The Triumph of the King? A sermon for Palm Sunday

The Triumph of the King. It sounds rather ponderous, like one of the bits of Tolkien that only hardcore geeks read. Or worse, it sounds presumptuous. Because we all know what happened in this triumph. Decent preacher from the north country, comes sweeping into the capital city, gets arrested by the authorities for sedition, put to death in a really nasty way. Some triumph. Of course, we also know happened two days later, on the great day that we’ve come to call Easter Sunday, when he rose from the dead.

Nobody knew this was going to happen on a Sunday morning when that preacher, the firebrand from Galilee who went around preaching the kingdom of God, and performing healings, and opening people’s eyes to God, when that man Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem. And while what happens next really matters, and many of us here will spend the coming week remembering it and mourning it and celebrating it, I want to invite you to think yourself into the minds of the people in the crowds that Sunday morning. Forget what you know about the events of the following week. What kind of strange event was going on that morning?

As a way into this, I thought we might start with a quiz. So, a show of hands please. What does Hosanna mean? Is it: A. Hail, O Lord! or B. God be praised! or C. Save us, Lord! or D. Give me oil in my lamp.

And the answer is… C: Save us, Lord! I was genuinely surprised to find the answer to this one when I read it a few days ago. You know the word hosanna. You’ve sung it many times in different songs [including this morning??]. But have you stopped to think what it means? I hadn’t done so before I started reading about this passage. I guess I thought it meant something like A or B, something similar to the word ‘hallelujah’. But it doesn’t. It refers back quite explicitly to the psalm we spoke together, with its line: “Save us, we beseech you, O Lord!”. So it’s not a cry of praise at all, it’s a cry for help. It’s a cry from the heart, like the psalm which says “out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. Lord, hear my voice!”

And the people of Jerusalem needed help. They needed to cry out to God. They were living under an oppressive ruler who was the puppet of the world’s largest empire, noted for its brutality. And yes, God answered. He sent them what they were asking for. But it wasn’t quite what they were expecting. They expected a very different triumph from the one they received.

Let’s talk about that word Triumph a bit more. The cities of Europe, old and new, are full of arches like this, set up by victorious military leaders to celebrate their victories. They’ve been around for millennia. This one, the Arc de Triomphe, was put there by Napoleon. There are at least two in London. But they were perfected by the Romans, as a way of celebrating the victories of their generals and rubbing it in for the defeated people.

These Roman triumphs had similar features. There was a victorious leader, riding on a war-horse or in a chariot, accompanied by his troops. The local dignitaries would make grand speeches about the leader’s achievements. The leader and his party would go to the grand temple to give thanks to their gods. And they would bring the spoils of the war – the treasures they had looted, the slaves they had captured, often killing those captives at the end of the process to show their power.

Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was certainly celebrated and was triumphal in its own way. But it was different from the Roman triumphs in almost every possible respect.

First, he didn’t come in on a war-horse or a chariot, like the Roman leader in the picture here. He came into the city on a colt, a young donkey (so young that its mother came along with it). Now, there was a prophecy involved, which Matthew quotes from Zechariah. But there was also the basic fact in that region that donkeys were humble animals ridden by simple folk. You might know the hymn to the tune of Drunken Sailor, which goes “We have a king who rides a donkey… and his name is Jesus”.

Next, he didn’t get lots of grand speeches. Of course there were palm branches and those shouts of hosanna. But there were no local dignitaries telling us of his great deeds. Instead there were people openly saying “WHO? FROM WHERE?” Not so much scorn as plain bewilderment.

And then there was Jesus’ actions when he entered. As I said, the Roman generals went straight to the temple. They brought animals to sacrifice, gifts to give to their gods. Jesus also went straight to the temple. But not to sacrifice. He went to turn things upside down – he drove out the money-changers and salesmen, he cured the blind and lame. He took away the petty acts of exploitation that the temple brought upon those who came to worship there, and he healed people instead. In other words, he fulfilled that cry of hosanna, save us, straight away – but to save the people from the ways they were exploited and oppressed by their own people.

So how did the people respond? Let’s look at that a bit more.

