Palm Sunday – a grand or not so grand an entrance?

Late November 1973, not a Four Seasons song – that was late December back in 63. In my case it was late November 1973. The school’s Christmas disco is less than a month to go. What I would wear, at the age of 14, for my very first disco becomes an issue for me. I am a bit of an odd one out in the class – I am the only one who has a short back and sides, at the instance of my step Dad. All the other boys have shoulder length hair or at least it covers their ears. My hair is a bit of a problem, not just because it is short but because it fails to cover my sticky out ears.

The other boys wear Oxford bags, ie trousers that have a 24-inch circumference round the bottom with turn ups. I have no such pair. Being captain in the school football team probably rescues me from some, but not all the ridicule from the other boys. So my appearance at the school disco is an issue for me.

One night straight after school I walked to Foster Brothers and tried on jackets and trousers. I settled on what I thought to be a wonderful all wool tweed jacket – in a pinky purple. The bags, 24 inch circumference of course, were a deep mauve – wonderful – I thought I looked the business.

When I got home from my shopping spree that night my parents seemed to be in shock at what I had done. I can’t recall them ever being so shocked. My very conservative second hand blue three piece suit, several years old, and well out of fashion, was not going to be worn at the disco after all.

On the night of the disco I stood at the number 8 bus stop for the town centre, rigged out in my new, very trendy outfit, I can still smell the wool. I was also wearing what had only just become fashionable thanks to pop singer Alvin Stardust, fake leather driving gloves, in other words plastic gloves. They too gave off a certain odour, not easily forgotten neither.

When the bus arrived I boarded it and made my way to the top deck where many of my class mates would be. To say that my arrival made an impression is a gross understatement. They could not believe the nerdy Bruce was wearing gear like them, bang on up to date. It was a great shock to them.  I felt accepted and one of the gang from then on.

How we appear, what we wear, how we behave, and what we say is important.

In 1898, Kaiser Wilhelm II, grandson of Queen Victoria, king of Russia and monarch of the young German State visited Ottoman ruled Jerusalem. He was the first European monarch to do so since the Crusader period. He insisted on riding his stallion and wearing full regalia including his helmet with a spike on top. The only trouble is the combination meant that he couldn’t enter through the Jaffa Gate without at least bowing his head or getting of his horse altogether. Kaiser Wilhelm, being Kaiser Wilhelm would do no such thing, so the city authorities had to break through the ancient wall of the city and make an entrance large enough for the Kaiser to make a triumphant entry.

Nineteen years later, on 11 December 1917, the city fell to the British and Allied Army under General Allenby. It marked the end of 400 years of Ottoman rule. Allenby also entered the city via the Jaffa Gate, but his entry was far lower key than the Kaiser’s in 1898. Allenby chose to walk in honouring the fact that the city is important to the three monotheistic faiths. He set about protecting religious sites sacred to Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

How we appear, what we wear, how we behave, and what we say is important.

We know well details of the entry of Jesus into the city. No stallion for Jesus, no conquering army, not even a purple jacket and Oxford bags. However, although he donned none of these accessories of power he actually entered the city from the opposite side to the Jaffa Gate; from the Mount of Olives. In doing so he was still making a very clear statement. Those that knew their sacred traditions well, those that had learnt what the prophets had said, would know that this was a statement, and a provocative one at that. Here is the Messiah, in fulfilment of centuries’ old prophecies. It was a statement alright. He knew it, the people knew it, and both the religious and political authorities knew it. Yet it didn’t look right – not everyone was won over.

In recent weeks we have asked who Jesus was, who he thought he was, who the disciples thought he was, who the people thought he was. In recent weeks we have taken up the story of what Mark sees as happening on the second day of what became known as Holy Week – the so called cleansing of the Temple. So much of what Jesus was saying and doing wasn’t what some might have expected from a Messiah that would liberate his people from slavery and oppression. It would take time. It would take a journey into the unknown, even through the process of dying and death, before some would know for sure. Yet even then, even today, perhaps more so today, many will not get the message. But those that do, find their lives are changed.

How we appear, what we wear, how we behave, and what we say is important.

Each can have a negative or a positive impact. Splashing out £27 of my savings, a lot of money those days, a week’s wage in fact, on what I thought to be a knock out outfit is no longer important. Kaiser Wilhelm’s entry into Jerusalem is still mocked by guides there today, and lamented by those historians who regret the damaging of an ancient city gate. General Allenby’s entry is all but forgotten, except by those that like to blame the British for everything that took place in the region thereafter, even though their historical analysis is far from accurate.

The entry of Jesus into Jerusalem is of course celebrated across every continent of the world by 1.5 billion Christians. The example which was set by the manner of that entry continues to inspire us to act in certain ways.

Our appearance, our entry into a geographical or metaphorical space, or into someone’s life impacts in positive or negative ways. Or may not impact at all.

I have often said that worship does not begin and end at the call to worship and the benediction, but with a handshake at the door and the washing up in the kitchen. It is in those moments of the regular routines that the tone is set, the example given, and the impact made.

Lent 4B: God loves even when the world has gone mad

If scripture were rock music John’s account of the Gospel would be Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale; it is amazing stuff: mysterious, at times dreamlike, half of it incomprehensible. You are left wondering where that came from. Which is why John’s account very nearly didn’t make it into the Canon; it was almost rejected.

Despite the fact that letters and Revelations bear John’s name, it is highly unlikely that any other text from his hand is available to us, since it is linguistically and theologically different to anything else.

It was par for the course in ancient literature to  give a text kudos by adding a respected author’s name to it, as in the Gospel accounts.

John the Beloved disciple of Jesus would have been long dead before the account we know as John came to be completed. Maybe the text that some will remain alive until the day of Jesus’s return was a response to those who claimed the Gospels could not have been written by a disciple or eye witness as they were so long after the events they depicted.

Like Whiter Shade of Pale, John’s account was a one off, a one hit wonder some of whose lyrics continue to inspire and mystify in equal measure. Like Whiter Shade of Pale it too carries some classic lines; the most remembered of course has to be

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.

