Friday, 25 December 2015
Happy Christmas!
Heaven is a wonderful place. The sun always shines, everything is beautiful, and peaceful and exciting. There are pleasures for evermore! Anything you want you can have!Why would anyone ever want to leave?
Thursday, 10 December 2015
Next year, it's back to the Bible
Christmas is coming, and the goose, apparently, is getting fat.
I've decided it's time for another online Bible reading - athon ... thing. Some years ago, I read through the Bible in a year, blogging every day. Then I tried to do the same with the Apocrypha, but gave up due to boredom.
My plan this time round isn't as ambitious, I'm simply going to read Luke and Isaiah. A little bit of Luke every day will take me up until May, then a slightly bigger bit of Isaiah will take me through the rest of the year.
Why have I chosen those two books? Well, Luke because a vicar colleague and friend was telling me how he spent more than a year preaching his way through the whole of Luke's gospel, and I liked the sound of that. Also, if you know what the word lectionary means, then chances are you'll also know that you'll be hearing some of Luke nearly every Sunday from now until the end of November 2016.
As for Isaiah, it's long been a favourite book, but I only really know it in bits. There are lots of famous bits, some of which we are reading now as Christmas approaches. Others will be brought out at Easter. But I want to try and get a grasp of the book as a whole. Is it one book, or three? And is Isaiah a name, or was it a club, to which certain prophets belonged? I won't reach an answer to these questions, but I'll have fun thinking about them.
So that's my plan. You're welcome to read along with me, starting on January 1st. Or to dip in and out whenever you feel like it. Write me a comment, let me know that you're there - it will be a great encouragement. And please disagree with what I say. I can guarantee that a large chunk of it will be completely wrong.
Trouble is, I don't know which chunk.
I've decided it's time for another online Bible reading - athon ... thing. Some years ago, I read through the Bible in a year, blogging every day. Then I tried to do the same with the Apocrypha, but gave up due to boredom.
My plan this time round isn't as ambitious, I'm simply going to read Luke and Isaiah. A little bit of Luke every day will take me up until May, then a slightly bigger bit of Isaiah will take me through the rest of the year.
Why have I chosen those two books? Well, Luke because a vicar colleague and friend was telling me how he spent more than a year preaching his way through the whole of Luke's gospel, and I liked the sound of that. Also, if you know what the word lectionary means, then chances are you'll also know that you'll be hearing some of Luke nearly every Sunday from now until the end of November 2016.
As for Isaiah, it's long been a favourite book, but I only really know it in bits. There are lots of famous bits, some of which we are reading now as Christmas approaches. Others will be brought out at Easter. But I want to try and get a grasp of the book as a whole. Is it one book, or three? And is Isaiah a name, or was it a club, to which certain prophets belonged? I won't reach an answer to these questions, but I'll have fun thinking about them.
So that's my plan. You're welcome to read along with me, starting on January 1st. Or to dip in and out whenever you feel like it. Write me a comment, let me know that you're there - it will be a great encouragement. And please disagree with what I say. I can guarantee that a large chunk of it will be completely wrong.
Trouble is, I don't know which chunk.
Thursday, 22 October 2015
Au revoir, Sue Riddlestone
I said goodbye to someone I much admired yesterday. I don't know when I'll see her again, but I'm absolutely certain I will. She had a great gift of being extraordinary, but seeming ordinary. Approachable enough to be friends with anyone. Wise and skilful enough to make friends with people whose language you would never have thought she could speak: from bishops and politicians, to single parents and immigrants.
I once asked her how many children she'd got, and she struggled to give me an answer. Not least because of the two Albanians who became part of her family, but also because she could be mother to thousands. How could she count the number of people she cared about as a mother cares for her children?
I was always a little in awe of Sue. I was in awe of the problems she dealt with, any one of which would have floored me, yet she juggled many of them simultaneously. I was in awe of her energy, spending all day every day making lives better all around her. Yet to be with her and talk to her was the easiest thing in the world.
