My mind is flicking back now about 2500 years to the days of the beautiful Jewish Queen Esther, super-glam of the ancient Persian Empire, surrounded by jostling and ambitious men, each vying for position, prestige and honour. Indeed, she had everything ... luxury, acclaim and clearly the King’s favour. But, she was not afraid to lose it all.
Perhaps I should rephrase that last comment. She probably was afraid but true courage outstrips fear and she certainly had some of that. See her now, risking life, risking everything for the sake of God’ s honour, God’s people. “If I perish, I perish” (Esther 4: 16 ) were her immortal words before she took the precarious step of entering the king’s presence uninvited in order to save her people from annihilation as the result of a monstrous ruling.
What would have been the headline that day? Death or glory? Esther’s dance with death: subtitle: queen risks life to gain audience with king.
I admire people, always, who trembling, embrace courage, risking reputation, honour for something higher, more important than themselves. Superstar Esther, you really did become a superstar in my eyes that day. And there have been many, many more like you since - usually hidden, unrecorded – stars, superstars. Heaven will reveal them.
O for the courage that outstrips fear. Esther prevented a catastrophe on a vast scale. What can be achieved if we step out, push past our dreadful enemy, Fear, take Courage by the arm and embrace the words of a Lioness: “If I perish, I perish?”
Thoughts from the book of Esther, Old Testament.
There are many advantages of living in Christian community: one of them is this: we, as a community, can take in and assist people in a way that we just couldn’t on our own.
Sarah (not her real name) is an asylum seeker who is staying at our house. She comes from, indeed is fleeing from, a place where it is shameful for women to be seen on the streets or in shops on their own. And, here she is, in the UK, alone and with a small child. For people like her, our streets and public areas can seem very frightening places; things we think nothing of - a trip to the supermarket or a ride on the bus – can be a scary ordeal.
Sarah is staying for a few months with us before she goes to live in her own place. She is excited about that prospect but, as yet, unprepared - and that’s our job. One of us is teaching her how to do the washing (she comes from a privileged background where these things are often done for you). Another is taking her out on the bus to give her confidence to travel on her own. I am teaching her how to shop.
However, none of us can teach her how to cook chapattis. Today she is cooking for us – yum, something to look forward to when I get home!
This week she has reached two milestones: a lone bus trip (you should have seen the pleasure on her face when she returned) and a trip to the post office (where she went to the counter to have two parcels weighed and posted).
It’s a journey towards independence which she is making and she’s learning it in what may seem an unlikely place – Christian community.
Christian community is not about hanging onto people; it's about releasing people to be, well, their best, whatever that may be. Maybe, in a few months, we won’t see much of Sarah – she
will have moved on. But, we’ve seen her on her way and hopefully what she has learned will affect the rest of her life. It will all have
been worth it; we will have done something together, something actually very special, something that I could never had done on my own.
Has anyone written a book called ‘Christian Failures’?
I mean, I love reading about people who fail, first time, second time, third time and more. . people who come home from the mission field with no fruit at all or spend fifteen years making one disciple.
Why? I like reading about humans like me, people who battled, doubted, sunk and rose again (figuratively speaking), felt like giving up, did give up, let others down, forgave others, forgave themselves ... God’s work is often built on our mistakes, our failures, our repentance - and His grace.
Failure is probably the wrong word. ‘Failure’ is God’s training ground; it is often the time when actually we are bearing fruit, maybe not in terms of outward success but in terms of patience, faith, love, repentance etc.
When I visit Oxford I love to walk down Broad Street and, if there’s not too much traffic, stand on that humble black stone cross which lies unobtrusively amongst the cobbles on the road. Why? One of my heroes stood there – Cranmer, one time Archbishop of Canterbury (1489 – 1556).
True, he wrote some of the finest prayers ever written in the English language as well as having the wisdom to collect and translate from former traditions but he failed the first round BIG TIME in a time of persecution in Queen Mary 1's reign, denying the very things he had so believed in and written about. He was double-minded, cowardly, weak. His vacillations did not save him and see him now, the faggots are piled up, the fire is lit and he is about to be burned, on the wasteland outside the city walls as it was then.
But, the story goes on, written by an anonymous bystander that 'he stretched out his right hand, and thrust it into the flame, and held it there a good space, before the fire came to any other part of his body; where his hand was seen of every man sensibly burning, crying with a loud voice, 'This hand hath offended.'
His offending hand placed in the flames first, the hand that had written the denial of what he had believed in - before his body was consumed. I like this sort of thing. Something is answered deep inside my humanity; I am comforted and moved; I find hope.
Book of failures? Not in my eyes. Good for you, Cranmer!