They waved palm branches of course. That’s the famous thing about the day. It was traditional to wave palm branches on Sukkot, the Feast of the Tabernacles, which was a harvest festival which also remembered the way the Israelites lived during the Exodus. But they were also the symbol of Judas Maccabeus, celebrated as the man who liberated the people of Israel two centuries earlier. And for the Romans the palm branch was a symbol of the goddess of victory. So there was celebration in the waving of palms but there was a political statement too.

And of course the very next thing the people do, according to Matthew, is to cry “Hosanna” – save us, Jesus. Save us from the people who oppress us. Deliver us from our enemies. They call him the son of David, and they say that he comes in the name of the Lord. Again these are quotes from the psalm, but they are strong statements about the kind of king they want, the kind of king they see Jesus as. This is a moment of transformation, of change. If you know the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, perhaps you remember the moment when the crowds are singing “Hosanna, hey sanna, sanna sanna ho”, and at the same time the priests are singing “Tell the rabble to be quiet, we anticipate a riot – this common crowd is much too loud”. This is a triumph of a very kingly sort, albeit a Jewish triumph rather than a Roman one.

And then he’s in Jerusalem and something strange thing happens. The tone of the crowd changes. It’s no longer “hosanna” but rather it’s “who is this man?”. They don’t know what to make of Jesus, this strange radical figure. One reason for this, perhaps, is that there are two crowds – the palm-wavers are the people who have followed Jesus from Galilee, while the ones asking who he is, are those who live in Jerusalem. But it’s still a great question, and one we might spend our whole lives answering: who is this Jesus for us?

And if that’s how the people responded, can we respond today?

Two thoughts. The first is from Helder Camara, long-time archbishop in Brazil and a man of great spiritual wisdom. He was once asked how he kept his humility in the face of all the wealth and power that comes with being an archbishop. He said that he imagined himself entering Jerusalem in triumph – but not as Jesus. He imagined himself as Jesus’ donkey, carrying him to where he needed to be.

And the other thought is a bit like it. I mentioned earlier the hymn “We have a king who rides a donkey”. It ends with the following words: “What shall we do with our life this morning? Give it up in service!” 

Because that’s what Jesus did. The road through the gates of Jerusalem led Jesus to Calvary, and to giving up his life for others. Palm Sunday is a triumphant time, but it’s not the kind of triumph that the Romans expected, or that the Jews expected, or that the disciples expected.

Jesus came into Jerusalem in an act of triumph, but it was a triumph that turned everything upside down just as much as his earlier preaching and actions had done. He came to proclaim a victory of the humble over the mighty, of the weak over the strong, of the oppressed over the oppressors. Now that’s what I call a triumph.

The Song of the Mother: a sermon on the Magnificat

[Sermon preached at Duston United Reformed Church, 30th March 2014, Mother's Day. Text: Luke 1:46-55, The Magnificat. The sermon was immediately preceded by the hymn Tell Out My Soul.]

So we have heard and we have sung a song, the great song, of the mother of Jesus. I’ve promised to be short this morning, but I want to talk a bit about Mary’s song, often called the Magnificat from its first word in the Latin version. It’s a song that has resonated down the ages from her time to ours. It’s got it all: joy, praise, concern for others and the world, and a deep sense of hope for a revolutionary kingdom of God present here on earth that will overturn the powers of the world.

If someone invented a Bible version of Desert Island Discs, and I had to pick a single passage, then Mary’s song might be well it. Martin Luther (perhaps not the first person that comes to mind when talking about Mary) wrote about the song that “She sang it not for herself alone, but for all of us, to sing it after her”.

There’s so much to say about it but today I want to focus on what Mary’s song can say to us about a mother’s love, which seems appropriate today for anyone who’s had a mother or is a mother or lives with a mother. I’m going to talk about three kinds of love that the Magnificat can tell us about: joy, risk, and justice.

