the generation of the red pigment lycopene. This happens naturally on the vine, and as the green tomatoes begin to ripen, they too give off ethene, encouraging their neighbours to ripen in a virtuous cycle of increasing deliciousness.

To mimic this process in the safety of my slug-free kitchen, I popped some ripe tomatoes on a tray along with my green ones and, sure enough, a few weeks later, my green tomato harvest was almost entirely red. As I contemplated these mutually ripening tomatoes, I was reminded of the words at the end of our passage for this Sunday:

And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. (Hebrews 10: 24-25)

As the green tomatoes are encouraged to ripen by their slightly redder neighbours, we can encourage each other to greater ‘love and good deeds’ – but for that to happen, just like the tomatoes, we need to be in close proximity, ‘not neglecting to meet each other’. See you on Sunday?!

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How do we feel God’s love?

I think it looks like a graveyard, now that the sunflowers have been harvested.

People talk about feeling the love of God, but how are we supposed to do that? Is it some sort of mystical experience only available to the spiritual elite? Or only to people graced with a particular sensitivity? Personally, I think that God’s love is much more accessible to us than that. In fact, God’s love is expressed any time we love others or others love us. I believe we can learn to take that experience of God’s love mediated through other people (and animals) and use it to tap into a sense of God’s unmediated love for us. How about trying the following exercise?

Settle into your seat, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths. Rest calmly in silence for as long as you are comfortable. Then bring to mind a moment when you felt loved. If this is difficult for you, bring to mind a moment when you felt great love for somebody else. Dwell in this feeling. Revel in the warmth. Notice how it feels in your body, how it feels in your whole being. Imprint this feeling strongly in your mind, body and spirit.

Mark 10:13-16
People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’ And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Imagine yourself as a small child, out for a walk with a parental figure. It’s a warm sunny day, and you are feeling happy and relaxed. You come across a crowd of children gathered around Jesus. You separate from your parent and approach the crowd. Jesus is smiling and laughing with the children. He speaks words of blessing over them and the children go away happy. How do you react to that? Now it’s your turn to receive a blessing – go up to Jesus and let him give you a big bear hug. Now bring back to mind that experience of love you just recalled and feel it now. Experience it as God’s love being directly shared with you in the present moment. Rest there for a while.

What does Jesus say to you, if anything?

Now talk with God about this experience. Were you able to sense God’s love? Perhaps it was difficult. Be honest with God, and ask for more love for yourself and for the whole world.