The first time she invited me and my family for a meal, she said "we haven't actually got a kitchen at the moment ..." and cheerfully showed me the hole where her kitchen was going to be - currently lacking a floor, as well as anything to cook with. But there was a row of slow cookers on a table, and a delicious meal taking shape inside them. I can't remember how many people she fed that day, with no kitchen, But I soon realised this was nothing unusual. This is what Dave, her husband did. He didn't just redecorate, he rebuilt.
The last Balkan war was a terrible thing. Countries that had co-existed for 50 years or more divided and religious or ethnic lines, families were ripped apart and neighbours took up arms and began systematically butchering each other. And some fled - including a teenage boy who made his way to this country. An email went round the churches, asking if anyone could give a home to a traumatised youth whose foster care arrangements had broken down. I had a phone call the same day, asking if I could help. Another problem beyond my ability to deal with, so I phoned Sue. The next I knew, she had taken him in, and Valdet became her son. She fought for him to stay in this country, even though the Home Office seemed to have decided that he would be sent back home and I actually thought it would be best for Sue to accept the inevitable. She wouldn't accept it, and in the end his case was won, and he stayed. Later, another miracle occurred, and he found his mother alive, after years of searching. "Now I have two mothers," he said.
Diagnosed with liver cancer three years ago, Sue should have died quickly, but somehow she managed to sustain course after course of chemotherapy, keeping active despite a raft of side effects. Although I had moved away and no longer saw her in person, she kept in touch, bothering to contact me by phone or online.
Finally I heard that she had died, and yesterday I went to say goodbye.
No, not to say goodbye. Because Sue and I share one unshakeable belief - the hope that this life is not the only one there is, but that heaven is not a dream or a fantasy but a reality in which no good thing will be lost. She had a firm faith in Jesus Christ, as do I, and would tell anyone who asked what it was about. She would never preach - that wasn't her style - but if you wanted to know, she would enlighten you. And being around Sue for a while made you want to know. How did she do it? How could she do it?
She loved, because God first loved her. And so her funeral yesterday wasn't a farewell, it truly was au revoir, Sue Riddlestone.
I once asked her how many children she'd got, and she struggled to give me an answer. Not least because of the two Albanians who became part of her family, but also because she could be mother to thousands. How could she count the number of people she cared about as a mother cares for her children?
I was always a little in awe of Sue. I was in awe of the problems she dealt with, any one of which would have floored me, yet she juggled many of them simultaneously. I was in awe of her energy, spending all day every day making lives better all around her. Yet to be with her and talk to her was the easiest thing in the world.
The first time she invited me and my family for a meal, she said "we haven't actually got a kitchen at the moment ..." and cheerfully showed me the hole where her kitchen was going to be - currently lacking a floor, as well as anything to cook with. But there was a row of slow cookers on a table, and a delicious meal taking shape inside them. I can't remember how many people she fed that day, with no kitchen, But I soon realised this was nothing unusual. This is what Dave, her husband did. He didn't just redecorate, he rebuilt.
The last Balkan war was a terrible thing. Countries that had co-existed for 50 years or more divided and religious or ethnic lines, families were ripped apart and neighbours took up arms and began systematically butchering each other. And some fled - including a teenage boy who made his way to this country. An email went round the churches, asking if anyone could give a home to a traumatised youth whose foster care arrangements had broken down. I had a phone call the same day, asking if I could help. Another problem beyond my ability to deal with, so I phoned Sue. The next I knew, she had taken him in, and Valdet became her son. She fought for him to stay in this country, even though the Home Office seemed to have decided that he would be sent back home and I actually thought it would be best for Sue to accept the inevitable. She wouldn't accept it, and in the end his case was won, and he stayed. Later, another miracle occurred, and he found his mother alive, after years of searching. "Now I have two mothers," he said.