I have been preaching 44 years and not once have I used this as a text for a sermon, because like one of those tracks that get overplayed on the radio you are left without the awe that it should inspire, the sense of something new.

I have of course referred to the verse over the years of course, how could I have not, but I have never felt the need to use it as the text for a sermon not before today.

Today, more so than ever before in my lifetime, we need to know love, in particular God’s love for the World.

I get the impression, more than an impression act, because it is very real, that there is an underlying concern for the World, for the future, for how everything is going, more so than at any time in my life thus far. Putin’s attack on Ukraine has left us again realising that once a dictator unleashes brutal force without a thought for the consequences, there is no telling how this will be checked because if someone gets used to killing tens of thousands, millions matter not. The result is some NATO countries considering entering the war. The situation in the Middle East is being used by those whose agendas include anti-Western values, anti-democratic systems, and anti-capitalism to win over the well intentioned to a common cause. The result being a weakening of common decency, a failure to enforce the rule of law and no go zones in our University campuses and on our capital’s streets for members of the Jewish community who have again become the target for hatred. Meanwhile the climate crisis continues unabated.

We have never needed an awareness of God’s love for the world more than we have today. It is as if we have slipped back to the 1930s again with extremism on the rise, antisemitism unchecked, and tensions spilling over in numerous parts of the World.

Only this last week Christians have been massacred in Sudan, churches burnt and 80,000 Christians fleeing for their lives, and hundreds of Christian girls taken captive in Nigeria. Who will march on our streets for them?

Last month Pakistan deported one million refugees back to Afghanistan, thousands of them Christians. What will be their fate? Who will march for them?

There is a silence all too loud when it comes to the rise of extremism here and elsewhere in our world – unless it fits particular agendas.

So what does it mean for God to love the world?

What would Jesus have considered the world to be? His region of it? The empire? The known world? The world that was yet to become known to a 1st cent middle Eastern Jew?

Debates ensued in previous decades about how much knowledge Jesus would have had of the metaphysical world. For eg whether Jesus would have thought the world to be flat, as did everyone at the time, or whether his knowledge would have surpassed every living human and all knowledge centuries before everyone else – that the earth is in fact a globe. The consensus in the debate was that Jesus the human would have thought of the world as flat because the divine had emptied themself and become human, as concluded by the writer of Philippians.

Whether Jesus thought of the world as flat or a globe is immaterial – the writer of John’s account would have thought of the world in a very different way to us today.

John did not have access to 24 hr news channels, or FaceTime to connect relatives on the other side of the planet in a nanosecond. His world would have been much smaller than ours; but the sentiment was still the same. Everything, everything and everyone, was loved by God, so much so that God was prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to prove it.

God had prevented Abraham from sacrificing his son Isaac, God would not step in again to rescue his own Son.

What does ‘the world’ mean?

Like the other gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and at the time of writing John’s world was still coming to terms with the destruction of the Temple.

The Temple had meant the world to most of the Jewish communities. Only the theology and practise of three of the sects were not connected so tightly to the existence of the Temple. There were the Essenes and the Pharisees and a third sect was the Jewish believers of Jesus. They too were not so connected with the Temple. The Temple did not mean the world to these three groups.

Though the destruction of Jerusalem was devastating for the people, akin to the fall of Jerusalem six centuries earlier, the faith and beliefs of the Pharisees and the followers of Jesus were less affected. It was these two sects that would go on to evolve into modern day Judaism and Christianity, for their world was not connected to a Temple, their world was much more fluid and linked to their daily lives.

The big question for us is ‘what is our world’ that God loves so much?

What loss would devastate us so much for us to conclude that our world had been destroyed? You will not need me to give examples. You will know what your world is – what it is, who it is, or what you value above all else.

The first text I learnt as a child was ‘Where your treasure is there will your heart be also.’

My heart was one with my Grandma who died when I was four, she was my treasure, and I hers. This meant that my world collapsed for a while.

God loved that world that I had lost. God would love that which I would come to treasure in the years ahead, God still loves this world that is now my treasure.

It is this world we treasure that God loves; this world that is probably our nearest and dearest; this world that is probably where our heart lies; this world that is probably vulnerable, fragile, and limited, it is this world that God loves. Your life, your time, your own love and affection, this is what God loves; God’s love is one with your love.  And God’s love is one with all those who cherish the righteousness, justice and truth of God.

The love that is eternal, not the passing fancy of a celebrity, not the narrow minded bigot, the self-centred politician, uncaring ideologue, not the one with hatred in their hearts, nor the one that prefers the headlines they agree with rather than the integrity and complexity of the small print.

For God so loved the world that is emerging and evolving into the light that God gave us as the example by which to live, the example that will save us from the darkness and despair of a world gone mad.

3rd Sunday in Lent: Anger in the Temple and Free Speech Today

What was it that made Jesus appear to erupt in a fit of anger?

Was it people selling sheep and cattle?

Was it the money changers? 

It has been argued that such an act was the final straw for the authorities – that by seeking to upend a local micro-economy Jesus had offended the wrong people.

It has also been claimed that the High Priest and his group were profiting from selling the plots on which these stalls were set. A kind of modern car boot sale in the nave of a cathedral.

Each of these scenarios play into the trope that Jews are obsessed with trade and money.

Whatever the reason for his action, Jesus would have known it would not have been a popular move.

So why did he do it?

I believe the answer lies in the location of the trading.

We know that it was within the Temple – we know that – but whereabouts exactly?

It would be in the outer court – the only court in which Gentiless could enter. They could not go further into the Temple. There was a court for the Jews, women and men, there would be a court for the priests, and there would be the court for the High Priest as well as the Holy of Holies into which the High Priest only entered once a year.But the market had been set up in the only court open to non-Jews. So, what Jesus sees is that Gentiles are being denied the opportunity of being awed by this sacred site, the beauty of the architecture, the extravagance of it all, the grandeur and above all the sanctity. He was affronted by turning the court into a market place Gents would not have any space in which to pray.