Mother’s love: joy

The first kind of mother’s love that the Magnificat tells us about is joy. Those opening words, “my soul magnifies [or glorifies] the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour” are words of such joy. Mary starts with praise and rejoicing. Before anything else, she praises God and rejoices in him. The rest of the song will outline the reasons why she praises him, but before anything else, she praises God and rejoices in him. The rest of the song will outline the reasons why she praises him. She praises him for her coming motherhood, for the things he has done for her, but also for the amazing things he has done for his people and for the whole world.

Mary’s song sits within a very long Jewish tradition of powerful women singers: Miriam in Exodus after the parting of the Red Sea, Deborah the judge, Hannah the mother of Samuel and Judith who questions the faith of Israel’s ruling class. Although she talks about herself as lowly, and although the status of women in 1^st century Palestine was pretty bad, her song is full of power.

So that’s the first expression of a mother’s love in the Magnificat: heartfelt joy. It’s a lesson we can all learn from, joy towards God and joy towards those we love.

Mother’s love: risk

The next kind of love is that of risk. All relationships have risk inherent to them. There are common images of Mary and Jesus in the history of art. Here is one, of her cradling the infant, and it’s found in many places  – this statue is in St Matthew’s Church here in Northampton.

Once a baby is born, it enters the world and becomes subject to all sorts of risks. That is the case whether the baby is the son of God, or any other human being. Mary talks about this one less in the Magnificat, but soon after Jesus’ birth (also in Luke’s gospel), she was warned about it by Simeon, who said that “a sword will pierce your own soul too”.

And from the moment Jesus was born, he was in a place of risk. He was born into poverty, in a borrowed place. His family had to flee into exile for fear of his life. His ministry was with the marginalised and the outcasts. He was pilloried by the state as a dangerous radical, betrayed by his friends, and put to death. No wonder Mary’s soul was pierced.

So there’s another image of Mary cradling Jesus. This is a version of the Pieta, the image of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus after his crucifixion. It’s by a German artist, Käthe Kollwitz, whose own son was killed as a soldier in the First World War. Many of her images are of mothers and children. Kollwitz knew about the risks of love. So did Mary. But loving someone, in a dangerous world, always involves risk.

Mary’s message to us is that it’s a risk worth taking.

Mother’s love: cry for justice

Mary’s song tells us about one more form of love: a cry for justice, for your own children but also for all the children of the world. 

The history of world is full of mothers who have sacrificed things for the sake of their children (yes, fathers too, but more often mothers). I’ve watched a couple of TV documentaries recently about food poverty in Britain. One of the most shocking parts was the number of times that mothers were shown going without food so their children could eat. In a rich country it is simply unacceptable that this should happen. But it’s something mothers have always done. This is another picture from Käthe Kollwitz about how this was in the depression of the 1920s in Germany.

And because it’s mothers who so often sacrifice things, it’s often mothers who call for justice for the world. Mary’s song is a statement of extraordinary radicalism. She says that God casts down the mighty and sends the rich away hungry. As the picture says in the style of a Pentecostalist church, “sing it again, Mary!”

The Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, who was the first to talk about liberation theology, talks of the great promise of the Magnificat, writing that “[its] thanksgiving and joy are closely linked to the action of God who liberates the oppressed and humbles the powerful. The future of history belongs to the poor and exploited.”

For those of us who have a decent income in a rich country, that puts us in an uncomfortable position! But it’s a very clear statement about justice. William Barclay wrote that: “There is loveliness in the Magnificat but in that loveliness there is dynamite. Christianity brings about a revolution in individuals and revolution in the world.” Mary’s song makes it clear to us: a world in which there is hunger and food banks and cities with vast wealth on one street and grinding poverty on the next – that is not the world of God’s kingdom. God is on the side of the oppressed and the marginalised, the people with whom Jesus spent his time.

The Song of Mary gives us a threefold statement about love for Mother’s Day, and a challenge for us all: love with joy, love with risk, love with justice. Amen.

Economic lessons from the sixties, still true today

Two quotes from great men speaking in the 1960s about economic injustice. Both could have been written today. Have we come so short a distance in almost 50 years?

