Author: Lioness Writing Ltd

James’s Blog: Peter & Paul

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James’s Blog: Peter & Paul

I know a man called Paul. Some people might consider him eccentric, but I think it is much more accurate to understand him as being a perpetual whirlwind of creativity and kindness.

He once did something very silly, which was to metaphorically immerse himself (and his family) in the Gospel of Mark for a period of time. It was a silly thing to do because that’s the kind of opportunity God might take to shift some heavy furniture in your life and, to be honest, who needs that kind of hassle?

Anyway, I imagine that he experienced all kinds of amazing revelations during this time, and he decided to share one of them with me. At least, I assume it occurred to him during this time. It might not have. It’s possible he could have known it for twenty years and then randomly decided to drop it on me one day. As I said, he’s a whirlwind of creativity and kindness.

In Mark 14, a woman anoints Jesus at Bethany. This fantastic little story appears in all four gospels, with particular nuances in each account. In Mark and Matthew Jesus uses a strange little phrase that, I must admit, I’d never really understood:  “I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

I found it an odd comment. I suppose my confusion may have come from years of a particular type of Evangelical brainwas…I mean, teaching, where ‘preaching the gospel’ hadn’t been done properly unless you had quoted a large chunk of Romans. Telling a story about some woman spilling a jar of oil over Jesus’s head like a clumsy waitress didn’t quite seem to cut the mustard. But Paul pointed out to me that, right here, Jesus links the telling of stories with ‘preaching the gospel’. So, he said, perhaps, just perhaps, Jesus’s expectation was that the main way that his disciples would share the gospel when he was gone was by telling stories.

Is Paul right? Well, I know another man. This one’s called Pete. He’s got the soul of a poet, and it’s trapped in the body of a bouncer. Not really trapped, I suppose. It’s more of a symbiotic relationship. Some people might consider him intimidating, but I think it is much more accurate…actually, OK, he can seem quite intimidating when you first meet him. But he’s not really. Not when you get to know him; him and his gentle poet’s soul.

He does silly things too, and as a result he’s probably changed more lives for the better than he’ll ever know. I heard that he once pointed out that when we want to evangelise we tend to mine Paul’s letters for nuggets of theological truth, and forget that those same letters were actually written to people who were already Christians. If you want to share the gospel with non-Christians, he says, it’s better to spend a bit of time looking at how it was done in the Gospels and Acts.

So if you look, what do you find? You find stories. Jesus tells parables; carefully encasing the whole Kingdom of God in each self-contained scrap of micro-fiction. That’s a neat trick. In Acts, most of the recorded evangelistic speeches are just stories. Sometimes Paul shares his own story, but other times he, Peter and Stephen do nothing more than repeat people’s own stories back to them, but each time adding a postscript: “Now let me tell you where Jesus fits into your story…” Indeed, it seems that when Jesus was gone, the disciples preached the gospel by telling stories.

I am grateful for the things that these two men have shared with me. I am much more grateful for the two men themselves.

So, take note, men and women of faith! Do not neglect your story! Somewhere along the journey we may have lost our way, and belittled our stories. Do not do such a thing! Your story has been entrusted to you, and you alone, for the purpose of bringing the gospel of Jesus into the lives of family, friends, neighbours and curious strangers. Do not dare to be ashamed of it. Own it, and proclaim it, for when you do you are preaching the gospel.

James’s Blog: In Which an Atheist Shows a Perfect Understanding of What it Means to Follow Jesus.

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James’s Blog: In Which an Atheist Shows a Perfect Understanding of What it Means to Follow Jesus.

“They walked on in silence. A shower of hail bounced off Granny’s pointy hat and Oats’s wide brim.

Then Granny said, ‘It’s no good you trying to make me believe in Om, though.’

‘Om forbid that I should try, Mistress Weatherwax. I haven’t even given you a pamphlet, have I?’

‘No, but you’re trying to make me think, “Oo, what a nice young man, his god must be something special if nice young men like him helps old ladies like me,” aren’t you?’

‘No.’

“Really? Well, it’s not working. People you can believe in, sometimes, but not gods. And I’ll tell you this, Mister Oats…’

He sighed. ‘Yes?’

She turned to face him, suddenly alive. ‘It’d be as well for you if I didn’t believe,’ she said, prodding him with a sharp finger. ‘This Om…anyone seen him?’

‘It is said three thousand people witnessed his manifestation at the Great Temple when he made the Covenant with the prophet Brutha and saved him from death by torture on the iron turtle-‘

‘But I bet that now they’re arguing about what they actually saw, eh?’

