Random 2022 stuff

Just some random thoughts/discoveries/lists/whatever about the year that is (as I write this) drawing to an end.

Games I have played

• Satisfactory – in which you play a nameless functionary of a mysterious corporation, dumped on an unknown planet in order to build ever-more complex factories for no other reason than that’s what you’re supposed to do. Your reward is more things to build. Oh, and you have to make the whole thing as efficient as possible. There is no point to what you’re doing other than that. It’s fantastic.
• SimCity 4 – it’s nearly 20 years old now, but it’s still the best city-building game ever. Ever. Detailed, complex, utterly absorbing, with a huge modding community behind it (there are still mods being released for it), it’s the only city builder that truly makes you feel like you’re actually in charge of a city, making decisions that actually have an effect on the city you’re building. It all went downhill from this point.
• Townscaper – the almost complete opposite to SC4. You build random buildings by clicking on the water. Clicking in different places allows you to customise your town in different ways. The whole thing has a wonderful “Mediterranean fishing town” feel to it. There are no people, only a few seagulls; there’s no budget, no transport or education system; it’s just you creating what you feel like and making surprise discoveries along the way. Bliss.

Magazines

• Amiga Addict – a brand new Amiga magazine, in 2022! (Although it was launched in 2021, I only started buying it this year). It’s a wonderful blend of nostalgia and news of the still-vibrant Amiga scene, featuring reviews of games old and new, interviews with people from the Amiga’s heyday, and about a million different ideas of things to do with your Amiga, real or emulated. And I find it wonderfully astounding that in 2022, I can go into WH Smith and buy an Amiga magazine. The guys who put this together are amazing and deserve support.
  Honourable mention to Pixel Addict, which takes a look at the wider, non-Amiga vintage computer scene.
• Railway Modeller – yeah, yeah, model railways are sad, geeky, whatever. Don’t care: this magazine is fantastic. There’s something wonderfully old-fashioned about it, in terms of its presentation, language and so on; yet it still keeps on top of new developments in the model railway scene, even if sometimes it seems to be slightly baffled by it all. The magazine is now 73 years old and is something we should treasure.
• Retro Gamer – Just the best guide to the ever-growing retro gaming scene. It features the big hits of past decades, but gives welcome attention to the hidden gems as well. It’s coverage of current developments in the retro scene, whether it’s new releases by big companies, homebrew games (ie games made by one or two developers), or mini retro consoles, is second to none. It also remembers that such games are meant to be played, not just hoarded and bought for ever-more-insane amounts of money (although it does give a spotlight to collectors as well). It’s just slightly scary that the PS2 generation is now considered retro. Speaking of…

Things that make me feel old

• That my oldest daughter is 16 and will be finishing school in the summer; and that my youngest daughter left primary school in the summer just gone.
• That for the first time in my life, our MP and (current) PM are both younger than me.
• Reaching our 20th wedding anniversary. 20 years!

Books/music/comic books etc.

• Four Thousand Weeks, by Oliver Burkeman – the antidote to time management books that posit all kinds of schemes to allow you to make your life more “productive” (ie rushed, stressful and unfulfilling). It basically starts from the idea that the way to deal with all this isn’t to try one of these schemes, but to accept that you are a finite human being with a finite amount of time on earth (the 4000 weeks mentioned in the title). The best thing to do is to accept that you aren’t going to fit in everything you want to do in this time, let go of the guilt and learn to value what you do do.
• First You Write a Sentence, by Joe Moran – a love-letter to sentences, which Moran suggests are the basic building blocks of writing (more so than words, as words need to be put together into sentences). He’s not trying to introduce rules for writing good sentences, so much as inspire a love of writing them and what such sentences might look and sound like. It helps that he writes beautifully; and the outcome of all this is to make you want to write something.
• I’m also fighting my way through The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky, just for the challenge. I’m 2/3 of the way through; not entirely sure of everything that’s going on, but determined to finish it. And finding it an interesting read.
• Handmade: Britain’s Best Woodworker (Channel 4) – I’m referring to the second season, which is just enchanting (I’ve only seen one episode of season one, and it wasn’t quite right). It’s everything that the Bake Off was and seems to be turning away from: challenging without being deliberately-difficult, entertaining, warm-hearted, informative and just lovely in the best way possible. Sophie Sellu and Tom Dyckhoff are the judges, bringing the right amount of encouragement and critique to their roles. It gets you truly involved in the contestants and their hopes and aspirations for the competition, as well as their struggles. And the right person won.
• The New Champion of Shazam! – in which Mary Batson, the sister of Billy Batson aka Shazam, is told by a talking rabbit that her brother has chosen her to take on the mantle of champion of Shazam as he’s stuck on the rock of eternity. As you can tell, it’s based on real life. At this point, she’s 18 and has just started a new life at college in New York and doesn’t want to revisit her superhero past, even after she saves the day as whatever her superhero name is. Her life is further upturned as she has to move back to Philadelphia after her foster parents mysteriously disappear, and she finds herself ever-more entangled in that mystery and the weird events and enemies that surround it.
  The characterisation of Mary is just spot-on, showing her power in her superhero form, but also the toll that everything is taking on her in both her identities. If it’s possible to empathise with a fictional 18 year-old who can become a superhero with god-like powers then I did. But she shows a remarkable amount of pluck and determination to keep going. The final part is out in January and I want to see how it resolves, because I’m utterly engrossed.
• I’m struggling to think of any music that I’ve discovered that I want to shout about this year. In the last few weeks, however, I’ve rediscovered Queen’s 1989 album The Miracle. It’s something of a flawed gem, the first album they made after Freddie Mercury was diagnosed with AIDS (and the last one they thought they’d make before he died, though in the end they also released Innuendo in 1991, which is magnificent). It’s a bit rough-and-ready, and some of the tracks don’t sound quite finished, perhaps because they thought they needed to get it out as soon as possible. But the singles are amazing (except maybe Scandal, which is a bit dull) and it has a life and energy about it that Queen had at their best. There’s a new collectors’ edition out, but I’m quite happy with the “normal” version.
• This is going to sound weird, but I don’t think I’ve sat down and watched a whole movie all the way through, at least not by choice (as opposed to just being in the room when someone one else is watching one). Might have to rectify that a bit this year and work through some of the approx. 2 million DVDs I’ve got and not watched.