So it is not the trade that matters to Jesus but the denial of something sacrosanct to him, that of prayer – people were being denied the chance to commune with G.

How does this relate to free speech?

People had the right to trade but not to prevent people from finding God. There is a place and a time. Today, people have the right to say whatever they think but they should be challenged if they spread lies, prejudice, and hate. Voltaire said “The right to free speech is more important than the content of the speech.”

No, no, no Monsieur Voltaire. You should have known better – and maybe you would have changed your view had you lived in the 20^th or 21^st century where speech became a tool for propaganda, the deepening of division in society, and the furtherance of hatred: Hitler, Goebbels, Trump, the preachers of hate that do not understand the God of love.

The content of the speech does matter – if it fosters understanding, builds up the common good, fine; but if it whips up the naïve into a frenzy that leads to attacks on innocents then that is far from good, it is wrong.

This has always been a difficult one because who is to say what is right and what is wrong?

Dictators, totalitarian regimes have always clamped down on free speech where it has challenged their authority and power.  Putin’s reaction to the opposition in Russia is a case in point of course, and the killing of his main opponent Alexi Navalny in recent weeks is a clear example. But how far do we go to curb calls for violent revolution when our freedom, hard won over centuries, is at stake?

There may be things wrong with the British way of doing things, but I still believe it is the best and most just system in the world. There are reasons why we have not had a violent revolt in this country for four centuries. Yet there are those in our midst anxious to overthrow it. They are keen to identify our faults but lacking in what they would put in its place.

Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947: ‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…’

I rarely agree with Rishi Sunak, but I listened to his speech outside number 10 on Friday 1 March and I found myself nodding in agreement at pretty well every sentence; although he would do well to root out extremists in his own party. The threat to our democracy is very real. Allowing calls for an intifada across the globe, is a dangerous step. Intifada means violence, suicide bombings, and the cheapening of life to such an extent that the death of innocents no longer matters. Intifada in this country means more 7/7s, more Manchester Arena bombings. That is what is being called for on the streets of our cities every weekend. Now tell me that those who make such calls have a protected right to say these things.

These protests are doing exactly what Jesus was angry about in the Temple court – they are frightening people away from our city centres, from using public transport, from wearing something that identifies their religion.

People are free to protest the war in Gaza, and they are right to do so – but they should be robustly challenged if they prevent others from expressing different opinions, or other concerns, and/or pointing out their fears.

Jesus: ‘It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.’

Those protesters that call for the death of Jews and their supporters, or if they call for genocide in the Middle East are deeply wrong. We have heard these sentiments before, it never ends well for anyone. It is not for nothing that Jews are often described as the canaries in the mine. They are the first to notice something wrong within a society, something that leads to danger for so many groups other than Jews. History has shown time and again that once people start attacking Jews, they soon move on to some other race, faith or philosophy.

The late Rabbi Lord Sacks: ‘What begins with the Jews never ends with the Jews.‘

Let me be absolutely clear – there is a hardly a nation left in the Middle East other than Israel where Christians, let alone progressive Christians, and minority faiths, are safe to practise their religion. What began with the expulsion of Jews in Arab states over the last century has now left the cradle of Christianity bereft of Christianity.

This is the fundamental issue for Jesus: that the Temple should be open for the purpose of its construction – to be a safe space for people to find their God. And this God is not an exclusive monster calling for the death of those that do not share the extremists credo, but an all loving, inclusive God whose son was prepared to risk the ire of the authorities to the point of losing his life for the sake of others.

Our response to all of this is clear though demanding: we remain open and embracing of all the children of God, whatever their views and beliefs. However, and this is important, what we must be careful of at the same time is that by being so inclusive we are not engulfed by the hatred others have of others, of us and of our values.

Jesus: ‘We should be as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves.’ Too often we overlook the first instruction.

Christian martyrs died with prayers on their lips and love in their hearts – because Jesus dies with and for them, Jesus dies with and for us, Jesus dies for all those that seek to be at one with the God of all embracing justice, truth and love. The cost of this commitment was clear to see at the expected outcome, in the crucifixion, it was also clear on the road to that place in the anger on show in the Temple court.    

Holocaust Memorial Day Sermon 2024

Fragility of Freedom, Methodist Recorder 25 January 2024

The theme for this year’s Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘Fragility of Freedom.’ Freedom is a central concept for both Christians and Jews. Christians believe that freedom is possible by knowing the truth (John 8.31) and that simply by being in, or with, the Spirit of God, freedom is present (2 Cor. 3.17).

In the West many have come to think of freedom as a given. We overlook its fragility at our peril. If it is Truth that sets us free (John 8.31-32) and truth is in short supply then freedom is surely at risk. Jews understand this well. I know a number of Jews whose grandparents have kept their bags packed and their passports at hand ready to leave at any given moment; such is their deep seated fear of how fragile freedom is.

For Jews the notion of freedom is a socio-political experience: freedom from slavery (Exodus), oppression (Isaiah 58), and exile (Psalm 137). In Judaism this understanding of freedom deepened and developed over millennia, not least as a consequence of religions, rulers, and regimes imposing restrictions upon Jewish beliefs and practise culminating in the Holocaust (or Shoah – catastrophe).

We still have much to learn from the Holocaust, including that freedom became increasingly limited over time. It was Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, on the 60^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz who said that the Holocaust did not begin with gas chambers but broken windows. Beginning in small ways, boycotts, political cartoons, and restrictions imposed on membership of organisations, fear increased. Almost without noticing and without much care on the part of those outside the Jewish community, freedom became limited and disaster ensued. The ranting of a madman was initially scoffed at by the intelligentsia, and indeed by many in the middle ground of German society in the 1920s. However, the capturing of minds lacking in historical understanding or willing to overlook the lessons of the past in favour of their own prejudices, led to ground being laid for catastrophe. These unrestrained developments steered one of the most cultured nations on earth to implement genocide on an industrial scale. 9 out of 10 Jewish children in Europe were killed. The US Holocaust Memorial Museum has calculated that 2.7 million Jews were slaughtered in killing centres, 2 million murdered in mass shootings, 800,000 to 1 million in ghettos, labour and concentration camps, at least 250,000 outside camps and ghettos. Additionally the Holocaust claimed the lives of many non-Jews, 250 – 500 thousand Romani, 250-300 thousand disabled people, 1,700 Jehovah’s Witnesses, hundreds possibly thousands accused of homosexuality, and hundreds perhaps thousands of Black people in Germany.