Here's Martin Luther King, in a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 July 1965:

This is why we must join the war against poverty and believe in the dignity of all work. What makes a job menial? I’m tired of this stuff about menial labor. What makes it menial is that we don’t pay folk anything. Give somebody a job and pay them some money so they can live and educate their children and buy a home and have the basic necessities of life. And no matter what the job is it takes on dignity.

And George Macleod, founder of the Iona Community, talking to the Church of Scotland's General Assembly in 1968:

By all means let [them] call on the people of Britain to work hard to make sacrifices. But youth will increasingly ask: ‘For whom the work, and for whom the sacrifices?’ Is the whole world of global labour just to go on doing just that for the benefit of indifferent Mammon? It is urgent that the whole issue of international monetary finance be independently reviewed.

Taste and See: a sermon on salt and light

Sermon preached at Duston United Reformed Church, 9 February 2014. Text: Matthew 5:13-20.

The psalmist wrote: “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him.” And today I’m going to talk about salt and light, the way we enable others to taste and see Jesus in our lives.

A couple of years ago, we were due to drive up to Scotland for Christmas. We hadn’t finished off all the work needing doing, and we were all a bit poorly, so we postponed the journey by a day. The next morning came, and it was snowing heavily. But we were committed to going, and the car was packed, so we set off. It was slow driving, the visibility was poor, and the roads were in danger of becoming icy. We were protected by two things: the lights of our car and those of other cars around us; and the salt which had been put down on the road. Light and salt. Salt and light.

They’re familiar, everyday things. Yet they’re also metaphors, images that help us understand a particular way of being followers of Jesus. Given the winter we’ve had this year, I’ve been reflecting this week what it would mean to be umbrellas and sandbags to the world!

The trouble with metaphors is that they become an end in themselves. And the trouble with these two metaphors, about salt and light, is that they get taken out of context. Here’s a diagram about what happens when you take bits of the Bible out of context. Last Sunday at the evening service, we heard Micah’s words about seeking justice, loving mercy and walking humbly with our God. That verse is often quoted by itself, with all the rest of Micah – good solid destruction-and-repentance OT prophet stuff – being ignored.

So it is with this passage. It’s really important not to take it in isolation, but to see it in its context. The text we’ve just heard is sandwiched between two much longer chunks of the Sermon on the Mount. First comes the Beatitudes, Jesus’ great teaching on who would be blessed in the kingdom of God. And after it comes a whole series of moral teachings, on themes such as murder, adultery, divorce, violence, and love for neighbours. In each of these teachings, Jesus begins by saying “you have heard it said” and gives the usual account from the Jewish law, and then follows it with “but I say to you” and presents a really radical reinterpretation of the law. So what Jesus has to say about coming to fulfil the law not abolish it is a very important introduction.

The keeping of the law of Moses, the Torah, was absolutely central to Jewish identity (and still is). Jesus says that his followers – that our – righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees. The poor old Pharisees have a bad press now, but they were hugely respected in Jesus’ day. They were righteous people, they lived upright and decent lives and encouraged others to do the same. The problem was that they didn’t always match up to their own aspirations. It’s a familiar enough image from our own times – those who do all the right things outwardly, but inwardly know they’re just doing it for appearances.

Because Jesus has a different way of treating the law. It’s no longer about outward appearance. It’s about what we do inside our hearts, how we live out the law within ourselves. In later times, we talk about this as receiving the Holy Spirit, or as the Inner Light of Christ, but when Jesus was preaching the Sermon on the Mount, he showed again and again that what was needed was to take the law within ourselves, to write it on our hearts, to live it day by day. To be more righteous and less self-righteous, more concerned with deeds and less with rules.

And Jesus gives his disciples, gives us today, these two clear images of what it means to be his disciples. He says that we are the salt of the earth, and that we are the light of the world. These are big statements, which might seem quite daunting. Salt had a big spiritual significance – it was seen as divine by the Greeks, a symbol of purity to the Romans, and was mandated for the Israelites both as part of their sacrifices to Yahweh and as a seal of covenants of friendship. And light – well Jesus is called the light of the world, who shines light in our darkness, many times in the gospels, especially in the gospel of John. I think I’ve shown this picture before here – for me it bursts with light and life. So for Jesus to give this title to his disciples is a big statement.