Diagnosed with liver cancer three years ago, Sue should have died quickly, but somehow she managed to sustain course after course of chemotherapy, keeping active despite a raft of side effects. Although I had moved away and no longer saw her in person, she kept in touch, bothering to contact me by phone or online.
Finally I heard that she had died, and yesterday I went to say goodbye.
No, not to say goodbye. Because Sue and I share one unshakeable belief - the hope that this life is not the only one there is, but that heaven is not a dream or a fantasy but a reality in which no good thing will be lost. She had a firm faith in Jesus Christ, as do I, and would tell anyone who asked what it was about. She would never preach - that wasn't her style - but if you wanted to know, she would enlighten you. And being around Sue for a while made you want to know. How did she do it? How could she do it?
She loved, because God first loved her. And so her funeral yesterday wasn't a farewell, it truly was au revoir, Sue Riddlestone.
Wednesday, 15 April 2015
First Light - A Passion Play for Hertford
Easter Saturday saw me at St Andrew's to see the Passion Play so long awaited. Written by Kate Miller and directed by Trevor Georges, this was not just some Am Dram production, but a play with some pedigree.
On Good Friday morning, in the town centre, we heard four monologues, also written by Kate, which whet our appetite. From them, it was clear that the play wasn't just set in the past, but dealt with the present day sufferings of rich people in a comfortable county town.
Yes - people do suffer in comfortable Hertford. To a surprising degree. Whenever people point the finger at God, and ask angrily why he didn't prevent a particularly hideous example of suffering, I usually think of the pain of so many people, carefully concealed behind what look like successful lives. No one ever blames God for not sparing their suffering, but any time there's an earthquake, or a child dies of cancer, God cops it with both barrels.
So I was expecting a play that would be floating on a sea of pain.
Instead it began playfully, with Jesus and his disciples dressed in bodywarmers and beanies, trying to gatecrash a private function at the Temple. A little fundraiser, organised by Caiaphas and his pals, schmoozing the rich and well connected, aimed at creaming off a little of their spare cash while leaving them with a warm charitable glow.
Predictably, Jesus (or Yesh as he is called in this play) spoils the party. Played by John Holden-White, Yesh has a playful innocence about him, His cleansing of the Temple isn't a calculated act, aimed at provoking political action against him: it's a thing of the moment, prompting him into a rerun of the beatitudes. Judas steps forward, trying to coach Jesus into action, giving us the clue as to how this play sees the betrayer. Like a footballer's agent, Judas sees his role as getting the most out of Yesh's talent. He gives him little pep talks like an anxious manager.
Soon Yesh is organising his Last Supper. It's a curry above a pub, in a room that's too small for the table. Organised it isn't. Perhaps he should have put Judas in charge. But it led to a great line - "Was that my last meal? Should have had a tandoori."
The disciples are an example of inclusiveness - a complete mixture of men and women, and Mags, (Mary Magdalene?) has her own clear ideas of what her Messiah should be doing. She argues passionately against his risk-taking, while it is dawning on Yesh that he really is in danger, and perhaps, danger is just where God wants him to be.
Peter is a small and whiny man, not a natural leader, found fishing on a reservoir after being made redundant. He can't believe or accept Yesh's trust in him. The big man is John - with few words during the first half of the play, but a solid reassuring presence. But it is Judas who drives the first half - his nervous crackling energy sets the pace - electric acting from Rob Madeley. He sounds confident even when he isn't, but we sense that he is driving blind and heading for disaster.
After the interval, the tone darkens. There are scenes with the excellently sinister Thom Jackson-Wood, playing Annas as a weaselly collaborator who has Pontius Pilate's ear. Caiaphas is manipulated by his shady colleague into forcing through an execution, and Yesh is duly arrested. Judas thought he's arranged it nicely - a few nights in prison just to get his man out of a tight spot, then he'll be free to ramp up his message and build up a following who can fight. But events slide out of his control, and Yesh is on trial for his life.