‘Well, indeed, yes, there are many opinions-‘

‘Right. Right. That’s people for you. Now if I’d seen him, really there, really alive, it’d be in me like a fever. If I thought there was some god who really did care two hoots about people, who watched ’em like a father and cared for ’em like a mother…well, you wouldn’t catch me sayin’ things like “There are two sides to every question,” and “We must respect other people’s beliefs.” You wouldn’t find me just being gen’rally nice in the hope that it’d all turn out right in the end, not if that flame was burning in me like an unforgivin’ sword. And I did say burnin’, Mister Oats, ‘cos that’s what it’d be. You say that you people don’t burn folk and sacrifice people any more, but that’s what true faith would mean, y’see? Sacrificin’ your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin’ the truth of it, workin’ for it, breathin’ the soul of it. That’s religion. Anything else is just…is just bein’ nice. And a way of keeping in touch with the neighbours.’

She relaxed slightly, and went on in a quieter voice: ‘Anyway, that’s what I’d be, if I really believed. And I don’t think that’s fashionable right now, ‘cos it seems that if you sees evil now you have to wring your hands and say, ‘Oh deary me, we must debate this.” That’s my two penn’orth, Mister Oats. You be happy to let things lie. Don’t chase faith, ‘cos you’ll never catch it.’ She added, almost as an aside, ‘But, perhaps, you can live faithfully.’”

Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett.

James’s Blog: The Thin Line Between Love & Hate.

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James’s Blog: The Thin Line Between Love & Hate.

I’ve just returned from speaking at our church on the topic of ‘Love’, because there’s no reason why my first church-based speaking engagement in years should be about something, you know, easy.

I used to work for a charity called Tearfund. I was in the glamorous business of, as it was known back then, ‘Income Processing’. That meant that if you sent in a donation, I was one of the people who made sure that your gift ended up allocated to the right project. You too can ascend to such dizzying heights if you have a degree in theology.

One day we received a letter with a donation. The gist of the letter was that the writer had been saving up to buy a new house, but that God had made it clear to her that she wasn’t to move. The donation was, she wrote, the money that she had saved so far towards her new house. Her donation was a cheque for £80,000.

What I remember most about this was the letter. By the tone, the wording and reading between the lines I was certain that this letter should have had a postscript, and it should have read ‘P.S. I’m not happy about this‘. There was a resigned frustration, a subtle anger in the wording. This was £80,000 worth of painful submission.

One day, an elderly man who had once walked around Palestine with an itinerant preacher and trouble-maker wrote his own letter, and in it you find the words, “This is love for God: To obey his commands.”

What an intriguing paradox; the topsy turvey Kingdom of God in action. Love for God has little to do with feelings, and much to do with obedience. Like the woman who surrendered £80,000, it is possible to be angry with God, resentful towards God, frustrated by Him, but if you do what He asks, then you love Him nonetheless. ‘A cold and broken Hallelujah,’ as Leonard Cohen sang. Hollywood tells us that we should have soaring violins and misty-eyed glances across a crowded room, but true love can be spitting bile as long as it obeys. After all, what you do shows to whom your heart really belongs.

James’s Blog: “How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth is it to have an Ungrateful Child!”

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James’s Blog: “How Sharper than a Serpent’s Tooth is it to have an Ungrateful Child!”

Shakespeare must have had a thing about ingratitude. As well as contributing the title of this blog entry (it’s from King Lear, fact fans), he also wrote the following:

“Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou are not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude.”

That’s from As You Like It. All I can say is that he must have been on the receiving end of some very insincere thank-you-for-my-birthday-gift letters. Mind you, he’s a fine one to talk seeing as the only thing he left his wife upon his death was his ‘second best bed’.

Many years ago there was a shipwreck off the coast of Evanston in Illinois. The students of nearby Northwestern University helped with the rescue operation. One particular student, Edward Spenser, personally saved the lives of 17 people that day. A long time later, when Spenser was an elderly man, a reporter asked him what was the one thing about that incident that stood out in his mind. Spenser replied, “I remember that of the seventeen people I rescued that day, not one of them ever thanked me.”

Imagine that. A day in which you personally saved 17 lives and all you are left with is the memory of ingratitude. Blow, blow, thou winter wind indeed.

Nothing kills a gift quicker than ingratitude, and a lack of gratitude is a sure fire way to kill the gift of the Spirit of God. In Colossians 3:12 Paul is in the middle of spelling out how followers of Jesus, ‘holy and dearly loved’, should live. By the end of verse 17 Paul has instructed us three times to live gratefully. Three times in three verses actually. Thankfulness is a mark of being ‘holy and dearly loved’. To be holy, we must put on gratitude.

But of course, God gives generously to those who don’t deserve, holy and unholy alike.  In Luke 6:35 Jesus reminds us that God is ‘…kind to the ungrateful and wicked’, but I think it’s rather telling that he lumps the ‘ungrateful’ in with the ‘wicked’, don’t you?

James’s Blog: Blessed are the Cynics, for they shall see God.

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James’s Blog: Blessed are the Cynics, for they shall see God.