Other random stuff

• Unexpected highlight of the year: Being invited by our previous MP, Kate Green, to the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast at, erm, Parliament, in the summer. A wonderful event, worshipping in this building that has captivated me for years, followed by a tour of the building. And, to top it all, an event that apparently set in motion a chain of events that led to the downfall of our then-PM (Boris Johnson – remember him?).
• “How did I miss that” of the year: being in London when pretty much the entire government was resigning, even standing among a crowd outside Downing Street as the ministers/dominoes were falling, and not having a clue what was going on.
• Anxiety disorder-worsening happenings of the year: pretty much The News in general this year, though I particularly wish that Vladimir Putin had had a very selective form of amnesia that made him forget that Russia had nuclear weapons.
• My favourite waste of time of the year: aside from doom-scrolling on Twitter (which I’d struggle to describe as “favourite”) it’s been ChatGPT, an AI-based chat-thing that apparently is capable of doing amazing things. I use it to get it to write mad ideas for superhero stories. I’ve also entered into discussions with it about various Bible passages, having asked it to write a sermon based on those. It’s interesting.
• Moment of the year: Huw Edwards announcing the news that the Queen had died. We’d probably known it was coming most of the day, but to actually hear it being announced was “woah!”. Huw did an amazing job, it’s difficult to know how he could have made such a momentous announcement in any better way. And if you watch the footage carefully, you’ll see that just before he announces the news, the camera focuses in on the Union Jack at half-mast, a visual announcement before Huw verbally confirmed it.
• Thing that keeps striking me the most: The “otherness” of God. Like, if God’s ways are higher than our ways and his thoughts greater than our thoughts, how dare we humans say anything about God? It annoys me when people speak too glibly about God, especially when doing so in defence of their own political positions (looking at you, US right-wing evangelicals). It’s miracle and grace that we can know or say anything about God and I think that needs to be front and centre in our minds. Which makes Christmas all the more remarkable, when we discover God lying in a manger as a new-born baby.
• Annoying habit that’s crept into my life this year: mixing up “our” and “are”. Never done it before, now it’s there all the time. So annoying!
• Stuff I wish for the new year:
  • That we’d learn that being kind has to apply to people you fundamentally disagree with, otherwise it’s no virtue whatsoever;
  • That Radio 2 would make the following changes: move Dermot O’Leary to weekday breakfasts and put Zoe Ball on weekends; give Tina Daheley Jeremy Vine’s lunchtime show; do whatever it takes to make sure Ken Bruce never leaves, if necessary employing Rob Brydon to do his impression of him if he does decide to leave; put Tony Blackburn back on Pick Of The Pops and find a new presenter for Sounds Of The Sixties; issue a general edict to all its presenters to calm down a bit. Yes, I am old.
  • That I’d finally get my loft/study/man cave/disaster zone sorted and tidied.

Recognising a king when you see one

Here’s my sermon/reflection from Greenfield Church’s services this weekend. If you’d like to watch the whole service, you can find it here: https://youtu.be/q1nZ0ei3RzM. It’s based on the readings Luke 23: 32-43 and Jeremiah 23:1-6, which are here: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+23%3A32-43%3B+jeremiah+23%3A1-6&version=NIV

Could you recognise a king?

Of course, we’d all probably recognise our new king, even if it still feels a bit weird to call him King Charles instead of Prince Charles, and even though we haven’t got used to singing “God save the King” instead of “God save the Queen”.

And even if you weren’t sure what he looked like, you’d know if he was coming: the streets would be lined with people, security would be be ultra-tight, and when he arrived you’d see the motorcade and the Royal car itself, complete with flags on the bonnet etc.

You’d recognise the King.

But what if you didn’t find yourself in the midst of a prepared royal visit? What if you were somewhere where you wouldn’t expect to see a king (or queen)? Would you recognise a king there?

During the Blitz in London in WW2, as people emerged to discover their homes and businesses had been bombed to smithereens, the King and Queen of the time famously visited the East End to see the damage and the survivors. And looking at the pictures now, it seems strange to see the king in his military uniform and the queen in her fine dresses and furs standing amongst the rubble and ruins.

But if you’d been there, you’d have recognised them, even if it was the last place you expected to see them.

But would you recognise a king who’s being executed?

And I don’t mean, would you know who they were.

Kings have been executed throughout history, and part of the point is to see the hated ruler being given his comeuppance.

No: would you recognise as your king someone who’s being put to death?

The unrecognised king

Many of those gathered round the cross of Jesus couldn’t – wouldn’t – recognise Him as king.

In fact, seeing Him on the cross was the sign they’d been looking for that He wasn’t the true king.

The leaders of the people, the soldiers, even one of those executed with Him: it was inconceivable to them that this man, this weak, dying, humiliated man could ever have been a king.

Sure, the sign above his head called him “The King of the Jews”. But it was a parody, a farce, a mockery of the man whom many had claimed would be their king – as well as a warning to others not to try to claim the same thing.

And so the leaders mocked him: “Let him save himself if he’s the messiah of God!”

And the soldiers joined in: “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!”

And one of the criminals joined them, too, though perhaps with a hint of desperation in his voice: “Aren’t you the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”

Oh, they knew a king alright – and they knew that this wretch couldn’t possibly be one.

“Remember me…”

But there was one person saw Jesus differently.

One person who was capable of recognising Him as a king.

That other criminal who put the first one in his place and who spoke of Jesus’ innocence.

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom”.

Wow! What an incredible thing to say!

That either of them had a future beyond their certain death…

That that future could involve a kingdom…

That Jesus could be the king of that kingdom.

How could he say any of that? How could he call the dying Jesus a king? How could he claim a place in his kingdom?

Well, perhaps this criminal knew that there on the cross, Jesus was doing what He’d always done: Putting himself amongst and welcoming the sinners, the law-breakers, the despised and rejected.

The ones whom everyone else said were write-offs, Jesus said were actually lost and needed finding – and that He had come to do just that.

What it takes to recognise a king

And now, even on the cross, even as His life is unjustly taken from Him, He does it again. He takes His place amongst the criminals and becomes King to one of them; the one who is ready to recognise what true kingship means:

Not pageantry and high security.

Not wealth and finery and gold and jewels.

Not military might and political power.

No, the true King is the one who’ll go and find the lost, who will go looking for all those whom the leaders and rulers have abandoned and bring them back and offer them paradise.

That’s what the Jeremiah passage is talking about: the people had been abandoned by those who were supposed to lead them to safety. Now they were scattered in exile – but God would send a new shepherd, a new king, who would go after them, find them, and make sure they could never be scattered again.

That’s why this criminal recognised Jesus as King: because He was the One who was doing exactly that, He was the One who would build a kingdom out of the lost, the hopeless and the helpless, a kingdom that would outlast even the empire that was putting Him to death.

Could you?

The criminal recognised Jesus as this King, even as they both succumbed to death.

Will you?

Could you accept as your king someone who willingly took his place amongst the criminals, those who deserved the death sentence?

Could you accept as your king someone who was willing to undergo the pain of the cross and the humiliation of the taunts and teasing of the powerful who saw him there?

Could you accept as your king the One who gave Himself over to death, who deliberately made Himself look like a failure?

And will you see Him as the One, true king of the kingdom that is like no other, yet which will outlast them all?

It’s harder than you think!

It means seeing yourself as unworthy, just as that criminal did.

It means recognising your need of Him and His death on the cross for you.

It means humbling yourself to accept the reign of someone who looked a fraud and a failure in the eyes of so many.

