Month: March 2021

Isaiah 50.4-9a, Mark 11.1-11

Palm Sunday, 28 March 2021

Jesus was a fundamentalist: he believed fundamentally in fun. [1] You may have heard me say this before, but I never tire of it, for Jesus’ way of challenging the social, religious and political derelictions of his day was to create comic incidents to challenge the ungodly and subvert the established order, and, with a smile, to introduce his new alternative and joyful way to those who had the wit to understand. 

It’s there in his cheeky provocations of picking grain to eat on the sabbath, his sunny disposition to always touch a leper; it’s there in his audacious use of Caesar’s coin to turn a toxic argument inside-out; and it’s there in his many parables full of characters whose behaviour would seem frankly absurd to Jesus’ audience, as they would to us if we read them the way Jesus told them: as a prankster’s take on social conventions which introduce the possibility of a whole new set of values we could live by.

Palm Sunday is perhaps Jesus’ finest moment of comic genius. It is pure political pantomime, in which Jesus on his donkey poked fun at the pomp of Pilate who was entering Jerusalem himself that same day in all the ostentation of a full military ceremony. Jesus’ burlesque backstreet performance made a very clear statement about his very different take on power and leadership. [2]

It’s joyful to see how the spirit of Palm Sunday is alive and well today. For instance, take the recent “involuntary walk-a-thon” which the people of the German town of Wunsiedel organised in response to an annual neo-Nazi march there. Avoiding the usual stand-offs which would almost certainly turn violent, the organisers determined to undermine the neo-Nazis by using comedy.

Marking chalk lines along the parade route they created a starting point, halfway point, and a finish line. Then they enlisted local residents and businesses to donate 10 euros for every metre the white supremacists marched, pledging their donations to a group called Exit Deutschland, which is dedicated to helping people leave right-wing extremist groups. Rather than attempt to block the neo-Nazi marchers, the counter-protesters chose the tactic of ironic encouragement. They came out to cheer the marchers on the day of the event, flanking the route with signs that read, “If only the Fuhrer knew!” and offering refreshments to the walkers. This comic turn transformed the marchers into involuntary resistors of their own cause, and brought the community together in unity to counter the messages of white supremacy. [3]

Then there is the student movement Otpor! that helped topple the kleptocratic Serbian president Slobodan Milošević. Otpor! once arranged a demonstration which they called a “Birthday party for Milošević”, in which more than two thousand citizens had a chance to write down, on a joint birthday card, their wishes for their president – the popular choice being a trip to the International Criminal Court. Along with the card, gifts, including a one-way ticket to the Hague, prison uniform, and handcuffs were received on Milošević’s behalf. [4]

Otpor! worked on the principle of “creating a dilemma” for the regime, which then had to either tolerate the movement’s actions and appear powerless, or respond with force and risk alienating members of the larger community or publicly embarrassing itself.  A sense of humour is essential here. And the last laugh is on the subject of the people’s protests who knows well how to stop violent demonstrations – by using violence – but who will be flummoxed by a people’s use of fun. The spirit of the laughing Jesus is alive and well on earth this Palm Sunday, at the start of Holy Week. Here’s a poem I wrote to celebrate it.

He put on a panto for Pilate

He put on a panto for Pilate

that day at Jerusalem’s gate:

Jesus the jester

erroneously dressed as a daft king

on a Donkey of State.

 

He made an old ass out of Pilate 

by lampooning his arrogant ways

with a braying old mule as his chariot

and a crowd of the town’s waifs 

and strays.

 

He went on to screw up the Temple:

chased its trading floor vendors away

with a show of derision,

and released every pigeon

like a comic magician at play.

 

When Judas protested the perfume

that Mary had splashed on his feet

Jesus the smiler

said just to beguile her

that what she had done was quite neat.

 

He caricatured the self-righteous

and made a big farce of their rules

by splitting his sides at their smug pious pride

thus showing those priests up as fools.

 

He made quite a twit out of Judas

For placing his bets the wrong way

On a guerrilla-fighter who’d take on the might of the Romans:

Saying, ‘No, put your weapons away’.