Notice that he doesn’t order us to be these things, he doesn’t do “thou shalt”, he doesn’t even say it’s better if we’re salt & light than not. He says that we are salt, that we are light – that by living in his way, those who follow him are salt of the earth and light of the world. It’s worth pointing out – and I don’t think this is just nit-picking – that the “you” in the Greek is plural both times. We are called to be salt and light in community. We are called to a common enterprise of shared discipleship, to act together as disciples to make the world better.

Let’s look a little bit more about the images, and why they matter. First, salt. Here’s the most obvious connection with salt in Jesus’ time: food. It must be lunchtime soon! In the ancient world, salt acted as flavouring and as preservative. It made food worth eating, and it kept it fresh. Then as now, salt’s flavour works best in moderation – too much and it overpowers the food. But I love the idea of Christians being called to give flavour to life. Jesus said that he came that we might have life, and have it in abundance. Too often, the public idea of Christianity is of rather serious people. The writer Robert Louis Stevenson once recorded in his diary, as if it were a rare event: “I have been to Church to-day, and am not depressed”. But we are a people who know joy through following Jesus, through his life and his example and his sacrifice. We can give flavour to the world, bring hope to others through our actions to help them and through the lives we lead. The URC’s own John Proctor, who teaches at Westminster College, compares salt and honey, and writes that “there is an honest tang about wholesome Christian integrity: salt is clean, rather than cosy, whereas honey coats everything, however sour and rough, with the same artificial film of sweetness. Trying to be all things to all people can strain us beyond credibility. Being ourselves, where we are and as we are, is what Jesus asks of us.” We’re talking about salt and light, not sweetness and light.

And in this way, Jesus’ calling us to be light to the world carries a similar message. Light is not always comfortable or easy – it can be a searchlight just as much as a gentle candle – but it shows up what is to be found in dark places, and it’s the very stuff of life. Every bit of life on the planet, ultimately, comes from sunlight. So being called to be light is powerful calling. Again it’s about hope. The founder of the Iona Community, George Macleod, wrote the following: “Follow the light you have, and pray for more light”. We have a great deal of light, individually and together. It’s sometimes easy to forget about it, but we can be radiant with light. Even if it feels hard, the light of Christ is waiting within us, and if we nurture it, more will be given to us.

One last thing. Jesus talks about us falling short from this great calling. He’s not suggesting that this is sinful or inevitable, but that we will become less useful as disciples. The salt of his time was often rock salt, typically gathered from the edges of the Dead Sea, roughly the same stuff as we put on roads in winter. If the salt was washed out of it, all that was left was rock. And of course he talked about the foolishness of putting a lamp under a bushel basket, which at best would hide the light and at worst start a nasty fire! If being salt and light are ways that Jesus wanted us to think of ourselves as disciples, then he was warning us that it wasn’t inevitable that we’d stay that way. Because we do lose flavour, we do risk becoming bland; and we too often don’t let our light shine. But Jesus offers us the opportunity to do so.

I’m going to end with a prayer from a writer called Peggy de Cuehlo from Uruguay:

You placed me in the world to be its salt.
I was afraid of committing myself,
Afraid of being stained by the world.
You placed me in the world to be its light.
I was afraid of the shadows
And my light slowly faded away.
You placed me in the world to live in community.
Thus you taught me to love,
To share in life,
To struggle for bread and for justice,
Your truth incarnate in my life.
So be it, Jesus.

What are you looking for?

Sermon preached at Duston United Reformed Church, 19 Jan 2014. Text: John 1:29-42.

“What are you looking for?” It’s the first words we hear from Jesus in John’s gospel. Up until that point he’s been talked about, as the eternal Word of God and then as the one who John the Baptist is talking about. It’s a challenge to the disciples of John the Baptist, and it changes their lives. And it’s a challenge to us too. We’ll come back to that, but just now I want to talk about the Lamb of God. 

