Palm Sunday and Britney Spears

Today is Palm Sunday, this slightly anomalous blip of joyousness in the midst of Lent and Passiontide. Of course, those of us who creep around churches habitually will know that Palm Sunday recalls the story of Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Such is the joy of that occasion that we will hobble around our grounds nursing our newly blessed palm crosses whilst singing 'Ride on Ride on In Majesty' at seven different speeds, losing a verse between the front and back of the procession. It's tradition. It must be done.

The story of Palm Sunday has the implicit taunt of 'how the mighty will fall', and the uncomfortable semi-presence of unseen pedestals upon which we will place the soon-to-be-slain. Of course, we read the Gospel and we inwardly judge the perpetrators, knowing of course that we would never do the same. Oh no, not us, m'lud. 

Palm Sunday, for me, has taken on the tint of modern society and its ways, and dear old Britney Spears seemed always to be the poster girl for that tendency. I have never bought or owned one of her records, have no real desire to either. However, the fortunes of this young woman have always troubled me. She is no saint, and maybe even errs in the opposite direction at times. But we all do. I have to say too, that her fall from grace was painful and upsetting to behold. 

The tendency to which I refer is this psychopathy in all of us to raise people up so that we can enjoy the blood-sport of seeing them fall. Oh how we love to watch people fall into disrepute. Britney Spears, Billie Piper, Charlotte Church, Drew Barrymore, and many others - all relative kids who became idols in one moment, and the meat for the next press sandwich the next. In these cases, it was more to do with too much too young - but we have all enjoyed the parades of their retribution. This picture of Ms Spears summed it all up for me; a talented kid who had lost her way and the world itching to see her fall. Fall she did, watch we did. We bought the press editions too, watching our tellies tutting. 

Palm Sunday feels a little like that for me these days. Those who will eventually crucify the Bethlehemite carpenter will be guilty of not understanding what is really going on with Jesus. They were the ones who were so ready to elevate him to such celebrity in one moment only to haul him down the next. We in our third millennium churches will preach and heap curses upon the Jews of Jerusalem of the fourth decade - mere moments before we return to our newsprint and our internets to bay for the blood of the next hapless celebrity (or, in a fit of decency look away because it has nothing to do with us, of course).

Save Your Life Today

This is film that forms part of the PITS campaign for the Lymphoma Association here in Aylesbury. The money raised by my parachute jump will help them raise awareness like this in future years (if you missed it, you can sponsor me by following the link at the top left-hand corner of this blog page - Thank you)

And I Thought It was Jeremy Clarkson

If you wish to waste a moment of your life, then try this ...

This is based on the twaddle in my last post. Every blogger in the whole world will have tried this tool today, and I am marginally disappointed that I don't appear to write like Jezza, or more importantly that literary giant David Cloake. Can anyone who has read the words of this fine woman, please qualify this assertion please. For all I know, she might write for the under-5s (though it pays Julia Donaldson well)!

I write like
Margaret Atwood

I Write Like by Mémoires, journal software. Analyze your writing!

I don't even look like a Margaret, more a Persephone.

Soap Bubbles

It is blog posts like this that keep me out of Wikio Religion and God-bothering rankings because they dilute my pious message of Godly things. Then again, posts like this grant me an opportunity to be grumpy - and it has been a while, after all!

Now, I am still young (had I mentioned that?) so can still remember some of the things of childhood. Poking poos with sticks, mucking around in buckets of green-tinged stagnant water that are already inhabited by mosquito larvae, digging holes in the mud with bare hands, carting the festering cadavers of post-mortem sparrows with glee, man-handling worms and bugs, burrowing into one's nose with one's digit, bum scratching, ear-picking - and then the best of it all: tea time. That was childhood for me. Grubby, messy, germ-ridden, filthiness. And then tea. Where I come from, by the way, 'tea' is the meal you eat in the evening (and a drink that the elderly drank), as distinct from 'dinner', or that most bourgeois repast - 'suppah' (even now, I have never knowingly eaten a 'suppah', and 'dinner' is of course what you eat at dinner-time, not tea-time. Get it?). No, tea was our end-of-the-afternoon-before-bed feast. 