As a fully-paid up member of Generation X, my teenage years were full of angst and world-weariness. Even at my tender age, I was already wise to all the tricks of The Man and as discerning as any middle-class white kid from south Northamptonshire can be. When I became a Christian this cynicism transitioned quite nicely into my new faith, as it seemed to me that there were no shortage of fruitcakes and nutters in church leadership. Some of them shouldn’t even have been let near heavy machinery, let alone given serious pastoral responsibility. Oh yes, I knew what was what. No-one would get one over me. My cynicism was so finely tuned that it was practically prophetic. I would watch my brothers and sisters work themselves up into a frenzy over the latest spiritual manifestation or teaching and I would remain calm, level-headed and quite unmoved. Unfortunately cynicism can be quite indiscriminate at times, and I would still be unmoved even when it was God trying to do the moving. Thankfully I manage my cynicism much more responsibly these days.  Some days it even borders on discernment.

At the end of the first chapter of John’s gospel we find Philip excitedly relating to his brother that he’s just met the Messiah, and Nathanael’s response is so world-weary and sarcastic that I’m forced to conclude that he was actually British.

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?”

It’s a classic response. Humourous and dismissive without actually addressing the issue. I recognise a fellow cynic when I see one.

The thing is, very rarely are people born cynical. Most of us spring forth into this world, wide-eyed and excited, hoping against hope for good things to come our way. But they don’t, and cynicism is just one of many defence mechanisms that we evolve in order to protect ourselves. The secret is this, that many cynics are just disappointed idealists. We once believed, but were let down, and to avoid hurt we have chosen to never believe again. Thus another cynic is born.

In the years leading up to Jesus’ birth there were Messiahs cropping up on a semi-regular basis. It was typical of the Israelites, chaffing under the unjust Roman yoke. Their freedom in the land was so bound up in their identity as God’s chosen people that it should be no surprise that there were plenty of people willing to jump on whatever revolutionary bandwagon came along. Nathanael would, no doubt, have known about the one called Athronges. He claimed to be the Messiah and, get this, he was a shepherd. Many Jews would have just loved that Davidic parallel. The Romans took a dim view of such behaviour and, without fail, every Messianic pretender (Athronges included) would have ended up dead or imprisoned, along with his followers.

“Not another Messiah! Philip, why do you have to be so gullible? You’re always falling for things like this…”

But if a cynic is just a disappointed idealist then maybe it’s not Philip who’s the gullible one? Maybe Nathanael’s harsh reply is just his wounded heart talking? Maybe he once believed? Maybe it was once him, rushing into the desert after Simon, or Athronges, or some other deluded trickster, hoping that it would lead to the freedom that a true Israelite desired. Well, never again! Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. But Philip is no fool himself. He knows that there’s no point arguing or trying to persuade his brother. He gives the only reply that will work on a cynic:

“Come and see for yourself.”

And Jesus sees him approaching. He appraises the young man. He smiles.

“Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is nothing false.”

What a strange thing to say of a cynic. What is false if not Nathanael’s bitter, dismissive reply to his brother? But maybe it’s true. Maybe behind the sarcasm Jesus sees the heart of a optimist; one who dreams of what might be. A true believer.

“How do you know me?” Nathanael says, suspicion making him revert to type.

“I saw you while you were still under the fig-tree before Philip called you.”

I don’t see it myself, but there’s obviously something in this phrase. Some secret that only God and Nathanael share. Whatever it is, it pushes all of Nathanael’s buttons. He drops everything and gives such an overblown response that it would be funny if it weren’t so perfect.

“Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.”

From nought to sixty in under a second. It’s almost as if he’s been waiting for this moment his whole life. The cynicism, it seems, was just a mask to keep false prophets from the door while he was waiting for the real thing to come along. And here he is, coming from a place from where nothing good comes, and Nathanael is his, mind and soul. A cynic may no longer believe, but he still wants to.

“Jesus, I’m your man. For the rest of my life, I’m your man.”

Here’s the thing. While a cynic will keep everything and everyone at arms length, if you can somehow break through his defences and give him a taste of the real thing he will flip-flop quicker than a politician. “Come and see for yourself.”

Watch out for those cynics. They are not far from the Kingdom of God. A little taste of the real thing, and before you know it you’ve got a true believer whose passion will burn everyone and everything that they come into contact with.

Third Time’s the Charm…

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Third Time’s the Charm…

This will be the third blog that I have started.  I began the first one soon after we moved to Australia and that was reflected in its content.  It was very much ‘An Englishman Abroad’, with me attempting humourous observations on life Down Under like a third-rate Bill Bryson.  I began the second blog years later as I attempted to discipline myself into writing on a regular basis.  For a year and a half I posted a short story every two weeks, like a second-rate Stephen King.  Much of that material found its way into ‘The Listening Book’, the imminent publication of which has been the catalyst for me fixing the punctures on my internet bike and setting out on this, my third blogging journey.

So let’s see where we end up this time, as I share reflections on life, faith and stories, hopefully – this time – as a first-rate me.