One of my great pleasures in life is singing in choirs. I sang in my first classical concert when I was 20, and got hooked. So I tend to have lots of tunes in my head at any time – it’s what some people call earworms. And this week, since I’ve started thinking about this passage, I’ve had at least two settings of the words of John the Baptist that it begins with: “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”. It’s a vivid image, and it’s one of the key prayers of the Catholic Mass and also the Requiem Mass, so it’s been set to music by many different composers, especially in its Latin text: “Agnus Dei, qui tollit peccata mundi”. And if you have any interest in classical music, or ever listen to Classic FM, your head might now be running through at least one version of that text! The one that especially has been in my head is a modern setting, written at the turn of the millennium by Karl Jenkins, part of his piece called “The Armed Man: A Mass for Peace”. I sang it ten years ago. I listened to the Agnus Dei a few days ago and had goose-bumps down my spine. It’s music that has real power to it, because it derives from an image with real power.

“Here is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” The instant John sees Jesus, it’s what he says to his disciples, even before he baptises Jesus and sees the Spirit descending and hears the voice from heaven. And John says it again when he sees Jesus the next day. Indeed, we don’t hear another word from John the Baptist in this gospel. For him and the gospel writer, it’s clearly a crucial image. And if you look at many of the traditional paintings of John the Baptist, he appears with a lamb beside him.

So what did John mean by referring to Jesus as the lamb of God? For such a resonant phrase, it’s amazing that it appears in precisely only two verses in the Bible, both in this chapter. But the idea of a lamb is present through the Bible, both old and new. And there’s lots of ways of interpreting the phrase. I want to talk about two.

First, the Passover lamb. In the book of Exodus, the people of Israel are told to slaughter a lamb and roast it over a fire, and then to smear the blood on their doorposts. It is the sign of the blood which tells the Angel of Death to pass over them, to save their children. It’s a gruesome story and a gruesome image, but one that was and remains central to Jewish identity as a people rescued by God. The Passover celebrations were a few days after the baptism of Jesus, and so the slaughter of lambs would have been in John’s mind. So one way in which Jesus could be said to be the Lamb of God is in his sacrifice. And of course related to that were the images that the prophets had, such as the suffering servant being led as a “lamb to the slaughter” in Isaiah.

Second, the victorious lamb. In the time of the Maccabees, around a hundred and fifty years before John baptised Jesus, lambs were a symbol of conquerors. A lamb with horns was a sign of power and strength, not of weakness and sacrifice. There’s a lot about the victorious lamb in the book of Revelation, such as the great hymn which Handel used at the end of Messiah, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing’. So as much as the image of the lamb is about sacrifice, it’s also about power and victory, hence the picture of the lamb & the flag.

But there’s more in these short words. John not only calls Jesus the lamb of God but also says that he takes away the sin of the world. There’s a lot about sin in the gospels, but Jesus only said he was forgiving sins in a few places. One of the most prominent was the healing of the paralytic man at Capernaum who was let down through the ceiling. Before Jesus healed him, he first of all said “your sins are forgiven”, and it was that which shocked the Pharisees much more than the actual healing. And the gospel of Matthew records that at the last supper, which we will be remembering in communion later, he said that the wine was the “blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins”. So we can see Jesus forgiving sins both during his life and through his death. And the Agnus Dei was originally written as a prayer to be said while communion was being celebrated – as the priest broke the bread, the people spoke or sung the words over and over until all the bread was distributed.

The second time Jesus is introduced by John the Baptist as the lamb of God, John has two of his disciples with him. And as I said earlier, Jesus said some words to them that just as well could be addressed to us: “what are you looking for?” It’s a challenge to them. They’re clearly seeking for something, but what is it? Are they just going for one interesting figure to another, or are they really looking for truth? And Jesus had a lot of conversations with different people during his public ministry, and some of them had pretty strong agendas. So Jesus is asking the disciples of John: what is your agenda? Why are you here? What are you looking for in life?