And if you will recognise Him as your king, what will you do about it?

Because the way that King Jesus chose – the way of the cross and all it brings – is the way He calls us to follow, too.

Will you walk this way, even if it means sacrifice?

Will you choose, not the path of ease or glory, but the path of serving others and putting them even before yourself, without seeking reward or repayment?

Will you show others what it means for Jesus to be your king, and call them to do the same, even if they ignore or misunderstand you?

But if you can…

Because if you will, then something glorious awaits you: paradise.

Not just “a room in heaven” as we often picture it. Paradise here was just the waiting room, the stop-off point before the final destination:

Resurrection.

Life.

Eternity with Jesus, the One who came looking for us, died so that we could be found, and who offers us something more wonderful and lasting than anything the kingdoms of our world could give.

Can you recognise the king? Will you accept Him as your king?

Cover picture by Jametlene Reskp, unsplash.com

Remembrance: extraordinary

My sermon/reflection for Remembrance Sunday at the weekend; you can watch the whole service here: https://youtu.be/0qHwW4Vj0B4

Is there someone in particular you remember on Remembrance Day?

For me, it’s my granddad. Harry Smith, or Sergeant Henry Smith, to give him his full title.

What’s perhaps a little unusual is that Granddad didn’t die in world war 2. But I’ve got to know a bit more about his story, and it’s quite remarkable: he was in the RAF, based  down  in Kent. In July 1940, on a routine patrol mission, his plane was shot down over the Hook of Holland. The other three members of his crew were killed; Granddad was taken POW and was in camps in Poland for the rest of the war, during which time both his parents died.

But my brother and sister and I didn’t know him as Sgt Henry Smith, rear gunner and former POW. He was Granddad, who lived with Grandma in Willerby, just outside Hull. After the war, he’d returned to England, married Edna, our Grandma, raised a family and  worked as a civil servant and then as a minister in the United Reformed Church. If you didn’t know his story – and he only once talked about it – you wouldn’t have guessed how eventful those 6 years had been.

Sgt Henry Smith (Granddad), RAF Detling, 1939

Ordinary people, extraordinary events

Forgive for talking so much about my Granddad.

But this is one of the things that I find most remarkable, at Remembrance and whenever I think of the wars this country has been involved in.

These were – and are – huge, world-changing events with consequences that reverberate down the decades.

Yet those involved in them, those at the centre of them, were mostly ordinary people. They weren’t brought up to be heroes or do extraordinary and brave things. Afterwards, those who survived mostly went on to live what we would call ordinary lives.

Yet for those few years, they were at the epicentre of these earth-shaking happenings, ordinary people suddenly finding themselves at the centre of these extraordinary events.

A bit like the disciples.

Jesus has just told them that the Temple – the beautiful, imposing building, the sign of God’s presence with His people – will be razed to the ground. No stone will be left on top of another.

If we’re talking about extraordinary events, then for the people of Israel, this was as  extraordinary, and devastating, as any war.

He tells them that they’ll hear about wars from all over, that false prophets will claim this is the end of the world, and that there’ll be earthquakes and famines and comets and all sorts that some will see as signs of the end.

So He’s talking big stuff here: huge events that will reshape the world  as they knew it, things they couldn’t possibly hope to be able to control.

At the centre of it all

But then, He suddenly focuses in on the disciples themselves.

“They will seize you and persecute you,” he says. “You will brought before kings and governors,” He tells them.

Suddenly, as these extraordinary events begin, the disciples are at the very centre of things. They’re not just spectators of the show: they’re central to all that’s about to happen.

Now, we can over-exaggerate how simple and uneducated the disciples were; they must have had a bit of gumption about them.

But they were not brought up to be the main players in a cosmic, heavenly drama like this. Yet Jesus is telling them that, just like those ordinary people thrust into the centre of world-changing wars, they will find themselves playing a key part in all that’s He’s saying will unfold.

What is that part? What will they be doing?

Opportunities

Jesus tells them that the arrests and persecution and imprisonment they face will be their “opportunity”.

I don’t know if Granddad or any other POW saw their captivity as opportunity. But Jesus says that as they face priests, governors and even kings, they will have the chance to speak, to testify.

To what?

To Jesus.

These ordinary people will get the chance to proclaim to the great and good that Jesus, who died on the cross in seeming shame and defeat, has been raised by God from the dead and is now Lord over all the earth.

That no other power, whether people, laws, buildings, spiritual powers – nothing has greater power or authority than Him. The fall of the Temple will be a sign of this.

And that He calls all people, extraordinary and ordinary, to turn to Him, and find God’s forgiveness and new life in Jesus.

And if you read the book of Acts, kind of the sequel to Luke’s Gospel, you’ll find that’s exactly what they did.

Ordinary people will be called to do extraordinary things: those who seem nothing in the eyes of the world will be testifying to the powerful and mighty about the One they’ve come to see as greater than all.

Just as ordinary people – especially those whom we remember today – were suddenly called to play their part in events that reshaped our world.

Just as we – seemingly ordinary Christians – are sent to be part of God’s extraordinary, ongoing work in the world; the work that flows out from what the disciples first declared to the great and the good.

Declaring the Lord

It’s our job, our calling, to declare to the world that Jesus Christ is Lord of all, that no power – government, military, even religious – has power over Him, and that in Him is healing, forgiveness and new life for all who will turn to Him.

Why? Why do we need to declare this?

Because we think it’d be nice for people to know?

Because we want more people to come to church?

Because it’ll get us more brownie points in heaven?

No: because this is the message that the world needs to hear.

For the first time in many years, there is war being fought in Europe as we remember the fallen. A time we thought had passed has come back to haunt and threaten us, as Ukrainians fight to defeat an unprovoked and brutal invasion, a display of ugly, naked power.

All this as wars are fought in so many other countries, as we still deal with the threat of covid, as the great and the good meet in Egypt to debate how to tackle the crisis facing our environment.

Feeling ordinary, doing the extraordinary

Against all this, we might feel as if we have nothing. Only God can change these situations, right?

Well, yes. But He uses us to do this work.

To speak of and to show the way of peace, the way of self-sacrifice, the way of hope, the way of putting others first that Jesus lived out and calls us to live out.

To tell others that Jesus is Lord and that in Him, and in Him alone, is everything that the world fights over.

To go to the ordinary, ignored and forgotten and tell them how, in God’s Kingdom, they are lifted up and treated as extraordinary.

Maybe we won’t get to stand before kings and rulers to say this.

Maybe we won’t face persecution and death because of this – though let’s remember our brothers and sisters who face exactly that.

Maybe we won’t see the fruits of what we do, just as the fallen whom we remember today didn’t see the outcomes of their efforts.

But if we do this we’ll have been part of something extraordinary, something wonderful that God is doing in His world.

We’ll have been making real the hope that we express every Remembrance Sunday: that the deaths of those we remember today, soldiers and civilians, won’t be in vain.