 

He’s a barrel of laughs at a party:

with the lovely red wine flowing free

he said, ‘This is my blood,

yes, honest to God, 

drink up and remember me’.

 

Like a miming old harlequin artist 

in the courts of the Chief Priest and King

he spoke not a word: 

which rendered absurd

each concocted charge that they’d bring.      

 

With a nod and a wink at poor Peter

Jesus walked out to offend

every humourless bloke 

with the ultimate joke

that death really isn’t the end.

How comfortable are you with the idea that ‘the contrast between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Caesar is central to the story of Jesus and early Christianity’; that his confrontation with the high priestly and Roman authorities was ‘the central conflict that led to Jesus’ crucifixion’? [5]

When we say that he ‘died for the sins of the whole world’, that is entirely bound up in the ways of those earthly powers and authorities, which he challenged, seeing them as being incompatible with the good and gracious ways of God he wanted all people to enjoy. 

Jesus’ crucifixion makes no sense. It is a non-sense. A foolish gesture, an absurd waste of a good life. But Jesus went through it because he knew it would reveal itself as a last desperate act of the kingdoms of this world to assert their dominion over those who oppose them. 

Funny, all that worldly power drains away the more you contemplate Jesus’ resurrection as the ultimate triumph of the kingdom of God, a victory achieved very much in and for this world. 

Notes

This talk is dedicated to my good friend Mark Coleman for his longstanding campaigning on climate change and environmental issues and honouring his vigil outside his local MPs constituency office last weekend.

[1] This line is derived from the rather witty Martin Wroe who I recall saying to camera way back in the 1990s, of Greenbelt: “We are a fundamentalist festival: we believe fundamentally in fun.”

[2] This perspective is expanded in a previous Palm Sunday talk of mine, The donkey-king is coming! Jesus’ crowd is a Flash Mob (2019). The writing of Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan in The Last Week: What the Gospels really teach about Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem, is central to this discussion.

[3] Elena Cresci, German town tricks neo-Nazis into raising thousands of euros for anti-extremist charity. Guardian, 18 November 2014.

[4] Wikipedia: Srđa Popović (activist): Otpor! See also CANVAS: Center for Applied NonViolent Actions and Strategies.

[5] Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan, The Last Week: What the Gospels really teach about Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem, p.2-5.

A new poem, the centrepiece of my Palm Sunday talk this year:

He put on a panto for Pilate

that day at Jerusalem’s gate:

Jesus the jester

erroneously dressed as a daft king

on a Donkey of State.

 

He made an old ass out of Pilate

by lampooning his arrogant ways

with a braying old mule as his chariot

and a crowd of the town's waifs

and strays.

 

He went on to screw up the Temple:

chased its trading floor vendors away

with a show of derision,

and released every pigeon

like a comic magician at play.

 

When Judas protested the perfume

that Mary had splashed on his feet

Jesus the smiler

said just to beguile her

that what she had done was quite neat.

 

He caricatured the self-righteous

and made a big farce of their rules

by splitting his sides at their smug pious pride

thus showing those priests up as fools.

 

He made quite a twit out of Judas

For placing his bets the wrong way

On a guerrilla-fighter who’d take on the might of the Romans:

Saying, ‘No, put your weapons away’.

 

He’s a barrel of laughs at a party:

with the lovely red wine flowing free

he said, ‘This is my blood,

yes, honest to God,

drink up and remember me’.

 

Like a miming old harlequin artist

in the courts of the Chief Priest and King

he spoke not a word:

which rendered absurd

each concocted charge that they’d bring.

 

With a nod and a wink at poor Peter

Jesus walked out to offend

every humourless bloke

with the ultimate joke

that death really isn’t the end.

This poem is the centrepiece of my Palm Sunday talk. Read it in full here.

Jeremiah 31.31-34, John 12.20-33 

The Fifth Sunday of Lent, 21 March 2021 – online

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”  These words of Jesus were a mystery to his disciples when he spoke them, and we may find then mysterious today, even though  we know what happened afterwards. 

“When I am lifted up from the earth….” Why should a condemned man in a bleak corner of the Roman Empire hanging alongside nameless criminals become so celebrated forever afterwards? 