We see the agony through the eyes of Mary, who pleads to be allowed to see Yesh and speak to him. Superb acting from Julia Thomas moved the whole audience, as her shrieks of a mother's misery tore through the church.
How hard it is to stage a crucifixion! After a somewhat clunky whirring, as the cross was winched slowly upwards, the answer here was to use a kind of lightning/electric shock effect (perhaps I'm reading too much into it to see a nod to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest?) and Jesus is dead and buried, thanks to the offices of a bookish Joseph of Arimathea, who remembers Yeshua as a 12 year old prodigy, answering questions in the Temple.
Peter and Judas have moving monologues, Judas brandishing his noose, and then comes the finest moment for me - the harrowing of hell. In the dark, Judas stands, surrounded by all the cast who walk round and round him, echoing words that shift in and out of a conversation with Jesus. Yeshua and Judas both ask each other for forgiveness for trying to use the other, and when Judas finally struggles to find forgiveness in his heart, he hears the offer to follow his master our of his place of torment.
As the lights come up, the resurrection scenes are played out - back to the reservoir for a spot of fishing, big John comes into his own as Mary's adopted son, and Yesh reappears, back to his jaunty self, lighting up a barbeque, commissioning little Peter to "feed my lambs" and tenderly receiving his mother's love.
Weaknesses? There were a few. It's hard to make slow painful death look convincing, even with some expert writhing during the electric shock moments. The resurrection ending, for me, felt too static. There wasn't enough sense of the disciples being sent out, and Yesh was there right to the end, as if everything was back how it was. No Ascension to force the disciples to move on. Joanna's self-unmasking - Catherine Forrester calling herself by her real name at the end - fell flat for me, which was a shame after she had drawn her character so well throughout.
Honourable mentions for Sarah Lawn, who played her several small parts with great aplomb, Charlie Abbott showing both strength and tenderness in her role as Mags, and the amateurs Wayne Matthews, who became more and more convincing as the play went on, and Stuart Handysides, whose James had the role of tidying up after everybody else, and propping up a drunk Peter, filled with remorse for betraying his Lord.
I was warned that it was not a conventional play, that as a Christian there would be things I wouldn't agree with. Actually there were few such moments. I suppose the sense in which Yesh felt his way into events, rather than operating to a divine plan, might raise certain theological eyebrows, but Mark's gospel in particular hints at a Jesus who made quite a lot up as he went along, so I was comfortable with this. The treatment of Judas? No shocks there - his character has to be rehabilitated somehow, after 2000 years of opprobrium, and this was a coherent attempt.
One final big feature to mention is the references to contemporary pain. By stepping in and out of a present day setting, and a Bible times setting, the play draws in a number of current sources of pain. So redundancy is explored, bereavement of course, exploitation by the rich, self-image, and more. This is the way in which we are invited to place ourselves into this age old story, and hear the message of liberation afresh.
On Good Friday morning, in the town centre, we heard four monologues, also written by Kate, which whet our appetite. From them, it was clear that the play wasn't just set in the past, but dealt with the present day sufferings of rich people in a comfortable county town.
Yes - people do suffer in comfortable Hertford. To a surprising degree. Whenever people point the finger at God, and ask angrily why he didn't prevent a particularly hideous example of suffering, I usually think of the pain of so many people, carefully concealed behind what look like successful lives. No one ever blames God for not sparing their suffering, but any time there's an earthquake, or a child dies of cancer, God cops it with both barrels.
So I was expecting a play that would be floating on a sea of pain.
Instead it began playfully, with Jesus and his disciples dressed in bodywarmers and beanies, trying to gatecrash a private function at the Temple. A little fundraiser, organised by Caiaphas and his pals, schmoozing the rich and well connected, aimed at creaming off a little of their spare cash while leaving them with a warm charitable glow.