That the peace we long for will one day take hold, and there will be no more names added to memorials and books of remembrance.

That hope is only truly possible through Jesus Christ. Our job, however ordinary we feel, is to show and share and speak this news, so that others might believe and the hope become a little more of a reality.

Cover photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

Resurrection – a whole new world?

Rather belatedly, here’s my sermon/reflection from last Sunday. It’s based on Luke 20:27-38, in which Jesus and the Sadducees debate the resurrection. You can watch the whole service from which it’s taken here.

“I wish it could be different.”

How many times have you thought or said something like that?

Maybe as you look around your house and picture all the ways you could spruce it up and make it look amazing.

Maybe as you think about your life and the things you’d love to do. How many people went into lockdown with grand plans to change their life for the better, and came out feeling exactly the same?

Maybe as you watch or hear the news and hear stories about war, financial crisis, fears for the environment, refugee crises – stories we’ve heard time and again – and we wish we didn’t have to hear them any more, we wish the world could be a better place.

There’s a real tension between how we’d like things to be – how we imagine things could be – and how they really are. We long for the first and that just makes settling for the second that much harder.

What’s the answer? Is there anything that can bring the two together?

An Insecure Future?

Of course, for some people, it’s the other way round.

The future fills them with dread; the present gives comfort, confidence, maybe even power. And any change might upset all that, might take away what they hold dear.

If the future looks bleaker than the present – and for many, it does right now – then we kind of want to hold on to what we have now: sure, it may not be great, but it’s better than what’s ahead of us.

But if you’re powerful, if you’re in control, if you benefit from the status quo, then you’re not going to want that disrupting.

The Sadducees: “This is all you get!”

Take the Sadducees who question Jesus in our gospel passage.

We don’t know massive amounts about them, not as much as we do about, say, the Pharisees.

We do know they were a religious group in Jerusalem – and we do know they had power.

Not overall power, of course – the Romans were in charge, of course.

But they were in charge of the Temple. And that meant they were pretty much in charge of the whole religious life of Israel.

What they said, how they interpreted the Bible, the rules and commands they set were what counted. They could decide, so they thought, who did and who didn’t have access to God Himself.

And that situation kind of suited them. Sure, ideally the Romans wouldn’t be there controlling everything, but they were doing alright with how things were. Change wasn’t really necessary.

So talk of resurrection was not welcome.

Partly because they didn’t see it in the Bible – it just wasn’t there for them.

But partly because resurrection meant change, and change might mean they were no longer in power, and that meant… disaster, if only for them.

“One Bride for Seven Brothers” – not coming to a stage near you…

Hence their rather strange question to Jesus about the brothers and their wife. Not so much “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers” as “One Bride For Seven Brothers”.

It was designed to make people who believed in resurrection look stupid: how could God allow a situation where one woman ended up as the wife of seven brothers?

That’s daft – God would never do that!

So the status quo was the only option: this was how God had set things up to be and this is how they’d remain. So off you go and get those silly thoughts about resurrection out of your head.

Except, Jesus wasn’t about to do that.

Because they’d spectacularly missed the point.

Resurrection isn’t just picking up where you left off, carrying on after a brief interruption.

Everything changes.

Why?

Overcoming Death

Because death has been overcome.

So much of our lives, so much of our world, whether we dare to admit it or not, is governed by the fact that everything will one day die. Nothing ever lasts for ever.

Autumn is a beautiful season: but the gorgeous reds, oranges and yellows of the leaves are signs of retreat and death as winter takes hold.

So many of our fears and anxieties hold us either because we know our lives are limited, or because we fear something that might bring that end a lot closer than we’d like.

And part of Jesus’ point is that the reason we have marriage, give birth to babies and so on is to keep things going because we know time is, relatively, short for us.

But if death has somehow been overcome, then all of that changes. The walls have come down and the possibilities are, literally, endless.

So the situation with the seven brothers for one bride is daft: but it’s daft because that situation won’t ever arise – it won’t be needed any more.

Life will go on in a completely new, wonderful and indestructible way.

Our lives, the lives of those we have loved – because yes, we will see them again – the whole of our world will be utterly transformed.

Those fears we hold and the things we do to try and hold them at bay – they’ll disappear.

And those who use those fears to try and control things – they’ll lose their power.

The God of Life

How? Because God is the God of life, not death.

He has been right from the beginning, as Jesus points out when He quotes from the story of the burning bush.

Our world, our universe, was made out of God’s life and was made for life. Death doesn’t belong here, it’s an aberration.

And through Jesus’ own resurrection from the dead, God has made that a reality. As He raised His Son from the tomb, God began that work of undoing death and the hold it has on us all. His life entered the world through the open tomb and the One who came out of it, forcing death to let go of its grip on the world.

For those who like things the way they are, those who gain or hold power because of the way things are, for people like those Sadducees, that’s a scary prospect.

Dare to Dream… now!

But for those of us who are caught between the dreams of how things can be and the depressing reality of how things are, resurrection says to us that those dreams don’t need to stay dreams.

That that future, that hope, that imagination that thrills our hearts and just for a moment shines a shaft of light into our lives – that can become reality.

In the future? Yes, of course. We look forward to the day when this work will be completed, when the great promises of the Bible about a new heaven and a new earth will be fulfilled.

But what about now?

Dare we believe that this future that we sometimes dare to imagine could in some way become reality now?

Because Jesus has been raised from the dead: resurrection has begun. God’s transforming power is at work now. Things can change, lives can be transformed, hostile powers can be defeated, good news can be shared.

And maybe we can do something to show that; maybe God can help us to do and say the things that will bring that resurrection reality into our world now.

Sticking with something, even when it seems hopeless.

Daring to follow that idea that seems a bit mad and unrealistic, and to believe that God might be behind it.

Refusing to let our lives be crushed by the cynicism that death can bring.

Giving to others; helping those in need; planting seeds and saplings; telling someone else about the hope you gain from Jesus…

All these things can be signs that the realities of our world that crush us and rob us of life aren’t the end of the story.

All of them are signs that those who try to cling to power purely for their own good will not win out.

All of them are signs that the resurrection Jesus spoke of, looked towards and brought about through His resurrection is coming, and that through the God of the living life, not death, will win the day.

Zacchaeus – more than meets the eye?

As a way of actually getting some content on here, I’ve decided to post my sermons/reflections in case they’re of value to anyone. Here’s yesterday’s, which is based on the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-10). You can watch the whole service here: https://youtu.be/tVAC5AAMOb4.

What do you see when you hear the story of Zacchaeus?

What do you imagine?

What pictures are in your mind’s eye?

Perhaps it’s a Sunday School or Junior Church group singing that song.

I suppose the trouble is that it stops about 2/3 of the way through the story.

Perhaps it’s a young children’s Bible or story book about Zacchaeus, with cute and cartoony characters on it, normally with the man himself either up a tree or rather awkwardly climbing down.