“… I will draw all people to myself.” What was it about what Jesus did which has caught the attention, the imagination, inspired the devotion, of people throughout the world? 

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” This is a bold claim for Jesus to make. People might tend to look away from a dying man on a cross, for it is a grisly scene of loss, a lamentable scene of failure. Jesus is claiming that his death would have opposite effect on people. How could he so confidently predict that his death would be the beginning of an astonishing alteration in human history? 

Undeniably, history has proved him right. The crucified Jesus has drawn people to him ever since the day it happened, and we can safely assume, always will. With the hindsight of two thousand years, we can say that the crucifixion has had the profoundest impact on human history. The last words of Jesus in John’s gospel, spoken from the Cross, are: “It is accomplished.” A more accurate translation would be, “It has been brought to completion” But what exactly is accomplished? What is brought to fulfilment? What is brought to an end? Let’s listen again to what Jesus said: “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”.

Jesus is teaching how the cross heralds the judgement of the world. At Calvary, the light of the crucified Christ shines brightly on the powers of darkness in the world. This event opens the eyes of more and more people to see the weakness and emptiness of evil in comparison to the strength and completeness of good, and in this way the Crucified One gradually draws all of humanity to himself. As Rudolf Schnackenburg put it, at Calvary, “The ruler of the world encounters the final rejection, loses his sphere of influence, becomes powerless – over those who look up in faith to the crucified Jesus and let themselves be ‘drawn’ to him.” [2]

According to John, the crucifixion begins a slow movement which will eventually fill the world with the light and love of Christ. And the driving force of this movement is the “Spirit of Truth”. This Spirit of Truth changed the hearts of Jesus’ disciples at the crucifixion and in the days that followed it. They were a scared and scattered group of people, but the Spirit brought them back together and replaced their fears with pure joy. And that same Spirit gradually made that same change throughout the whole of history, over and over again, in the hearts of men and women everywhere who were drawn to Jesus. Who is this Spirit?

The word John uses for the Spirit means a “counsellor” or “advocate.” That is a legal term meaning  one who defends the “accused one.” The gospels call Satan ‘the accuser’, whose work is to set people against each other, the self-righteous against those they condemn, that old and terrible human activity of strengthening our own group by scapegoating innocent people. In contrast, we might call God ‘the chooser’ – for God chooses to accept and love all people unconditionally. Nothing about who we are or what we have done matters to God – he chooses to love us all. [4]

Jesus saw the way that the world worked – with the self-righteous holding on to their own place in the world by creating and condemning disposable victims. People in the grip of the “accuser” would continue to drown out the victim’s voice with their myths and chants and slogans. Crucify him! Crucify him! Stop their benefit! Lock them up! Silence their protests! Send them all back home! 

But Jesus taught that ‘I will send the Advocate to you. And when he comes, he will show the world how wrong it was, about sin, about who was in the right, and about judgement.’ [3] In his exchange with Andrew and Philip, Jesus revealed that from the moment of the crucifixion onward, the Spirit would begin slowly giving the victim’s voice the ability to speak above the violent language which Satan makes sound like righteousness. The victim’s voice – releasing the Spirit to show the world how wrong it is about sin and judgement, gradually leading humanity towards truth. This week, in consequence of the murder of Sarah Everard, we have been hearing many victims’ voices speaking out, the usually silenced or unheard, each bringing to light buried, uncomfortable truths about our society; is this an example of this Spirit’s power at work today? [5]

Jesus’ crucifixion loosened the grip of Satan’s lies on the human imagination. Without the crucifixion we would still be living under the spell of ‘the accuser’, ’the father of lies’. It’s like that moment when the first astronauts showed the world the pictures of this planet they had taken from the moon, and some myths about our planet just could not be believed any more. It’s not flat, it’s round, for instance; the continents look different from up there. The crucifixion had exactly the same effect as those first photos from space, only with even greater significance. Jesus said that once he was raised up on the Cross he would draw all humanity to himself; John made it clear that gradually the sight of this innocent man on the gallows would become the greatest story ever told – greater than all the lies that Satan has poured into human ears since the beginning. 