Predictably, Jesus (or Yesh as he is called in this play) spoils the party. Played by John Holden-White, Yesh has a playful innocence about him, His cleansing of the Temple isn't a calculated act, aimed at provoking political action against him: it's a thing of the moment, prompting him into a rerun of the beatitudes. Judas steps forward, trying to coach Jesus into action, giving us the clue as to how this play sees the betrayer. Like a footballer's agent, Judas sees his role as getting the most out of Yesh's talent. He gives him little pep talks like an anxious manager.
Soon Yesh is organising his Last Supper. It's a curry above a pub, in a room that's too small for the table. Organised it isn't. Perhaps he should have put Judas in charge. But it led to a great line - "Was that my last meal? Should have had a tandoori."
The disciples are an example of inclusiveness - a complete mixture of men and women, and Mags, (Mary Magdalene?) has her own clear ideas of what her Messiah should be doing. She argues passionately against his risk-taking, while it is dawning on Yesh that he really is in danger, and perhaps, danger is just where God wants him to be.
Peter is a small and whiny man, not a natural leader, found fishing on a reservoir after being made redundant. He can't believe or accept Yesh's trust in him. The big man is John - with few words during the first half of the play, but a solid reassuring presence. But it is Judas who drives the first half - his nervous crackling energy sets the pace - electric acting from Rob Madeley. He sounds confident even when he isn't, but we sense that he is driving blind and heading for disaster.
After the interval, the tone darkens. There are scenes with the excellently sinister Thom Jackson-Wood, playing Annas as a weaselly collaborator who has Pontius Pilate's ear. Caiaphas is manipulated by his shady colleague into forcing through an execution, and Yesh is duly arrested. Judas thought he's arranged it nicely - a few nights in prison just to get his man out of a tight spot, then he'll be free to ramp up his message and build up a following who can fight. But events slide out of his control, and Yesh is on trial for his life.
We see the agony through the eyes of Mary, who pleads to be allowed to see Yesh and speak to him. Superb acting from Julia Thomas moved the whole audience, as her shrieks of a mother's misery tore through the church.
How hard it is to stage a crucifixion! After a somewhat clunky whirring, as the cross was winched slowly upwards, the answer here was to use a kind of lightning/electric shock effect (perhaps I'm reading too much into it to see a nod to One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest?) and Jesus is dead and buried, thanks to the offices of a bookish Joseph of Arimathea, who remembers Yeshua as a 12 year old prodigy, answering questions in the Temple.
Peter and Judas have moving monologues, Judas brandishing his noose, and then comes the finest moment for me - the harrowing of hell. In the dark, Judas stands, surrounded by all the cast who walk round and round him, echoing words that shift in and out of a conversation with Jesus. Yeshua and Judas both ask each other for forgiveness for trying to use the other, and when Judas finally struggles to find forgiveness in his heart, he hears the offer to follow his master our of his place of torment.
As the lights come up, the resurrection scenes are played out - back to the reservoir for a spot of fishing, big John comes into his own as Mary's adopted son, and Yesh reappears, back to his jaunty self, lighting up a barbeque, commissioning little Peter to "feed my lambs" and tenderly receiving his mother's love.
Weaknesses? There were a few. It's hard to make slow painful death look convincing, even with some expert writhing during the electric shock moments. The resurrection ending, for me, felt too static. There wasn't enough sense of the disciples being sent out, and Yesh was there right to the end, as if everything was back how it was. No Ascension to force the disciples to move on. Joanna's self-unmasking - Catherine Forrester calling herself by her real name at the end - fell flat for me, which was a shame after she had drawn her character so well throughout.
Honourable mentions for Sarah Lawn, who played her several small parts with great aplomb, Charlie Abbott showing both strength and tenderness in her role as Mags, and the amateurs Wayne Matthews, who became more and more convincing as the play went on, and Stuart Handysides, whose James had the role of tidying up after everybody else, and propping up a drunk Peter, filled with remorse for betraying his Lord.