Now: I have no problem with children hearing and telling and exploring this story in their own way – after all, Jesus said that the Kingdom of God belongs to such as them.

But is that all we see this story as? A story of a short man who climbed up a tree to see Jesus and was rewarded by hosting a tea party for the Son of God?

A story about a short, but resourceful, man who was able to find a way to see Jesus when all other routes were blocked off?

A nice, sweet story about redemption?

Some see it as a story of the vindication of Zacchaeus: they claim in his little speech to Jesus, he’s saying that he always gives away half his possessions and refunds 4x anything he wrongly charged people. Jesus is merely pointing this out to the rest of the crowd.

What do you see in the story of Jesus?

The reason I ask about what you see is because the story of Zacchaeus is in a sense a story about seeing: about what people see, who people see, and how they see them.

For example: while the song and the storybooks see Zacchaeus as merely short, and maybe a bit funny, perhaps a little bit mean, the people of Jericho did not see him that way.

He was, in their words, a sinner: a traitor working for the Romans; an extortion artist; a man who’d got rich by ripping off the people of the town and, quite probably, the other tax collectors who worked for him.

He was, in short, a right… well, I can’t say that word. Use your imaginations!

That’s how they saw him: not as comic relief, but as someone to be righteously shunned. And maybe they were glad he couldn’t see Zacchaeus.

Which is, of course, another of the “seeings” in this story.

Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, but couldn’t, because he was too short.

We don’t know why he wanted to: maybe it was the thrill of seeing someone famous, like the crowds outside Downing Street when something important’s happening, or the people waiting outside the Stage Door of the theatre.

Maybe he just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Or maybe he’d heard about how this Jesus treated people like him. He’d heard the stories – and the complaints – of how Jesus had a tendency to eat and drink and keep company with tax collectors and sinners.

To welcome them and not run away from them.

To show them – dare he think it – some love that no one else did.

We don’t – can’t – know the reasons why Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus. But I wonder if this was part of it.

Because it seems like Jesus did see people like him differently to everyone else.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Jesus was oblivious to what they were up to; I don’t think he thought they were just “misunderstood”.

After all, in one parable he compares them to a younger son who takes his inheritance before his father dies and blows it all on wild living. That’s not good, or just “misunderstood”.

He knew their sin. He knew their state. And he knew the damage they’d caused others.

But he saw them not just as sinners, but as people who were lost. Who’d taken the wrong route, got themselves in a mess that they couldn’t get out of and needed someone to get them out of it.

And the only way they were going to undo that damage was by being found – by being seen.

So Jesus saw Zacchaeus. Looked up in the sycamore tree and saw him, perhaps before Zacchaeus saw him.

And Jesus saw what he’d seen in other tax collectors: a lost son of Abraham, who was hurting himself and others and needed bringing home.

So he invited himself round to stay – as you do.

And, Luke tells us, “all the people” saw this. More seeing.

Now, in the story before this, “all the people” had seen Jesus do something else – give sight to a blind man on the outskirts of the city.

And when “all the people” saw that, they praised God for this great miracle.

But when “all the people” saw Jesus go to Zacchaeus’ house, they did not praise God. They did not give thanks for a miracle. They grumbled and complained, “he’s gone to the house of a sinner”, as if Jesus wasn’t in the regular habit of doing just that.

Which is a shame, really. Because they were seeing a miracle of equal grace and power as the one they’d just seen.

They just didn’t recognise it. They didn’t see what was happening in the right way.

But Zacchaeus did.

He’d seen what Jesus was truly about. He knew that Jesus wasn’t a human reward chart for those who thought they did well; he was a human lifebelt for those who knew they were sinking fast, possibly taking others with them, and needing help urgently.

And Zacchaeus saw it, took hold hold of it and clung to it for dear life.

So he gives away half his stuff – right there and then. And he promises to give back 4x as much to anyone he’d defrauded.

I bet if you’d gone back to Jericho later on, what you’d have seen is a massive refund queue outside Zacchaeus’ house or office.

But what we saw at that moment was God’s grace doing its saving work in Zacchaeus’ life.

And what does Jesus see in all of this?

Salvation.

Mission accomplished. Someone brought back from the brink, rescued from ruin, someone who belonged in the family but who’d hurt it restored and renewed, able to stop hurting others and himself and give them life instead.

So back to that question: how do you see the story of Zacchaeus?

What about Zacchaeus himself: a short man in a tree? A scoundrel, thief and traitor? A lost soul who needed someone to bring him home?

What about Jesus: a nice guy who does something good for someone? A potentially good man with a bad habit of spending time with the wrong people? Someone who brings God’s grace to those who need it most?

And what about that grace of God that reaches out and changes Zacchaeus’ life?

The grace that refuses to see someone just as a write-off, or beyond the pale, but that goes after them to try and bring them back – how do you see it?

Do you see it at work in your life at all?

Have you seen it change or transform someone else’s life?

Who are the Zacchaeuses of our day who need to see, hear and receive that grace? The ones whom it might not be popular to go to, but who are longing for a change, a way back, someone to find them and drag them home.

We live in a world that loves to divide people into goodies and baddies: people it can praise and venerate and people it can dismiss, ignore, cancel.

Jericho saw Zacchaeus as squarely in the ‘baddie’ camp: but Jesus saw more than that.

How can we ask and allow Jesus to change the way we see people, the ones we’re tempted to write off as baddies?

How can he use us to help them to see him and his wonderful, saving grace?

Picture by Aaron Burden, unsplash.com

In the wake of the Texas school shooting…

An 18 year old has walked into an elementary school in Texas and shot dead at least 21 people, all but two of whom were children.

It seems crazy just to type the words “elementary school shooting”. Any mass shooting event (yuck, what a horrible phrase) is an act of gross evil; one at an elementary school just seems beyond words, beyond comprehension. It comes just days after an apparently racially-motivated shooting in Buffalo, New York, where 10 people were killed.

Of course, this isn’t the first of these, far from it. There was the Sandy Hook shooting nearly 10 years ago, where 26 people were killed, 20 of them children. Here in the UK, we had the Dunblane massacre in 1996, where sixteen people died, fifteen of them children.

There’s a difference, though: after the Dunblane massacre, action was taken to ban private ownership of handguns of the sort that were used in the shooting. After Sandy Hook, nothing was done. Nothing. Dan Hodges had it right:

In retrospect Sandy Hook marked the end of the US gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over.

— (((Dan Hodges))) (@DPJHodges) June 19, 2015

I get that there are huge cultural and social differences between how ownership of guns is seen in the UK vs how it’s seen in the US. I don’t want to get into “we’re better than you” arguments. Yet the simple fact is that massacres like Sandy Hook, like the one in Texas simply haven’t happened in the UK since Dunblane and the subsequent restrictions. Correlation isn’t causation, yet it’s hard not to see there’s a link here.