2013: New year, new adventures - so we (5 of us) decided to begin a few hours early. Last night’s late hours and this morning’s early ones saw us venture out onto the Foleshill Road, in Coventry, down the dark back alleyway to the ‘Stag and Pheasant’ on Lockhurst Lane. We didn’t exactly creep in quietly by the back door; our pockets were stuffed with chocolate bars to give out and that we did as well as delivering sprinklings of prayers to those who said they wanted it. We then moved onto the ten pin bowling alley at Walsgrave. Some seemed rather taken aback as we sang to them, ‘we love you (their name) deep down in our hearts’ but there were smiles and ‘thank yous’ before we sped on to Spon Lane in central Coventry to snatch the last few minutes of 2012 and the first of 2013.
We went to the ‘Old Windmill’ pub and I don’t know how many kisses and ‘happy new years’ we got between us. The gig was in full swing and I spied an empty seat by two middle-aged women (I bet they wondered what I was doing there in my Jesus Army jacket) but we got chatting and found out one was a vicar! An unlikely meeting, I guess, but despite the thud, thudding of the electric guitars within a few feet of our ears, we managed to have a fragmented conversation about Christian community and Jesus Centres.
A good start to a new year, I would say; exciting, even exhilarating, hanging hard on God, enjoying the daring together and the team dynamics. May it be a year when we continue to run into and with God’s opportunities. Movements that are tame, attract, if any, the tame but adventure, adventure, adventurous living attracts the adventurous and how we more than need those in the church.
2013: end as you began! May we collect a crowd of God-mad, holy adventurers this year – and some, at least, from the most unlikely places.
I believe in friends ...
I believe in God, the Father Almighty … and in Jesus Christ, His only Son ... the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church etc. etc. I’ve said it many times and what a noble statement of faith.
There’s only one thing, however: I wouldn’t mind just adding as an appendage at the end (or maybe it fits in alongside ‘communion of saints’): ‘I believe in friends.’ What I mean is, yes, Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all most essential, vital parts of my life - and so also are my friends. If God has rescued me BIG TIME in a redemptive sense and in a million practical ways, my friends have also rescued me again and again from all the things that tangle me up and send me off course. There are times when I have just placed myself in their hands and trusted them to the uttermost with the most painful parts of my life. The strange thing, though, is that in the middle of all this is – God. I come away and my spirit is refreshed and renewed and lightness enters my soul once more. I feel full of fresh energy to serve Him, I who was so full of weariness. God Himself has nurtured, rescued me – through my friends.
I believe in friends. There’s nothing on earth like them. Give me a million pounds and that would be nothing compared to having a group of true friends.
Those who lack friends are, I believe, living in poverty, poverty of soul, of spirit.
That brings me on to this: enjoying friends must lead onto seeking to be a friend. To be a friend, a true friend, is a high calling indeed. O to be a good friend - as others have been good friends to me.
O I do, I do, I do: I believe in friends.
Luke 5: 1-11
Can you imagine the scene? A tired Peter, first weary from a fruitless haul and now exhausted by a massive haul of fish, throws himself down at Jesus’ feet saying: “Choose someone else better than me – go, leave me!” and Jesus’ heartening words: “Don’t be discouraged or afraid; I’m bringing radical redirection to your life: you will be fishing for disciples." (My paraphrase).
I reckon, in that moment, for Peter, Jesus ceased to be an exceptional rabbi; He became the one who demanded nothing less than everything and life would never be the same. What Peter perhaps did not realise was that his sense of unworthiness was the very thing that qualified him for the task He felt so unfit to do.
This was one of Peter’s conversions - I reckon those who, like Peter, choose to continue to follow Jesus have many such 'conversions' when we make an inward realignment, a choice that alters the course on which we are set, plunging us into a deeper surrender to God’s will.
Peter, Peter, two steps forward, one step back. We see that pattern in your life but I guess we’re all a little like that. But even two steps forward, one step back is progress – and look where it got you in the end!
As long as these ‘conversions’ continue to take place, I’m happy.
Now, the church I belong to is a second generation church; 'chapter two' of the story, we call it. Perhaps you get the picture, the fire has died down a bit - we all acknowledge that.
I've noticed the tendency is to panic a little to preserve; there's an inclination to a knee-jerk reaction to create rules to safeguard what we have; I can understand this but believe it's not the best way to stoke the fire.
I think we need pace setters, front-runners in the race, people we can follow. Yes, we know who they are. Steven, the first martyr, was one in the early church; he wasn't an apostle but he was a pace-setter. People like that around convict us of our selfishness, show us we've slowed down and hopefully make us want to run faster too. After all, the writer of Hebrews didn't say walk the race, jog along as best you can; he wrote, 'run the race'(Hebrews 12:1).
“Hey, hey I can't keep up;” “I feel, well, just a little threatened by this one’s zeal.” This is no time for feelings of inferiority but rejoicing in another's strength; followers become leaders. One of the marks of Christ-likeness is the joy in seeing others do better than ourselves: John the Baptist was a true hero when he said of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30 NKJ).
Isaiah, prophesying Messiah’ s golden age said: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb ... and a little child shall lead them” (Isaiah 11:6 NKJ). These pace-setters need not be recognised leaders; they’ve just got to be lovers – of God, of His people, of every sort of person.
Young generation lead us on; we’ll try not to mind being followers; we just want to get there together!