It’s a question that Jesus could be asking each one of us just as well. What are we looking for? And it’s an open question too. It’s not a trick question, with a single right answer. Jesus came to people where they were, and taught them and healed them and led them to God where they were. The gospel of John is full of vivid images along with the lamb of God – the light of the world, the bread of life, the vine and the branches – and these reflect different ways that different people found what they were looking for in Jesus. But all of them had to be authentically themselves, to allow Jesus to see them authentically and to listen to him fully. They call him Rabbi, but in Jesus’ day, Rabbis – highly respected public teachers – didn’t go out seeking for the followers, the followers came to them.

And that’s what the disciples do. They want to know where Jesus is staying, and ask him. And Jesus says, “Come and see”. So they go to the place Jesus was staying, and they remained there with him. The word in the Greek is exactly the same as that which is translated as “abide” later in John’s gospel where Jesus says he is the vine and his disciples are the branches and over and over he says they must abide in him, they must remain with him. It’s not an easy journey, and many of them suffer for it, but it changes them completely. At the end of the reading we meet Simon, brother of Andrew, for the first time. He was transformed from a simple fisherman to the centre of a new movement by this encounter, and Jesus even gave him a new name – Cephas or in Greek Peter, which means ‘rock’ and as some people have commented is a bit like saying your new friend who’s quite big and burly should be called ‘Rocky’.

On and off the past couple of months I’ve been reading a book by an American pastor, John Ortberg, by the title “Who is this man?”  It’s a question to wrestle with. Who is Jesus for us? What are we looking for when we seek him? Here’s what John Ortberg says (in a different book) about being a follower of Jesus:

The decision to grow always involves a choice between risk and comfort. This means that to be a follower of Jesus you must renounce comfort as the ultimate value of your life.

The disciples must trust in him, and follow him. Do we have the courage to do the same? And can we ask ourselves what that would truly mean in our lives right now?

What are you looking for?

Born with no dignity

An important reminder at the time of tinsel and over-consumption as to the nature of the one whose birthday we celebrate on 25th December:

He entered the world with no dignity. 

He would have been known as a mamzer, a child whose parents were not married. All languages have a word for mamzer, and all of them are ugly. His cradle was a feeding trough. His nursery mates had four legs. He was wrapped in rags. He was born in a cave, targeted for death, raised on the run. 

He would die with even less dignity: convicted, beaten, bleeding, abandoned, naked, shamed. He had no status. Dignity on the level of a king is the last word you would associate with Jesus.

John Ortberg (2012), Who Is This Man?

Movember: emodiment, incarnation and denying the body

So it's Movember. Or at least, it's November. And this year (for the first time) I'm growing a Mo. Years ago, I had a moustache and full beard, but eventually I shaved it off and have been quite happy with that. So why am I sporting facial hair again (for one month only)?

It's all to do with the male body, and my personal attitudes to the body. I've spent quite a big part of my life being afraid of human bodies. As a teenager, the Latin tag "sana mens, in corpore sano" (a healthy mind in a healthy body) filled me with horror. I ate and exercised well enough, but why what seemed liked the core part of me (my mind) have to be shackled to an unreliable bag of bones, skin and blood? My first beard growth, around age 23, was partly an attempt to hide myself. Since then, I've married and had children; I cook, clean, have changed upteen nappies - to some extent I've come to terms with bodies. But that early view hasn't quite left me.

In the mean time, I've become very interested in theories of embodiment. In my working life, I've written on and off about the way that information is embodied (I have often quoted Katherine Hayles' view that in early cybernetics, "information lost its body") as well as on cyborgs, those transgressive mixtures of the technical and the physical. In my religious life, I frequently describe myself as having an incarnational faith (focused on the Christian belief that God became human at a particular time in a particular place, leading us to likewise focus on our own time and place), and I am increasingly interested in incarnational mission.

And the combination is more than a little bit hypocritical: to be a creature of the mind, but deeply interested in embodiment and incarnation. Of course, I'd hardly be the first man to have this particular discordance: many men are bad at their bodies. And that's why Movember is particularly striking: it's about men being just a little bit aware of their bodies, by doing something that men can do as men, and in the process also raising awareness of the diseases that specifically affect men. So this month I'm forcing myself to be a bit more aware of my body and the things it does. Maybe it'll have a longer-lasting effect.