At the start of an edition of The Daily Show in 2015, after the shooting of nine black people in a church in Charleston, Jon Stewart spoke eloquently about the lack of any response to address the issues that led to the shooting, compared to the urgency and scale of the post-9/11 response. He was talking about this in the context of racism; yet it’s hard not to see something similar in terms of gun control measures.

On September 11 2001, nearly 3,000 people were killed as a result of the attacks on New York and Washington DC. It was a terrible, horrific act played out right in front of us on TV. The US launched the “War On Terror”, basically a carte blanche by the Bush administration to do, as Stewart puts it, “whatever it takes to keep Americans safe”. Two wars were launched; huge restrictions on freedom were introduced, some of which were alleged to be unconstitutional; people suspected of terrorism were held in Guantanamo Bay without trial; people were tortured; the US took it upon itself to fly drones over other countries in order to take out those it believed posed a threat.

Now, my point isn’t whether these specific actions were justified by what happened on 9/11 or not (if you want my personal view, then I was horrified by much of what went on under the banner of “protecting freedom”, both in the US and here in the UK; as much as anything, if you willingly take away rights and freedoms from people, you aren’t protecting freedom). My point is simply that after the shock and horror of the attacks, the US felt it had to act, and act quickly, to protect itself and take out those it believed to be a threat. And, in theory, this was to some extent understandable, even unarguable, even if the ways in which the Bush administration went about it were questionable at best.

Yet, according to the US Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, over 4,300 children were killed by guns in 2020, making guns the leading killer of US children that year (the year that covid-19 first reared its ugly head). That’s a death toll nearly 2 times that of 9/11. And those deaths – of children – are still being added to today, as we’ve seen. Surely deaths of children of that number should provoke an urgent response, right? Some measures to try and protect children and try and get the guns away from those who would hurt others would be in order, even if they didn’t go as far as the post-Dunblane restrictions here, right?

No. Apparently not. Indeed, for President Biden to even talk about gun control in the wake of this outrage was party-political and divisive:

The president of the United States, frail, confused, bitterly partisan, desecrating the memory of recently murdered children with tired talking points of the Democratic Party, dividing the country in a moment of deep pain rather than uniting. His voice rising, amplified only as he repeats the talking points he repeated for over 35 years in the United States Senate, partisan politics being the only thing that animates him. Unfit for leadership of this country.

Tucker Carlson

Yes, apparently it’s ‘politicising’ the issue to talk of gun control when a gun massacre has occurred. Senator Ted Cruz said similar here:

Sen. Ted Cruz said Texas & the country “are grieving horrifically” after an elementary school shooting in his state
 
But Cruz said he still doesn’t see gun reform as a solution, via @jessicadean pic.twitter.com/u3qPnC5Mua

— Ali Zaslav (@alizaslav) May 24, 2022

Add to that the usual “this isn’t the time to talk about gun control” responses, along with those who claim that the answer is to arm more people (read both here), and the difference with the 9/11 response is stark: “Whatever, I dunno, just don’t take our guns.”

But if the aftermath of a massacre isn’t the time to talk about it when is? Presumably never, as the issue will once again be kicked into the long grass, the can booted hard down the road, which presumably is the NRA and Republicans’ aim.

And yes, actually, this is about politics, because the issue is political: certain parties in America see the right to own, carry and use whichever guns they wish as being more important than other people’s right to, y’know, life – even when it’s the lives of young children that we’re talking about. It’s just as political to say “now is not the time” as it is to say, “we need to talk about gun crime while the issue is still at the forefront of our minds.”

Just imagine if someone had said that in the wake of 9/11: “now is not the time to discuss security and how to defeat terrorism”. They’d have been – rightly – pilloried, perhaps even accused of wanting the terrorists to succeed, especially in the “with us or against us” climate after those attacks. Yet the deaths of 4,300+ children a year, the aftermath of yet another horrific attack against children isn’t the right time? It just blows my mind, that people can look at events and statistics like these and just try and carry on with the status quo, or even introduce more guns into the equation. How does this not make you complicit in the ongoing atrocities?

I know gun controls won’t stop all these attacks; I know that even if you took every firearm away from every American gun owner, those who are most committed to carrying out these atrocities would find a way to do so. But to cite that as a reason for not doing anything is just admitting you don’t care about the problem. Because gun controls, making it harder for those people to get their hands on these death-devices, can surely only help.

Ultimately, I guess, it’s a simple equation: people’s lives (including children’s lives) vs guns. For too many of the powerful in America, it’s the guns that win. Every time.

God’s small big rescue plan

So we’re a week or so out of the Easter weekend itself and into the season of Easter, which actually lasts until Pentecost.
Remember: an Easter is for six weeks, not just for the weekend.

To describe the events that we commemorate and celebrate as “astonishing” is to do them a massive disservice: Jesus shares bread and wine with and washes the feet of his disciples, including one who will betray him and one who will deny ever having known him. He is then arrested, refuses to fight back, and condemned by a potentially illegal trial. After that, he’s brought before the Roman governor Pilate, who refuses to convict him but sentences him to be crucified anyway, because it’s more convenient. Jesus dies on the cross (the Romans were good at that) and then is buried.

Then a couple of days later, on the third day, he isn’t in the tomb. The women who come to see him are told by one or more angels that he has risen from the dead, just as he said he would (duh!). What happens next depends on which gospel you read; but between them they take us from scenes of great triumph, to ones of fear and mystery, to ones of very personal, intimate reunions and reconciliations.

And what strikes me about all these events is how small they are, as well as how big they are. This is a big, huge, cosmic-scale operation, carried out on a seemingly small scale.

Huh?

The Big Picture

Well, what I mean is this: the Bible sees all this as something to do with salvation: God’s work to rescue His people, the whole of humanity and the whole of the world. Somehow, Jesus’ death and resurrection are world-changing, cosmos-shaking events that bring about the possibility of change, transformation and freedom from everything that enslaves and works against us humans and which brings about death instead of life. Sin isn’t just forgiven, it’s overcome; and its great partner-in-crime, death, is defeated as well. The way is opened for the great vision at the end of the Bible, Revelation 21-22, to become a reality: no tears, no pain, no death, humans and the whole of creation being made new and right and good.

That’s big picture, IMAX-scale stuff, right there: awesome!

So you’d think that such a huge rescue operation would need acting out on a huge scale, right? If the stakes are that high, if the job is that big, then this is going to need something spectacular, something, as I said earlier, that goes beyond “astonishing”.

The Small Picture

So how does God do it?

By making it look like a failure: His Son, the supposed Messiah (meaning God’s anointed one – the one many thought would rescue Israel from the Romans) goes and gets crucified by the very people he’s supposed to be defeating.

And yes, he is raised from the dead on the third day. But does he make a triumphant return, showing himself to the whole of Jerusalem and putting the wind up those who crucified him?

He does not.