I was warned that it was not a conventional play, that as a Christian there would be things I wouldn't agree with. Actually there were few such moments. I suppose the sense in which Yesh felt his way into events, rather than operating to a divine plan, might raise certain theological eyebrows, but Mark's gospel in particular hints at a Jesus who made quite a lot up as he went along, so I was comfortable with this. The treatment of Judas? No shocks there - his character has to be rehabilitated somehow, after 2000 years of opprobrium, and this was a coherent attempt.
One final big feature to mention is the references to contemporary pain. By stepping in and out of a present day setting, and a Bible times setting, the play draws in a number of current sources of pain. So redundancy is explored, bereavement of course, exploitation by the rich, self-image, and more. This is the way in which we are invited to place ourselves into this age old story, and hear the message of liberation afresh.
Saturday, 21 February 2015
Ashes to Ashes
I preached this sermon on Ash Wednesday, and slightly modified, used it again on the Sunday following.
The Bible passage I mainly used is John 8:1-11.
I’d like you to put yourselves in the shoes of an interested visitor to our service today. Imagine someone who has probably read the service booklet by now, listened to the words of the hymns and the Bible readings, and who is probably wondering what “Imposition of Ashes” might be, and whether it hurts.
What might they think we are about?
Would they be concluding that we are a nervous, somewhat paranoid bunch of people, who feel the need to check that God isn’t cross with us, rather than confidently making our own way in the world?
What would our visitor think of the God we are worshipping? Does he sound like a stern and strict enforcer of the rules?
Or is he like a violent husband who, unless his wife keeps saying that everything is her fault and she’s so sorry, will let fly with his fists again? That may be what they would think.
But I don’t think we believe in an angry sort of God, and I don’t think we are a nervous sort of people.
So I want to take a closer look at what we’re like and what God is like. I want to suggest that we’ve got a God who loves us no matter what we’re like, and that we’ve got a God who has found a way of dealing with the wrongs in the world.
Jesus doesn’t confront them back. He crouches down.
The Bible passage I mainly used is John 8:1-11.
What do you think God is like?
I’d like you to put yourselves in the shoes of an interested visitor to our service today. Imagine someone who has probably read the service booklet by now, listened to the words of the hymns and the Bible readings, and who is probably wondering what “Imposition of Ashes” might be, and whether it hurts.What might they think we are about?
Would they be concluding that we are a nervous, somewhat paranoid bunch of people, who feel the need to check that God isn’t cross with us, rather than confidently making our own way in the world?
What would our visitor think of the God we are worshipping? Does he sound like a stern and strict enforcer of the rules?But I don’t think we believe in an angry sort of God, and I don’t think we are a nervous sort of people.
So I want to take a closer look at what we’re like and what God is like. I want to suggest that we’ve got a God who loves us no matter what we’re like, and that we’ve got a God who has found a way of dealing with the wrongs in the world.
The Gift
During the week I saw a programme on telly about a man who as a boy had quite mercilessly bullied a school mate. Now grown up and my age, he was tortured with guilt and shame about what he had done, and desperately wanted to meet the man he had wronged, and ask for his forgiveness.
The programme built up the tension by interviewing a psychologist, who spoke about the immense damage that bullying can do. Then Matt Baker, the presenter, did the detective work of tracking down Simon, the bullied boy, and asking if he would be prepared to meet Jon, who had done him such harm.
Jon was a perfectly decent family man, yet as a child he’d picked on another boy and made his life a living hell. It made me think that something is very wrong in people. Even people who ought to be perfectly decent and good don’t always behave in a decent, good and righteous way.
Jesus came for sinners
It made me think how that old fashioned word that the church still uses – sin – still has some currency. Jesus said, “I haven’t come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance” So if you are righteous, holy, decent and good, I’ve one thing to say – there’s the door. Just close it on your way out, and keep us sinners warm. Because we’re the ones Jesus has come for. And in this service, we are confronting the reality that none of us are good through and through.
