A Black Halo - Really?

Reflection given at Zoom Night Prayer on Monday 21st March 2022

Whilst living in Yeovil we enjoyed taking friends who were visiting us around St John’s Church, called the ‘Lantern of The West’ because of its huge windows.

One of these is an ‘Apostles’ Window’ depicting The Twelve.  Each of them is represented and honoured with a golden halo, except Judas.  His is black.

At this time of year we recall Judas’ part in the story as the ‘betrayer’, and the recurring question comes to us once more: did he, and does he deserve a black halo?

Treasurers, and that’s the position Judas was entrusted with by the others, are normally reliable and honourable people.  For three years Jesus and the eleven had looked to Judas for their daily bread.  He settled up their expenses and made the practical side of life as comfortable as possible.  No doubt Jesus had had many ‘quiet words’ with him in the past, requesting, perhaps, a gift to help out a disciple’s family back home, or something extra be purchased to make this week’s Shabbat meal a little special as a birthday celebration.  On Maundy Thursday Jesus’ final ‘quiet word’ with Judas is full of deep sadness and dignified resignation.  ‘Do whatever you have to’.

Of course, John is telling us all this overlaying his narrative with his own interpretation of that night’s cruelty.  So, he depicts Judas’ actions as evil.  Part of the diabolical momentum that’s now running which will see Jesus executed at the cross.

And Jesus is very close to the cross as he now sits for one last time reclining at table alongside his friends.  And there’s the rub.  One of them was friend no longer but enemy.  The enemy within.

It’s Jesus’ reaction to disappointment, and here particularly his intense disappointment with Judas, that speaks to me most.  It’s as if he realises that after three years of such close companionship when so many words must have been spoken and discussions had, Jesus knows he hasn’t won Judas over to his version of servanthood Messiahship.  Judas is a zealot, or at least he’s prepared to use zealot tactics, pushing Jesus into a crisis moment of confrontation,  maybe with the hope that his arrest will trigger anger and aggression in Jesus, a call to arms against the oppression of the Romans.

It's conjecture, it’s our yearly attempt at trying to understand Judas Iscariot, friend turned foe.

Does he deserve the black halo he wears in St John’s Parish Church in Yeovil?  Answers of a postcard!

I’m not sure the distribution of halos is ever wise, for don’t all of us combine in our lives the character of both saint and sinner?

What I’m surer of, is the honour due to Jesus at this lonely moment.  The time for debate with Judas is over, he knows he must now accept the consequences of his treasurer’s duplicity.  Yet he does this with quiet dignity and without rancour towards his friend.

Holy Week surely teaches us that the struggles are rarely taken away, what’s important is how we face them.  Jesus faced his with an acceptance that this was the only way forward.  And, having accepted that pathway he walked it in a spirit of forgives to others and trust in God his Father.

View from The Pew: March 2022

 

View from The Pew write up of visit to Oxford - found at: https://viewfromthepewsabbatical.blogspot.com/

It is in giving that we receive

 

There is a line in the famous prayer of St Francis of Assisi that it is in giving that we receive.

At that, sounding in the first hearing like a contradiction, is what we come across the very essence of Jesus.

He came among us to show that most godly of characteristics; self-giving love.

He spoke of his life in terms of a seed being thrown into the ground where it seemed as if it died.  Yet, under the soil in the darkness, it germinated and grew up into a harvest of wheat. 

During Lent and on Good Friday we remember Jesus being given up upon the cross.  To many watching it seemed the ultimate failure, yet because of Jesus today the cross, both inside and outside of the Christian tradition, stands for love, compassion, assistance and peace.

Two years ago next week we entered that first official and prolonged lockdown of the pandemic.  Our world became smaller and more focussed and regularly we applauded and admired those frontline workers who, in the days before a vaccine, literally gave of themselves to keep society going.  Again and again, we encountered sacrificial love and cross shaped generosity.

Lent doesn’t have to be a bleak and joyless time, indeed it shouldn’t be.  Before us is the example of the Lord Jesus and his self-giving love and nothing makes faith more ‘joy-filled’ and ‘down to earth’ that acts of loving service that reflect that side of our Saviour.  It is, indeed, in giving that we receive.

Today is St Patrick’s Day, so happy Saint’s Day to all our Irish friends!  We don’t really know much about St Patrick and he was probably English anyway!  Many think he was sold into slavery and taken to Ireland where he worked for many years in forced labour.  Eventually he returned home to England before receiving a call, which he considered to be ‘of God’, to return to Ireland, this time as a missionary.

It's a wonderful story of someone returning to a place which, for them, was full of painful memories. Yet into this context he pours out his life in sacrificial service.  So, what was a place of sorrow is turned into a context of joy filled service by this self-giving generosity of Ireland’s patron saint.

May themes of sacrificial giving and generous love give us all a sense of joy and hope as we continue our journey through Lent.

Representation of The People by The People

 

I once served as an MP.  Let me explain that!

I sat in my School Parliament as an elected representative of my class; these were heady days you understand and I loved it for we all took it very seriously.

This was my school’s way of instilling a love of democracy among us, and I continue to be grateful for their efforts. 

Of course, to anyone who even casually dips into history it’s obvious that democracy, to misquote Churchill, is the worst form of government except for all the others.

I often think of that whenever I get the chance to visit parliament at Westminster.  I know its architecture is gloriously ‘over the top’, yet perhaps it was quite deliberate of Pugin to give both the Commons and Lords the feel of a cathedral, for there is something reminiscent of the ‘sacred’ in this citadel dedicated to democracy.