Tony Blair was correct in stating that incremental changes brought about the Holocaust. Given more time we could go further and consider the centuries of Christian contempt toward Jews that helped create the environment in which the Holocaust could occur. The spin that people were fed meant the oldest hatred was always a light sleeper. Given the right conditions such hatred awakens and stalks the earth, as it did during plague and pandemic, as it did during periods of political upheaval, as it did in times of economic recession, and as it is doing today. Jews are once again fearful of where the limiting of their freedom will lead. With a ten-fold increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the UK since the 7^th October pogrom by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas and Israel’s response in Gaza, many Jews here have had to remove their mezuzot from their doorposts, many are unable to wear a Magen David in public spaces, and many are afraid of what colleagues might say if their heritage is discovered. It has been heart-breaking to receive phone calls from Methodists with Jewish heritage, some to whom I had not spoken before, expressing anxiety over what has been said in their hearing.

So much of what is being said and done by members of the Christian Church in response to the Israel/Hamas war is out of a deep desire for peace and justice, and to free Palestinians from the restrictions imposed upon them. However, depending on the form of action we take, and those whom we choose to partner, there is a danger that like those before us we intensify the fears and limit the freedom of our near neighbours.

There is a real possibility that any desire to do good may actually bring harm. This is not new of course, far from it. All sorts of wrongs have been justified from religious belief over the centuries, I do not need to list them. Horrifying though it may seem but in the 1930s many Christians believed that the Nazis had the answer to their problems, and Nazi apologists were not limited to central Europe.

Methodist minister and Holocaust academic in the post war world Franklin Littell stated that the Church could never fulfil its mission until it repents of its historical contempt toward Jews (The Crucifixion of the Jews). It is incumbent upon us as Christians then to ensure that when we engage in socio-political discourse, not just in our dialogue with the Jewish community, we do so from a position of sound historical knowledge as well as theological maturity. A text that continually assaults my mind in opinion formation or ethical decision making is from the Gospel according to Luke ‘consider whether the light in you is not darkness’ (11.35). It is often said that all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to do nothing. I have an additional view: all it takes for evil to succeed is for good people to make the wrong choices. The wrong choices of many in the 1930s have much to teach us today.

Lessons from Simeon (Luke 2.22-40)

On the morning of 18^th November 1991 I watched Breakfast Time TV’s live coverage of the release of Terry Waite from captivity. He had been held hostage by Islamists for 1763 days. As he got out of the car in Damascus a British man greeted him and ironically said something like Mr Waite I have waited here 4 hours to see you.  Terry had waited 4 years and 10 months.

Simeon had waited even longer to see the Messiah. Not 4 hours, not 4 years and 10 months, but decades.

This is the first point I want to draw from this passage: for Simeon, the waiting was over.

• We spend much of our lives waiting.
• As a child for Christmas.
• As a teenager for someone to dance with.

I’m reminded of the Black Country character Aynuk, Enoch to those with Queen’s English, or is that King’s English? To those of us from the West Midlands it is Aynuk. Aynuk was waiting for his girlfriend at the station. So was a somewhat posh gent, smartly dressed, suave and sophisticated. When the gent’s girlfriend finally arrived she apologised for being late. The gent replied, ‘don’t worry darling, when I look at you time stands still.’ Aynuk takes this on board and when his date arrives and apologises for being late he responds, ‘Doh worry luv yower ferce could stop a clock.’

Waiting is part of life.

As an adult we wait for achievement.

We may wait for the appointment, we wait for the results, we wait for our final hours.

Simeon was able to approach his final days knowing that the waiting for the Messiah was over.

Knowing Jesus may not quantifiably solve all our longing and problems, but something stirs within our soul when we recognise Jesus in our lives and world.

• We may still worry about our children,
• we may still be concerned about injustice across our world,
• we may still fear what the future may hold, but to harbour Jesus in our hearts as Simeon held the Christ Child in his arms is to bring new perspectives on our lives, our community, our world.

This brings me to my second point. Simeon notes that the Christ will responsible for falling and rising. In our world today we are used to rise and fall. We speak of empires rising and falling. We speak of celebrities rising and falling. Yet J is responsible for falling and rising. According to his teaching, seed falls to the ground and rises. Even in the fall of death he rises on the third day. Here is hope.

Life is not one of a long fall, a long decline, but of rising, one of accumulating knowledge, wisdom, and insight. Every new day brings the opportunity to learn something new. Every new encounter brings the opportunity to develop through interaction.

I have recently read that novels enable us to live the lives of others. That is so true. Through reading a novel I can be transported to another place, another time. By doing so I learn so much about others, about the lives they led or led, about the times and places in which they occupied. A novel can indeed enable us to live the lives of others. What I have discovered is that the scriptures enable us to live our lives. We are not truly fulfilled until we spend our time with scripture, study it but more importantly embrace it. There is a reason why the books of the Bible have stood the test of millennia.

It seems no coincidence to me that those I have sat with as they approached death were the ones that had spent time with the scriptures. Maurice , the old Jewish man from Salford, whose parents fled the pogroms of Easter Europe as infants at the turn of the twentieth century who greeted the news of his terminal illness with as much grace as anyone I have ever known. Enoch , the old miner who sat behind me when I was a youngster in church with a Bible under his pew runner, and who, when as a teenager I visited him during his last days always seemed to be putting down his well-worn Bible as I walked in. These two people and a fair number of others I have known over the course of my ministry, taught me much about the importance of not just reading but embracing scripture and in doing so we discover that life is not one long fall, but one long rise.