In fact, none of the gospels tell us of the moment when he rises again and leaves the tomb. We’re only taken to the tomb once he’s gone from it, when the women arrive and start trying to make sense of what’s happened. His resurrection appears to be a mystery, something that happened out of sight and something that no one can quite get a hold on. By the end of the gospels, only a few people even know he’s alive, although there are hints that the news will become a lot more widely known when these witnesses go and spread the news. And that’s interesting in itself: this all-important message is entrusted to a bunch of people who still can’t quite decide whether they believe that Jesus is alive and who certainly didn’t understand why Jesus had to die in the first place.

(Unlike us 21st century western Christians. We totally get it. All of it. All the time.)

And all this in a (at the time) rather obscure part of the world that wasn’t known for Really Important, World-Changing Stuff happening in it.

So, there you have it: God’s small big rescue plan, ladies and gentlemen.

God decides to save the world in the way that’s possibly the easiest to overlook, misunderstand, deny, ridicule, ignore and denounce. Even/especially¹ by Christians.

And…?

A perfectly reasonbly question. What’s the point of this beyond mildly interesting (I hope) theological speculation?

Well, just this: is this God’s normal way of doing things?
I mean, if this is how God undertakes the greatest and most urgent act of God ever (at least in our world; I can’t speculate about other possible acts of God in other worlds) then it seems to me it’s at least possible that that’s the way God tends to work all the time.

I’m not saying that God isn’t capable of doing mighty miracles or great acts of power or anything like that. And I’m definitely not trying to dictate how God should work; He will be relieved to know, I’m sure, that I’ll leave that for Him to decide.

But I do mean that if we always associate “God intervening” with something spectacular, then maybe we’re looking for the wrong things, or we’ve got the wrong idea about God.
What if God is the kind of supreme divine being who likes to work as much in unusual, quiet, easily-missed ways, ways we might write off as just human kindness, or people doing the “right thing”, or that we might miss altogether, or that we might point to as failure?

After all, God spoke to the prophet Elijah, not through earthquake, wind and fire, but through the “still small voice“², a voice that was so quietly powerful that it could only have been God.

And yes, the church began at Pentecost with the sound of rushing wind, tongues of fire and a multitude of languages given by the Spirit. But that was easily mistaken by much of the crowd at the time as people being drunk.

When we ask God to work, to intervene, to act in a particular situation or a particular person’s life or whatever it might be, perhaps we need to look for the answer, not in a spectacular sign or spectacular act which cannot be mistaken for God, but in something small, overlooked, easily attributed to someone or something else. Perhaps our job is to highlight those things and learn to see them as true “acts of God”. Because the insurance companies had it wrong from the start: those “acts of God” aren’t earthquakes, tornadoes, floods and general devastation; they’re a man dying on the cross and the world-changing news of His resurrection being revealed to a bunch of people who won’t fully understand it or even believe it at first.

Notes

¹Delete as appropriate
² Most translations seem to prefer “gentle whisper” or something; but “still small voice” still seems more poetic, more evocative to me.

My mental health wishlist…

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week this week. As you’ll have picked up from previous posts on this blog, I’ve struggled with my own mental health for a long time, though it’s only in the last few years that I’ve finally realised that’s what the problem has been (I can be very slow on the uptake).
So, in writing this post, I’m not pretending to be an expert or some lifelong campaigner on mental health. I’m not those; I’m just someone who’s struggled with it myself and occasionally comments on it in the hope it’ll be helpful to others.
But in any case, here’s my list of things I would wish for with regards to mental health (aside from all my problems with it being relieved instantly). Some of it might be a bit rant-y, I hope some of it will be positive, I hope all of it will be helpful. Here goes!

1. We all have mental health, just the same as we all have physical health. How good or bad they are will vary, but “mental health” doesn’t equate to “mental illness”.
2. You will know someone with mental health issues, likely without realising it. I almost guarantee it. Maybe they’re really good at hiding it, maybe it’s the person you’d least suspect. But you will.
3. It is genuinely important to talk about our struggles with mental health. It’s not easy; but how many of us have struggled with this in some during the last year? And how many of us have wished we’d had someone to share it with? Talking about it can be nerve-wracking, but just the burden of having got it off your shoulders, of having released those words can make such a big difference.
4. But that means people need to be prepared to listen. And this is where I get a bit militant. “Listening” here doesn’t mean instantly offering advice, jumping in to help or anything like that. It might mean saying nothing at all. It will almost certainly mean hearing stuff that’s uncomfortable or perhaps scary about someone you love. But that person needs to know most of all that they’ve been heard without passing judgement or offering advice. And it’s only by there being more wonderful people who are prepared to listen in that way (and there are already many) that people struggling with their mental health will find it possible to talk. If it freaks you out, the chances are it’s already freaking them out.
5. The gap between reality and my head’s perception of reality. I know things aren’t as bad as I’m making out. I know in a moment of clarity I’ll understand what’s really going on. I know that stuff that happened long ago in the past doesn’t matter. But my head says it does; and that’s not going to change easily. Please bear with me while I try and readjust.
6. Dealing with mental health struggles isn’t a straight line from problem to cure. I’ve been on meds for nearly 3 years and have had two courses of CBT. All of these have been immensely helpful and have helped me gain some real victories. But there have also been setbacks and times when I’ve gone backwards. New problems have suddenly appeared like massive spiders that suddenly appear from nowhere one morning in the bath.
7. “Think Positive”. If only it were that easy. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t – and I use “can” and “can’t” advisedly there; it genuinely feels like there’s something stopping me from doing so. Please don’t say this to someone with mental health issues; the problem isn’t them just being a pessimist.
8. Facebook “inspirational” pictures/quotes/posts: AAAAAAGGGGHHHH! Should be banned. Come on, Zuckerburg!
9. There’s no quick fix to a lot of this stuff. I think that’s what I’m getting at in these last few posts.
10. Misusing mental health language. OCD isn’t about having to have everything really neat or whatever; it’s a scary condition where your head presents you with all kinds of nasty, dark intrusive thoughts which you try and control by compulsive behaviours (tidying up, washing hands etc.); there may not even be any outward behaviours, but they can still have OCD (it’s called “pure ‘O’ OCD”, and it’ll take the form of thoughts, prayers, mental rituals etc.). Please, please don’t say you or someone else is or has OCD just because they’re extremely neat and tidy; there are plenty of other words that will do.
    Oh, and please don’t jump to assume that someone who’s committed a terrible crime must have a mental illness. That’s one of the worst stereotypes around. Just because we don’t understand why someone’s done something appalling, doesn’t mean they’ve a mental health condition.
11. This can be especially bad with religious people. I am religious. I am a Christian, a minister in fact. But I have mental issues and, despite all my years of praying about them, they haven’t gone away: God’s not chosen to instantly heal me from them. And my anxiety isn’t because I don’t trust Jesus; I don’t fully understand why I have anxiety, though some of it’s related to what’s happened in the past. And yes, I do need the pills and no, taking them isn’t a sign of a lack of faith. A religious person having a broken leg doesn’t mean they don’t have faith; neither does them having a mental illness.
12. “Helping” can mean all sorts of things. It might mean listening, as mentioned above. It might, sometimes, mean advising, pointing people in the right direction – as long as it’s done out of that true listening. It might just treating everything as normal, because that’s best going to help them. It probably doesn’t mean jumping in to do something for someone else, or treating them as completely incapable. Yes, ask if you can help, but there are times when you need to accept “no” as an answer.