“When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.” 

Clearly Satan’s lies still have influence in our world. The Accuser is still working in us that instinct to condemn others as a way of solving or ignoring our own problems, just as Caiaphas and Pilate, encouraged by the crowd, condemned Jesus as a way of solving theirs. But the greatest thing is that the Spirit is also still at work, gradually, slowly but surely, drawing all people to Jesus and his ways. On the cross Jesus defeated death. Afterwards, and now, for all who come to him, there is only life. 

Notes 

[1] A rewrite of John 12 – “I will draw all people to myself”, preached at the Good Shepherd, Croxteth, 2006. It draws heavily on an extract from Gil Bailie, Violence Unveiled: Humanity at the Crossroads p. 226, as quoted in Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Notes on The Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year B. 

[2] Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St. John, 2, p.392 

[3] John 16.7-8.

[4] See Paul Nuechterlein, Satan the Accuser and God the Chooser and my subsequent version, Mark 8 – Satan the Accuser and God the Chooser.

[5] Molly Blackall, ‘I’ve been quiet too long’: reflections on the death of Sarah Everard. Guardian, 15 March 2021. Maya Wolfe-Robinson and Vikram Dodd, Institutional misogyny ‘erodes women’s trust in UK police’. Guardian, 16 March 2021.

Exodus 20.1-17, John 2.13-22 

The Third Sunday of Lent, 7 March 2021 – online

The cartoonist Michael Leunig notices it: that in this day and age it seems like ‘Everyone is offended. Everyone is irritable, disagreeable, cranky and nervous. Everybody is jumping at shadows, jumping at conclusions. Everyone is in a bad mood.’ 

Does this ring true to you? Is it something you notice in yourself? That simmering dislike of the person holding up the queue in the shop chatting, while you wait with decreasing patience wondering if you’ll ever get your turn. The road rage – both with slow ones in front of you and people in too much of a hurry annoyingly up close behind. Shouting at the TV news in reaction to some opinion you’ve grown to dislike being parroted again. 

There’s a lot of talk at the moment about our society’s poor mental health – the negative effects of the pandemic with its consequent lockdowns and social isolation. These experiences of the past year have certainly damaged us; we’re feeling the cumulative effects of the loss of loved ones, the loss or reduction of work and income, the strains of being stuck at home for prolonged periods, the removal of our freedom to travel (although we mustn’t forget the countless acts of individual and communal neighbourly actions which have nurtured strong social bonds and protected people against stress during this crisis). [1]

This talk about our society’s poor mental health contains contradictions. Our anger, our distress, our depression, is usually depicted as an individual problem – the focus is on what each person needs to do (on their own) to practice ’self-care’. It makes you think that you are the problem which only you can fix. This is rooted in the idea that it’s our malfunctioning neurochemistry or our dysfunctional family circumstances which cause our chronic health conditions, and which should be treated by some combination of therapy and medication. What this ignores is those circumstances ‘outside’ the individual’s control which impact on us physically and on our state of heart and mind. In this point of view, the cause of our mental health problems is not ‘inside’ us, it’s in the world around us, in society and the way it’s organised.  As food poverty increases there will be more stressed families. So the ‘solution’ depends on more than counselling services and Prozac;  it must also involve a combined effort to address the structural problems which trouble us. [2] 

We will get angry – even Jesus got angry. It’s not the healthiest emotion, it can be destructive. Yes, it can be a safety-valve, a helpful release of pent-up pain, but it can cause so much harm. If we can understand it, then we may find redemption in our anger; if we can begin to address what causes it then we’re on the path to making positive change – in ourselves, and in the world.

We may find the image of an angry Jesus unsettling; for it seems so out of character and so removed from the way we expect him to be: gentle Jesus, meek and mild. Yet if we pay close attention to his life story we might see this coming – for what drives his angry outburst is his instinct to protect what he loves: The Temple. As John wrote, it was ‘zeal for God’s house that consumed him’. [3]

He was angry protecting what he loved – for he was a child of The Temple, taken there by his parents as a babe in arms to receive blessings from the elders Simeon and Anna. His love for The Temple grew through his childhood – The Temple as the place where he would learn about the ways of God and his laws, his love for this learning witnessed on that family trip to Jerusalem when he stayed behind to sit at the feet of The Temple teachers. 