Thirdly and finally, this appearance, this coming to us is not without cost. There will be opposition. There will be opposition because the innermost secrets of others will be revealed when they encounter the fullness of truth, and grace, and light. When evil encounters goodness it is a painful experience, goodness is opposed and evil seeks to snuff it out.

• A prophet is despised.
• The one who points out error is not welcome.
• The person that goes against the tide is made to feel lonely.

Simeon reminds us of this and even to Mary he informs her that a sword will pierce her own soul too.

Imagine, the woman that carried the child in her womb for nine months, who felt the first stir of movement within her, who felt torn at birth will experience a sword piercing her soul.

There is a fascinating tradition within Orthodox Christianity dating back to earliest times. Mary’s mother Anna became pregnant late in life. As a consequence her father dedicated Mary to the Temple as Temple Virgin. This meant that so long as Mary remain unbetrothed and a virgin she would receive instruction in the Law, the Torah. She also had to commit to some form of work in the construction of the Temple. At the time Mary was a child the Temple Virgins were working on the curtain that hung in the Holy of Holies. Matthew’s account of the Gospel tells us that curtain was torn in two, top to bottom, at the death of Jesus. We have often thought of this as a symbol of the barrier between humanity and God being torn down. For some Orthodox Christians it is that the soul of Mary was torn, pierced, Simeon said.

As we have already noted, harbouring Jesus in our hearts does not necessarily give us identifiable solace, it may cause us grief. Just as Jesus wept over Jerusalem so may we lament over the state of our world. Someone once said to me they would prefer a sensitive companion who feels the pain of the world and breaks down now and again than a cold hearted individual unmoved by the pain of others.

1. Ministry, discipleship calls us to recognise Jesus in the waiting
2. To know that for every fall there will be a rise
3. And that though the journey of faith is not without pain we are never alone, for God is with us in Christ, Emmanuel, the Word made flesh.

Luke 1.37 ‘For no word of God will ever fail.’ (NIV)

Words matter. A word can make or break a person. A word can heal or it can destroy. A word can end a conflict or start a war. There is a Jewish saying for in a time of trauma: A thousand words may not be enough but a single word may be one too many.

For those that compiled the Gospel accounts, words mattered. Time was passing, those that knew Jesus personally were no longer around, those that had witnessed the miracles, heard the stories, marvelled at the teaching and experienced the resurrection on that extraordinary Sunday had passed from this life. How were they to convey the Jesus event to a rising generation? The means they adopted, for it was the only truly effective means at their disposal was to seek to capture what had happened in word. They would do so in different ways.

The earliest account that we have is the Gospel of Thomas, a collection of sayings, many of which found their way into the earliest canonical Gospel Mark. Mark is focused on acting as a witness to the adult Jesus – no annunciation, no trip to Bethlehem, no Shepherds, no Magi, no Herod, no slaughter of the innocents. Mark cuts to the chase and presents a blow by blow account of the adult ministry of Jesus. Matthew decides to highlight a link between what we would come to know of as the Old Testament and quote after quote Jesus is seen as the fulfilment of the prophets, a continuation of God’s purposes throughout history– the accomplishment of Jesus. John, much later spends huge time on explanation of Jesus through lengthy discourse and the use of symbolism.

A few decades earlier, and about a decade or so after Mark, Luke tells stories, parables to illustrate the truths of the teaching that Jesus brings. He, like Matthew sees Jesus as the fulfilment of ancient text and draws on a technique adopted by others. At key moments early on in the Gospel, Luke has the main characters bursting into song, imagining what all this has to mean and the impact it will have on others and our World.

So it is that Mary’s Magnificat has the same style and sim substance of Hannah’s prayer in 1 Samuel on giving to birth the child Sam. The same style would be adopted by Luke not just for Mary, but for Zechariah on the birth of John and also, to a degree, the joy of Simeon on receiving Jesus into the Temple. Words matter.

Art and music are often employed to convey deep meaning. They have the ability to draw us in, sometimes in a far greater way than words. But those without the gift of art or music, words are their only means of conveying how they truly feel. The great Telly Savalas aka Kojak complete with lollipop in cheek and the catchphrase ‘Who loves ya baby, got to number in the charts in the early 70’s with a song entitled ‘If’. The lyrics included: ‘If a picture could paint a 1000 words, then why can’t I paint you? Around the same time the Bee Gees would sing: It’s only words, and words are all I have, to take your heart away.

For Luke and the other Gospel compilers words matter – they are all that they have to pass on the Good News of Jesus Christ and win over our hearts. And knowing that God spoke into creation, ‘and God said let there be, and there was,’ they knew that God’s word was important – that G spoke and it happened, the outcome was good. According to the centurion anxious about the sickness of his servant, Jesus would only have to say the word “Lord, I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. But just say the word, and my servant will be healed.” There are many other occasions where Jesus simply speaks a word, sometimes intelligible, sometimes not intelligible, but the outcome is the same, healing occurs. Salvation has come to that house – meaning wholeness, justice, harmony, shalom. For us of course we may wonder whether God is going to speak into our lives, or our World. If only G would speak into the conflict. If only G would speak into our prayers. If only G would speak and all will be well.

Sometimes it seems that the Word is absent from our lives and our World: the clamour of voices seems to drown out the voice of reason, that the lies are louder than the truths, that 1000 bigots surely can’t be wrong, or that the silence is deafening. John would come to see something even deeper than his predecessors – that Jesus not only speaks as God did but is actually the Word – the expression of all that G is. Even when the voice of God is apparently silent, the Word is with us, even the darkness cannot extinguish it. As the graffiti in the ghetto had it

I believe in the sun even when it not shining

I believe in love even when I cannot feel it,

I believe in G even when he is silent.

In the end it is true, it is good news, that God’s Word after all everything is said and done never fails.

Never Again? The Denial of Realities and the Inability to Face the Truths

I only met him once. I doubt I will meet him again.