Finally, because this has got a bit negative, in my own coming to terms with my mental health issues, there have been many, many wonderful people in real life and online, who’ve listened, put up with me, let me cry, been extraordinarily patient with me, even just read and liked one of my blog or Facebook posts. If that’s you then, thank you – it means so much. It can still be tough talking about this, but things have changed dramatically and for the better, so thank you for being part of that change.

Just stop… please, just stop

Dear Trump-supporting US Evangelicals, especially the pastors,

Please stop it.
The lying, the misuse of God’s name, the support of a (soon to be ex) President who stands against just about everything you claim to stand for, the claiming to know the will of God “without even having to pray“.
Just stop it.

You are tying yourself up in knots.
You are breaking every single one of the Ten Commandments you claim to stand for.
You are being a simply terrible witness to Jesus.
You are leading astray the folks in your care.

President Trump has lost the election. I know you don’t like this… just as lot of people didn’t like it when he won the 2016 election.
But he lost. It’s over. There isn’t going to be a sudden dramatic reveal of new evidence to save his skin or anything like that.
He’s lost. It’s over.

It’s astonishing that you continue to claim that that’s not the case, that this election was “stolen”, despite the fact that every lawsuit Trump’s team have brought bar one (which apparently was irrelevant anyway) has been defeated. Your cries of foul play, of theft, of Satanic deception or whatever just sound like the words of sore losers.

But what’s more astonishing is that you hitched your wagon to someone like Trump in the first place.
Why?
He’s a man who lies, who at the very least encourages racism and racists, who boasts of ill-treating and sexually assaulting women.
He’s a man who’s been married three times, the second of which happened shortly after they had a child out of wedlock. You claim to stand up for “family values”, yet you throw your lot behind a man like this.
He’s a man who openly chases money and who’s main motivation seems to be greed – for money and for power.
You should be condemning him, you should be urging people never to vote for him or his allies again.
And yet here you are, trying to invoke the name of God and Jesus to prop up his failing legal cases against an election he lost.

Again: why?
For pity’s sake, he mocked you after you prayed for him. He’s no friend of yours, or of the faith. He doesn’t care for you. If he’d thought you were an impediment to his winning the election he’d have thrown you off like he seems to do to women. You’re a tool for him, you’re people he can use to get what he truly wants: power.
Except now it’s failed; he’s lost and you’re left alone. Which I guess is part of the reason you make the ridiculous claims you do.

But there’s something more, isn’t there.
It was about power, wasn’t it. He got power; but in the process, you got power, too.
The power you had under Bush Jr, the power you seemed to have lost under Obama, the power you could regain under Trump.
You supported and continue to support him because he put you in places of power. He may have despised you, but he knew your usefulness. So he gave you the power and the influence you craved, because he knew you’d prop him up, you’d support him and will go on supporting him.
You were at the top table again, you had influence over a whole nation, you had a platform from which to spout your prejudices, your bigotry, your weird interpretations of the “end times”; a platform from which to try and impose your view of what America should be.
So you were willing to overlook it all: all the abuses, all the denial of what you claimed to hold dear, all the sins – you turned a blind eye to it all.

All in the name of the One who gave up His heavenly status, His claim to earthly power, and became like a slave – even to death.
Hypocrites.

“Oh but he’s not perfect,” you said. “Nobody’s perfect.” True enough; I make no claim to moral perfection or anywhere remotely near it.
But Trump isn’t just “not perfect” in the way we’re all not perfect. He’s not perfect in his own, Trumpian way, for all the ways mentioned above – things that, if Obama had committed them, you’d have been all over like a rash.

“Oh, but God uses imperfect people for His purposes.”
Yes, He can do – in a sense, He has no option.
But, He also can reject those whom He has put into positions of leadership who refuse to follow His ways; see King Saul or the religious and political leaders of Jesus’ time (kinda sounds familiar, huh?).
And even if we take, say, King David; after his affair with Bathsheba and his murder of Uriah, his reign went downhill, he was never the same again.

So just stop it.
The talk of “spiritual warfare”.
The lies.
The vain attempts to cling to some modicum of power.
The deliberate misusing of the Bible and of God’s name in order to shore up your own position.
You have no right to do any of this.
The best thing you could do now is step aside from your media positions, your podcasts and webcasts and your positions of political power and influence, go back to your congregations and apologise for all you have done and said, for misleading them, for holding up this man who has done so much damage to your country as a man of God.

Because it’s over.
He lost.
And you are hurting the name of Jesus.
So stop. Please – just stop.

Greater Manchester goes into Tier 3

So, as of Friday morning we (Greater Manchester) join much of the rest of the north-west in Tier 3 restrictions. Which is what it is, don’t know what else to say, really.
But what’s galling is the games the government have been playing about the financial support for the region. Andy Burnham asks for £90m, based on £15m/month for the rest of the financial year. The government offers £60m based on ???? Burnham rejects that as not being anywhere near sufficient. Eventually, he comes down to £65m; but the government refuses to budge and we get tier 3 imposed, instead of agreed. And then the government only commits to £22m for test and trace.

This is just so, so petty and vindictive by the government. Andy Burnham’s right, IMO, to be furious. Matt Hancock claims additional support is “still on the table”. But why can’t the government just give that money if it’s available? What does Greater Manchester have to do to get the money – promise to vote Tory forever and ever?

There’s people blaming Andy Burnham for this, saying it’s all about money and his intransigence is costing lives. Why didn’t he agree to £5m less and get the deal agreed? But why should he? He’d already come down £25m from his initial starting point to a figure that, presumably, he doesn’t think is sufficient. £5m is nothing to a government – would it really have hurt them to go up that amount? Who’s really playing games here?

The other attack line seems to be, “it’s all about the money”, or “he’s putting money ahead of people’s lives”. But actually the money is important – crucial – here. People need financial support if their jobs etc. are going to be put on pause. And let’s be clear: it will be the least well-off, the ones who are able to lose less than anyone else, who will suffer most from this. This will damage, and perhaps take, people’s lives.

There’s all sorts of worrying things about this. One thing that strikes me, however: why should GM, or anywhere, be forced to take the minimum support, the lowest figure possible? In times of crisis, when businesses and livelihoods are at risk as well as people’s lives, looking to negotiate down the amount of support to the least possible is mean and small-minded. We should be looking to give people what they actually need (as much as is possible), not play this stingy, penny-pinching game that will do real damage.