As he loved spending time at The Temple, Jesus saw everything that happened there. We know he saw the pious scribes walking around in flowing robes, taking the most important seats and enjoying being honoured in The Temple courts. He saw the show they made of giving their offerings out of their wealth, and he observed how the Temple tax system enriched them whilst taking the last pennies from poor widows.  We hear a flash of the angry Jesus when he said, ‘Those devouring the homes of the widows and praying at great length for show, these shall receive condemnation in greater abundance.’ [4]

If you love something so good – like the house of God; if it carries deep value to you and to your people – then you’ll want it to flourish in the ways for which it was intended. But if you see it losing its way, its leaders turning a blind eye to the injustices from which they benefit – then you might get angry. But it’s out of love, from the instinct to protect what’s being lost, that this anger rises within you. The Temple is good;  The Temple is broken; can The Temple be redeemed? – this is the question that lies behind Jesus’ table-turning act of aggression that day. [5]

Jesus’ instinct was that The Temple could be redeemed – although it would be dismantled completely before it could be restored. In his anger and his sadness at the corruption at the heart of God’s Holy Place he had realised that the present Temple system had run its course; it was morally exhausted. He began teaching his disciples that The Temple would be destroyed – a prophecy which came true in the year 70AD, the decisive event of the First Jewish–Roman War [6] – and that in its place he would be the new Temple – he would be the one to whom people would come to find forgiveness, to find redemption, to find God, to find hope. He began speaking of The Temple of his body: and of his sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

There is plenty of anger being directed at the Church of England today. For if you love being in the house of God then you’ll be understandably upset finding your church doors locked; if you are sustained by weekly worship and the act of Holy Communion then your being denied it will cause pain and even outrage. I’m angry at the Church in the wake of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse which shows how the institution has consistently sought to protect its own, for the sake of its reputation, at the expense of those suffering abuse. [7] In her astonishingly frank memoir of growing up in a clergy family, Patricia Lockwood writes of the feeling of being inside the “we” which is the Church with all its shameful secrets. She writes:  “A we is so powerful. It is the most corrupt and formidable institution on earth… The we closes its ranks to protect the space inside it, where the air is different. It does not protect people. It protects its own shape.” [8]

Yet what begins in anger can develop into hope. In an interview this week the Archbishop of York said: “We constantly need to reset our compass, which isn’t quite the same thing as losing it. We’ve learned to accommodate things that we know are wrong, which it would be possible to do something about.” [9]

The force of moral outrage which drove Jesus to expel the moneychangers from The Temple has propelled many other protests for just causes over the centuries. Sometimes our anger just needs healing and forgiveness. At other times our anger can fuel hope; our anger can bring about redemption.

Notes

This began as a rewrite of Turning the tables on the taxman (my Ken Dodd sermon) preached in Somerset, 2018 and in Devon, 2012, but which then took on its own particularly 2021 turn.

[1] Richard Bentall, Has the pandemic really caused a ‘tsunami’ of mental health problems? Guardian, 9 February 2021.

[2] Colette Shade, Mental Health Is a Political Problem. Tribune, 25 February 2021.

[3] John 2.17 quoting Psalm 69.10. “Anger is the force that protects that which is loved.” Valarie Kaur, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, quoted in Suzanne Ross, Faith, Beliefs, & Revolutionary Love: An Excerpt from Brian McLaren’s Book, “Faith After Doubt”, RavenReview, Raven Foundation, 22 February 2021. “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child”: a hymn by Charles Wesley.

[4] Mark 12.40 (using the wording in David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation).

[5] “The Powers are good. The Powers are fallen. The Powers must be redeemed.” Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. p.3

[6] Wikipedia: Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE).

[7] Church of England website, Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse.

[8] Patricia Lockwood, Priestdaddy: A Memoir. Chapter 6.

[9] Harriet Sherwood, Britain must reset its compass, from housing to wages, says archbishop of York. Observer, 28 February 2021.