‘The trouble is that Israel is full of American Jews and they are all doctors, dentists and lawyers. All of them have dual citizenship so they should get on a plane a go back to the US. That would resolve it.’

‘It’ was of course the Israel-Hamas conflict. I was able to contain my shock at this statement not just because I have heard many incredulous comments and fantastical ‘solutions’ to the decades-long battle for the land over many years, but because this one genuinely took me by surprise. The only response I could think of was, ‘And what about all those Israeli citizens that are not American doctors, dentists, and lawyers that don’t have dual citizenship?’

Quick as a flash, indicating that this may well have been thought through previously, ‘well they would have to get on with it, they would soon make peace with the Arabs.’

My goodness, this conversation was loaded with a lot of stuff. I don’t think I need to unpack it. However, it clearly indicates that someone with intelligence can have an altogether unrealistic opinion he thought to be a wholly reasonable argument. He is not alone. There are far too many that believe the Israel-Palestine conflict can be resolved by simply acting in a certain way or doing something that is so blindingly obvious despite the fact it has eluded the greatest political minds and the world’s finest diplomats for more than a century. 

Added to such naïve views is the growing denial of reality and the inability to face the truth by many professional commentators let alone the growing number of regular and even occasional social media activists. So many, including the professionals amongst them, are often ignorant of the complexities and the historicities of the conflict. Some of this could be forgiven if there were a humility to their approach. However, when someone thinks they are an expert on this and they are clearly not, then they need to think again. The Israel-Palestine conflict has not been resolved not for want of trying.

What can be even more galling is when someone is so embedded in a particular viewpoint that they cannot allow themselves to engage in a conversation with anyone who might present even a variant of their perspective let alone an alternative. What the current Israel-Hamas has highlighted is that over the last two decades or so is that allegiance to one side or the other has become so embedded that the conflict has been exported across the globe. We are now seeing that conflict on the streets of our cities where abhorrent placards and chants call for genocide ‘From the River to the Sea’ and ‘intifada from London to Gaza.’ We are now seeing that conflict on the bus shelters and lampposts where posters have been torn down of the children and elderly held hostage by an utterly brutal and depraved terrorist organisation. We are now seeing that conflict in the exponential rise of antisemitism in places of education and in almost every section of society.

The level of doubt being cast on the 7 October massacres, the biggest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, is extraordinary. It may be a symptom of our age to fall for conspiracy theories but disbelieving the barbarism inflicted on the victims when the evidence is so unequivocal, and to do so in such a hasty manner, has to be a new low.

When Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower arrived at the newly liberated Ohrdruf concentration campaign in the final days of the Second World War, he was faced with scenes that even he, after years of fighting a brutal enemy, found to be an exceptional level of brutality. He was a man of great foresight. Knowing that the depravity before him was unprecedented he recognised that those that had not witnessed would doubt the facts. He therefore ordered the scenes to be filmed and photographed, and locals to be brought to the camp to witness for themselves the scene, so that no one should question the veracity of the horror inflicted upon the incarcerated victims, the vast majority of them Jews. The newsreel footage was eventually shown in cinemas across the world, not only of Ohdruf but Belsen, Buchenwald, and elsewhere.

Once the initial shock began to dissipate and people were able to begin reflecting on what had taken place the term Never Again echoed across the nations. This would often mean different things to liberators and survivors. Never Again might mean that we should never permit the conditions in which such contempt could erupt into genocide. Equally Never Again also came to mean that ‘we will not let this happen again to us.’

Later, when Holocaust denial became a feature, for the far right especially, and was robustly challenged to the extent that in some European countries Holocaust denial is illegal, we might consider that we should Never Again doubt the depths some would sink in their hatred of Jews.

Eisenhower was prescient. Today many on the far left cast doubt on the 7^th October massacre, the Simchat Torah pogrom. Did it really take place? If it did, could Israel have conducted the killings using Apache helicopters? If it wasn’t Israel, were they still complicit in inciting the wrath of Hamas? Did Hamas avoid the killing of civilians? Were women raped? Were children set ablaze, were babies beheaded? All these questions and so many more avoid the facts, seek to erase the reality, exonerate Hamas, despite their own body cam footage of the slaughter and the live streaming of torture, and lay the blame at the feet of Jews, again.

The failure to at least condemn atrocity may act as the first stepping stone to a more sinister step of denial which can in turn lead to acting as an apologist for antisemitism and terrorism. If we have ever wondered how so many people in what had been one of the most cultured nations on earth had been blind to the steps that led to the Holocaust then we only need to look about us today. It is deeply worrying that speeches, articles and interviews that understandably lament the tragic loss of innocent lives in Gaza but fail to acknowledge the premeditated brutality of Hamas on 7^th October. On that tragic day hundreds, young and old alike, were raped, tortured, executed, and paraded as trophies of war for civilians to spit on their naked bodies. When those appointed to speak on behalf of the terrorist organisation that conducted such depraved acts on 7^th October on the one hand state they didn’t happen yet they live streamed them on social media, and on the other hand pledge to do it again and again until Israel is eradicated we should know where the truth lies. Failure to recognise this and to unequivocally condemn such barbarism is a first step towards becoming an apologist for antisemitism. Calls for a global intifada, the erasure of Israel, and the genocide of Jews should not be dismissed as empty threats. We must not doubt the impact rising antisemitism is having on members of the Jewish communities and those concerned for their presence and wellbeing in our world. 

Never again should we discount the evil intent of some in our society. Never again should we doubt verifiable facts in favour of the propaganda put out by the haters. Never again should we be so naïve as to think this could not happen here and now.