We believe in Love
The truth is, we’re not all bad. Alongside that crookedness inside us all, there is also a great deal of goodness. We respond to love. We have it within ourselves to respond with kindness when we see a need.
But the dividing line between good and bad doesn’t separate US, the good people, from THEM, the bad ones. Oh no. The dividing line runs right through the middle of our souls. And that’s the problem.
And or course God knows all about it. He knows we aren’t perfect, so he gave us a book with rules to follow, he taught us right from wrong. God’s ways, the Bible’s ways, are the basis of the law of our land.
The law is very good at telling us what we should do. But the law is a lot less good at telling us what to do when we’ve done what is not right. We tend to resort to punishment, in those circumstances.
But punishment doesn’t put right what was wrong. It just makes the perpetrator suffer. The injured party is still injured.
If I broke into your house and stole all your possessions, and if I was then arrested and sent to prison, you wouldn’t have your things back. I’d be suffering for my crime, but you would still be dealing with the shock of being burgled, the fear of it happening again, the loss of your treasured belongings. Two wrongs don’t make a right.
And yet we still think that a little bit more suffering will cure our suffering. A little bit more violence will fix our own violence. One more war will end all wars. But it never does.
We need more than the law.
Jesus was different. He knew what to do with people who had done something wrong. And we’ve got a brilliant example in our gospel reading today.
Jesus and the woman caught in adultery
First of all, this is not about the woman. The pharisees weren’t wanting to know what to do with someone who had committed adultery, They knew perfectly well. They just wanted a situation to throw at Jesus, something to test him with. They just wanted to say “It’s all very well for you to criticise us for being judgemental and unloving, but let’s see you deal any differently with a crime!”
The man
He is concerned with everyone, the pahrisees, the woman, and the person who isn’t there. Let’s just mention him first. You can’t commit adultery by yourself. What happened to the man involved?
Nobody knows. All we know is that he managed to get away. Maybe he was hopelessly in love with this woman, maybe he was heartlessly using her for his own pleasure, whatever the situation, he was savvy enough to make himself scare when the religious police came knocking. He exemplifies our modern morality nicely, doesn’t he? The only thing that’s wrong is getting caught. Like HSBC thinking that making money out of tax evasion was fine, so long as nobody knew. So the man, the absent man, is a very important part of this story.
The Pharisees
Jesus doesn’t confront them back. He crouches down.
He doesn’t escalate. He finds something very interesting on the ground instead, until finally he says “who’s good and who’s bad here? Just show me where the dividing line goes.” And they can’t. They can’t draw a line that allows the adulterous woman to be on one side, and the upright, religious people to be on the other side. They find that it can’t be done, so they slink away.
The woman
At last Jesus turn to the woman and points out that no one has condemned her. “Neither do I condemn you, Go and leave your life of sin.” Jesus opened a door for her, and gave her the chance to step through into a new life.
The key that opened the door was Truth.
The tv programme I saw last night had Simon, the victim of the bullying saying “Yes I will meet Jon. But I won’t forgive him. I’ll never forgive him for what he did to me.”
Jon the bully said “I can’t keep this a secret any longer, I have to put my cards on the table. I don’t know what Simon will say when we meet, but I have to believe it’s better to tell the truth about what I’ve done.”
When they met, Jon said “Simon, will you forgive me?”
And Simon said “Yes.”
The truth will set you free
The woman had no choice about telling the truth – the truth was told for her. Jon felt he had to tell the truth, because the secret of his shame was eating him up.
We’re in the happy position of being able to choose. But if we want a door unlocked in our lives, maybe we need to tell God the truth about ourselves.
Jesus is the truth, he said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Jesus is present here, by his Spirit.
So we’re in good company, we’re in safe hands.
And what does he have to say to us? “I do not condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin.”
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