One of my favourite scenes from the American political drama series The West Wing is a visitation to the White House of a new democracy recently carved out of The Eastern Block.  The President drafts in an eccentric history professor to facilitate them in drawing up a constitution.  They gather in the Roosevelt Room day after day till long into the night seemingly getting nowhere, with not a page of the new constitution drafted.  Eventually an aide challenges the wise professor who says it matters little that nothing has been written, that can all be done when they get home, for now these few days have been focussed on discussing democracy, getting a feel for it and beginning to have a deep appreciation of what it means, he called it a ‘beautiful process’!

Such thoughts have filled my mind over recent days because it seems that the Russian system of government has enabled dictatorship and an evil tyrant to triumph and wreak terror on its neighbour without the slightest reference to the wishes of the Russian people.

The Bible tells us we have an ongoing responsibility to pray for our leaders.  Today we pray for those leading Ukraine that they will be sustained, even as we continue to pray that those leading Russia will stop this bloodshed.  And longer term, we carry the hope that a more effective dialogue will emerge in Russia so that one day there may be a true representation of The People by The People.

Lord, look upon our broken and blooded world, sustain those who are fighting for their lives and show, we pray, those who would act with aggression the way of peace.
Lord, have mercy.

View from the Pew

 For this week's blog please see the report I've written about our recent visit to Scotland and attending morning worship in Edinburgh at https://viewfromthepewsabbatical.blogspot.com/

A friend in need...

Last evening, as those 70 mph winds started to whip up, there was an unexpected knock on the Manse door.  We opened it to a neighbour we had never spoken to before, who had thoughtfully come across to tell us our blue bin had blown over and our recycling rubbish was now making its way into every garden in the close!  Amid the howling gale this was actually a very nice encounter, full of friendly banter and, at the request of our neighbour, an opportunity for him to meet the dog.  He’d only heard her bark before! 

After saying ‘goodbye’, and before I dashed off to lead a Housegroup, we organised a family activity to clean up our rubbish and secure the bin more firmly for this morning’s collection.

Isn’t it so often the case that we humans seem to get along more easily if we can lend a helping hand.

If someone seems to have life sown up we sometimes avoid them, yet if we and they share a common need, or if we can lend a hand, then empathy flows and the door of friendship opens a little easier.

Perhaps that old adage is right: A friend in need, is a friend indeed.

Certainly Jesus found that often those who felt accomplished and self-sufficient avoided him.  Yet those who ‘owned’ their vulnerability in life readily opened their hearts to him and his message.

And perhaps that’s the key. It’s as we recognise and appreciate each other’s humanity, both its weakness alongside its strength, that we covenant together to walk as friends, with Jesus in the middle.

Blog holiday next week.

Change and Stability - Brother and Sister?

 

Talk given at LunchBreak on Tuesday 8th February 2022

70 years is a long time and a BBC programme on Sunday evening, one of many I guess that will help us celebrate the Platinum Jubilee, charted the social changes that have occurred in our society over these past seven decades. 

With the inevitable help of a sprinkling of celebrities the programme recalled the Queen’s first PM was Winston Churchill, that the rationing of the early 1950’s seemed even more severe than that of the war years, that opportunities for women were now unrecognisable compared to 1952 and that the World Wide Web seems to have changed everything with Sir David Attenborough making the dry observation that ‘nowadays people spend more time talking to their phone than to one another’.

Perhaps the TV programme was a little bland as the general conclusion was that so much was now much better than it was at last century’s half way point.  I suspect we’d need more than just celebrities to have a true and in depth evaluation.  And, after all, there is no need to be Pollyanna-ish about change.  It isn’t inevitably positive.  Indeed Princess Anne was asked a couple of years ago if she thought the Queen was an optimist about the future and she replied, quite honestly, ‘probably not’!  I suspect a long life gives a more balanced and nuianced perspective.

The other year I was given a 1957 copy of The Radio Times for a Christmas present.  That’s because it had a piece by one of my heroes, Alistair Cooke, about the 500^th episode of his radio talk Letter from America.  It makes for fascinating reading!  There is a page of TV listings, and I noted that programmes didn’t even start until 3pm and concluded around 11.30pm with an Epilogue and the National Anthem!  Many more pages were devoted to the radio – the wireless – listing the Home Service, The Light Programme and the Third Programme.  I looked up the Sunday schedule and found that across the network there were no less than five church services broadcast every Sunday – now it’s just Songs of Praise after lunch!  Other things have changed too, such as Women’s Hour being in the afternoon and Listen with Mother broadcast around mid-day.

I was struck by Lulu’s words in Sunday night’s programme, she rather affectionately said of the Queen: I can honestly say she’s been the one constant in my life.

I suspect that change and stability are brother and sister and need each other.  You can accept change much better if there is stability at the core of your life.  And stability fossilises unless it adapts and changes when greeting life’s new phases.

You can always take lines from hymns out of context, so let me be a bit naughty and do that now.  There’s one such line that runs: for nothing changes here. And sometimes that’s what people say about some churches, and I suppose it’s true.  It’s sad to see a congregation dwindle because it no longer feels relevant to people who might otherwise have joined it.  It’s equally sad to see a church ‘implode’ as a result of too much aggressive change.

I sense that we love the idea of the stability and faithfulness that comes into our lives through a belief in God.  To have a faith that believes God is always present, always trust worthy, always loving, and always ‘for’ us, can bring us comfort and confidence in our ever changing and challenging lives.  Prayer, worship and faith ground us and offer a great foundation.

So, here’s to the next 70 years with a prayer that change and stability will continue to walk hand in hand.