Better to light a small candle than curse the darkness

Across the world on each Sunday of the 4 Sundays of Advent, churches light a candle on a wreath to symbolise the increasing light in a dark world. Today, the Second Sunday of Advent we light a second candle which is sometimes known as the Peace candle. There has rarely been a more poignant time than this to light a candle for peace in our troubled world. Additionally I will be lighting another candle to the two on the Advent Wreath as we pray for the world and the peoples of the world. My candle has been used in vigils such as 7/7, the Manchester Arena bombing, throughout Covid, the invasion of Ukraine to name just a few. Today I will light my candle for those held hostage in the underground tunnels of Hamas, for all those traumatised by the pogrom on 7 October that included the most barbaric sexual violence toward women and girls, for all those innocent Palestinians caught up in the fighting between Israel and Hamas, for the people of Ukraine, the grieving mothers, the orphaned children and those that are suffering abuse without a voice to express their hurt or fight their cause.

The Study in Ten Objects: The Candle

Most major festivals celebrate festivals of light in the darkest time of the year. Diwali, Hanukkah and Christmas. Each rejoice in the victory of light over darkness and commemorate new beginnings.

Millions from the Hindu, Sikh, and Jain faiths celebrate Diwali. The word Diwali comes from ‘a row of lighted lamps.’ For Hindus it recalls the return from exile after 14 years of two deities; for Sikhs the release from prison in 1619 of a guru; and for Jains their founder’s attainment of eternal bliss.

Jews recall their survival after being persecuted by a Syrian king. After a war of three years they retook Jerusalem but found the Temple in ruins. They built a new altar and rededicated the Temple only to discover they only had enough oil for the holy lamp for one day. Replenishing the oil would take days but miraculously each day there was sufficient oil for another day. It took 8 days for the fresh supply of oil to arrive. They never ran out of oil during that time. Today the festival of Hanukkah is 8 days long and one candle is lit on the first night, two on the second, three on the third etc.

As Christians we are familiar with the Advent wreath and the lighting of a candle each week representing various characters or themes as we approach the birth of the Christ Child, the Light of the World, usually represented on the wreath by a single white candle with the other four being of colour, depending of course on the tradition.

Since the Moravians began using a spherical fruit, now an orange, along with sweets to represent the fruits of the four seasons with a single candle for the Light of the World, many churches have added another symbol to their Advent/Christmas season.

In my study is a single candle stand. It was a gift from a very good friend when I left my second appointment in 2002. It is a treasured item, not just because it is beautifully crafted, which it is, not just because I still value the friendship of the giver, which I do, but also because it has been a fixture of my life and ministry these past 20 years. Several candles have been placed on it over the years and they have been lit on many different occasions, in times of great sadness, in times that have commemorated anniversaries, in times that have been dark and seemingly without much hope in our world.

It was lit to mark the terrorist attack in London on 7/7; it was lit on the 100^th anniversary of the declaration of war in 2014; it was lit each Sunday evening of lockdown during Covid; and on so many other occasions over the years, sometimes in the quietness of my study or lounge, sometimes at public events. Most recently it was lit at the Vigil for Peace at Wallingford on Sunday 15^th October.

For many people, formally religious or not, candles are the means by which a prayer is made tangible. They are used to mourn people or to long for something. We only have to visit a cathedral to see how this is so with row upon row of votive candles blazing away; or pass the site of an accident that has claimed someone’s life and see the numbers of spent candles amongst the flowers and tributes. The light of a candle may touch us at a very deep subconscious level. In the past fire was lit at night for warmth, to create light, and to ward off wild animals. Today we may still find reassurance in the light of a candle. For Christians it can be a symbol of God’s presence, the God who reassures us, who helps us see through the darkness, and who protects us from those things and people that assail us.

Antisemitism Erupts Again

I used to think that members of the anti-Zionist lobby in the UK would hang their heads in shame if Hamas or Hezbollah managed to breakthrough the security and massacre Israelis on a large scale. How wrong I was; the antisemitism I knew to be there all along was even more deeply rooted than even I thought and is now erupting on a scale we have not seen for more than 75 years, and in the UK even longer.

The sight of young adults on the streets of London smirking as they tear down posters of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza turned my stomach. How could someone so young and seemingly so intelligent be filled with such contempt for incarcerated babies, the elderly, and frail, who are probably held in tunnels, and whom they have never met? That they should so brazenly display their hatred of Jews made me wonder what they would say, or worse still do, if they could retain their anonymity. Imagine if this had happened to posters of the missing after 9/11, or the memorial photos to victims of the Manchester Arena bombing. Of course, on each of those occasions it would have been unthinkable, but clearly not unthinkable when it comes to Jewish victims of the abhorrent terrorist attack on 7^th October, the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.

The hundreds of thousands that pour onto the streets of major British cities to declare their hatred of Israel, on occasion of the West, and of the values many of us hold dear, makes me wonder where all this will lead. It appears that for not an insignificant number of people antisemitism is now a commonly accepted form of conduct; it is also increasing at an alarming rate.

For many people their capacity for hate must be greater than their power of reasoning; there can be no other explanation for the deafness with which they respond to expressions of concern about their words and behaviour. After all, if you marched stating that Black Lives Matter, if you took part in a Pride Parade, or stood in a vigil in memory of the raped and murdered women on our streets, why would you march alongside Hamas apologists and supporters? Let there be no mistake, for Hamas, no life matters not even their own. For Hamas, diverse sexualities are of Satan and should be eradicated in the most perverse ways. For Hamas, women are merely objects and should be subdued and possessed by men. So why would opponents of racism, homophobia and misogyny stand next to banners that in effect support Hamas?

Some that take part in the marches say they would never endorse the appalling views of the Islamists about them. They also claim they are insulted by those that criticise the marches in their entirety when there are calls for genocide in Israel, and jihad or intifada in the UK. They object to being labelled as apologists for extremism and terrorism. If that is so, then why don’t they speak as vehemently against those they march alongside who are promoting such hatred? Those that claim to be ‘innocent of the hatred of their co-marchers’ are at best naïve, but also tragically playing into a trajectory that is not only divisive, but hurtful, and extremely dangerous. Whilst their ignorance of what would be said and done on such marches could have been justifiable on week one, after four weeks of brazenly repetitive calls for genocide no one can be in any doubt as to what will be said and done on such a march. So those that choose to march now do so knowing they might end up standing alongside jihadists calling for genocide. They may therefore be complicit in fuelling the antisemitism that has erupted across our nation and world.

How can this apparent lack of self-awareness be understood? For many people antisemitism is inexplicable. It is the longest hatred; it has caused the greatest genocide in human history, and it does indeed defy all logic. The tropes recur in different form in every generation, and I fear that the roots of antisemitism are present in every person. It is as if a shadow is cast across every human soul at birth. The new-born is shocked at its arrival, having given up the security of the womb they have become at risk. Emerging from reassuring darkness, the light pierces their eyes. From constant warmth, their nakedness is exposed to the cold. From a previously muffled environment, the sudden and sharp sounds in this new world are distressing. In short, the new-born is made to feel an alien and utterly defenceless. Any subconscious reminder as a child or adult of this moment, i.e. a threat to their familiarity and security, increases their hostility toward it. This may include encountering something new or someone that is different, or a culture that is dissimilar to their own. At that moment the one that feels threatened may fight or flee. It is as if the light in their life, all that is good and joyful and safe, has momentarily been extinguished and there is no desire to reignite it. No matter how irresponsible and irrational the consequential contempt becomes, nothing appears able to initiate a pause for reflection, as it is with antisemitism.

Antisemitism is beyond any reason. It exists and has done in various forms for millennia: religious, racial, or political. A philosopher once said that if God didn’t exist, we would have to invent him. For many it is a similar phenomenon with Jews. If Jews didn’t exist, they would have to be imagined, thus creating a vent for scorn, hostility, and anger. It is a despairing thought, but no less despairing than the waves of Jew-hatred that have afflicted every corner of God’s earth in which Jews have sought to settle over millennia. To paraphrase Tom Lehrer, ‘Catholics hate Protestants, Protestants hate Catholics, Muslims hate Hindus, and everybody hates Jews.’[i]

Today’s hostility toward Jews is expressed in many ways: political cartoons, conference resolutions, campus debates, and protest. The mask that is donned to cover the hatred is a call for Israel to desist from attacking Gaza. It is always right to condemn the sickening deaths of children and other innocents but there is an interesting take on the present protests. Where were the protests when children were being blown apart in Yemen? Where were the protests when women were sold in slave markets during the time ISIS controlled much of Syria and Iraq? Or men’s severed heads there used for footballs? Or young women imprisoned and even beaten to death in Iran because they want to express their freedom and femininity without a hijab? Or schoolgirls in their hundreds abducted from their classrooms in Nigeria? And countless other places where Islamists have inflicted their abhorrent and violent worldview and resultant actions on anyone whose culture and beliefs did not match their own? But what happens when the only Jewish state in the world responds to the greatest massacre of Jewish life since the Holocaust by seeking to destroy a terrorist organisation whose leaders have promised to repeat the pogrom again and again until Israel is eradicated? Protests on a massive scale erupt across the planet: Jews are again the reason for their own suffering, the Jews are lying about the events, falsifying the facts and stats. Jews around the world live in fear because they have again become targets for abuse and worse. Hans Mayer wrote, ‘whoever attacks Zionism, but by no means wishes to say anything about Jews, is fooling themselves or others.’[ii] One friend in the UK Jewish community said in typical fashion to me that ‘when it rains in Israel, the Diaspora get wet.’

So many on the marches are using coded slogans that most people in the UK cannot decipher. Thankfully more have come to understand what the chant ‘From the River Sea Palestine will be Free’ actually means. It is of course a call to arms by Hamas and others to wipe the State of Israel from the map through the eradication of Jews and others. Take also the hadith ‘the day of judgment will not come until Muslims fight Jews and kill them. Then the Jews will hide behind trees and rocks, and the trees and rocks will cry out. “O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me; come and kill him.”’ A demonstrator in Birmingham waved a placard stating ‘Now do you understand why the trees and rocks will have to speak?’ Lost on most people, but she knew the Hadith and she knew what she was saying. Incitement to hatred? Of course. Incitement to violence? Of course, but lost on most people and lost on those officers policing the protest.

Make no mistake about it, these are dangerous days for Israel, the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East, the only nation where Christians have increased in number over the past 75 years. As long ago as 1967 Jean Améry quoted a Palestinian leader in an interview who said, ‘Israel is condemned to win every battle. If it loses just one, then….’ [iii] Amery said that the Palestinian did not continue, but the interviewer and those listening knew what the outcome would be. 56 years on from the interview, we have seen with our own eyes, that the threat still looms over Israel.

Make no mistake about it, antisemitism is gaining ground across the world, as well as in the UK, and again becoming mainstream and normalised. In so doing it will be difficult to stem, as it has always been in the past. Some outside the Jewish community, as in previous generations, recognise this ancient phenomenon. They have a huge burden of responsibility, one that is not exercised lightly, one that is costly, to speak out and act as they are able. Friendships are broken, vulnerabilities become exposed, and life is all the more difficult when they do. However, what else can we do other than stand against the hatred and stand with the oppressed?  

I recently came across a song that inspires confidence in times of danger.

He Who Believes Is Never Afraid (Mi Shemaamin Lo Mefached)

In every place, all the time

Everyone, old and young alike, has

Nice days and bad days

And in between them is the answer to all questions

There is one great G-d

In this world, he gives us everything

From darkness to light

The path that we just have to choose

And it is know that life is a gift

Everything is foreseen and given

He who believes is never afraid

Of losing hope

And we have the King of the Universe

And he protects us from everyone

This nation is a family

Time and time again that is the secret to success

The nation of Israel will not give up

We will always remain on the map

And it is known that life is a gift

Everything is foreseen and given

He who believes is never afraid…

It is a great deed to be happy

To always be happy

He who believes is never afraid…

Eyal Golan

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[i] Frank  Améry, Essays on Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, and the Left, Ed by Marlene Gallner, Indiana University press, 2021, p58

[ii] Ibid p52

[iii] Ibid p49