I know that you are wondering where I am going with this. I doubt you can predict the waffle of my mind, so explain I better had. 

The thing is this; childhood is, in my modest opinion, to do with playing with dirt and then eating food. Schooling fits in somewhere and church too for some of us, but dirt and food largely sum up childhood. I can remember once, gleefully carrying the long-dead Mr Sparrow of the family Sparrow around my Nan's garden in a macabre requiem procession (I was liturgically minded at six). Then, I'd be called in from the yard for tea, maybe wash my hands (but maybe not, to be honest) and then tuck in to sandwiches, crumpets or eggy-bread. 

And then Reckitt Benckiser (the makers of the soap-thing you see here) come along fill the minds of all parents with dread fear that their kiddies are in mortal danger not from the vile diseases that exist in rotting garden birds, or the bacteria that revel in a cat-poo house - no, the greatest peril to the fabric of our society is, my dear friends, the spout on a soap-dispenser. So terrible is this risk, that if you are a parent of any decency, you must buy a 'No-Touch' Soap Dispenser. Why? So that after poking poos and the giblets of dead things, you may not - before you wash your hands - get germs on them from the soap spout. 

Is it me? 

And it doesn't end here. Oh no. The makers of those odd bottles of foul-stinking purple detergent that you lob under the rim of your lavatorium would tell you that it is to kill germs in there. Marvelous. Marvelous because only yesterday I was saying to Mrs Acular how long it had been since I last used my porcelain trumpet as a Tandoor oven and baked naan bread in it. Only the week before I had pondered how long it had been since I last served my kids' dinner in the toilet. 

I think that we, the buying public, are certifiably stupid. I do. I bet that eight-million sensible folk, with one accord, all believed that the greatest peril to our offspring is in the germs we acquire just before we clean the germs off with the expensive soap that is really good at killing germs off of our hands ... just before we fling a rib-eye in the loo and bob for it like an fair-ground stall. Frankly, I am surprised I survived past the age of seven. Frankly. 

And So It Begins

I have been reading a considerable amount regarding Christian antisemitism. For those of you who, like me, were appalled at the very suggestion - it is the sad fact that antisemitism has permeated Christian thinking for almost all of its existence. [My reason for this inquiry is a paper that I am writing]. 

For those of you still unconvinced, I would invite you to look at the work of St. John Chrysostom, Martin Luther or Ambrose of Milan - and a pattern develops. Why? In short, the basis of this antisemitism is the Christians' charge that the Jews were (and for some, still are) guilty of deicide. However uncomfortable I may be about that, it is a fact born out by the writings of our most loved Christian thinkers. 

For those of us of a more liturgical bent, we will have marked yesterday as Passion Sunday (as distinct from the Fifth Sunday of Lent, which is also the label for yesterday). Passion Sunday brings with it the behemothic Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus. We hear not just of a death, but of a rotting corpse, putrefaction. We are encouraged, in this account, not simply to engage with our spiritual senses but also our physical senses. Why? The simple message is that God can raise us to new life, that death is nothing - merely sleep; that faith in God is more potent that life itself, more powerful and more life giving than life. But how easy that is for us a couple of millenia later when the raising of Lazarus is no more a miracle to us than me getting up before 6am! We are used to the story, accustomed to it, desensitised. This applies to the account of the Passion too - hey ho, they just hammered a nail into Jesus' hand; what's the next hymn?!

Might we enter the mindset of a first-century Jew and consider these events, without our modern abilities to achieve so many more miracles, without our prior knowledge of the end of the story - and actually empathise with how they may have responded to a rotten corpse emerging from its tomb. Little wonder this is a tipping point. No wonder the crowd were split in two - those who believed and followed and those who believed and hated Jesus (through fear, probably). If some beardy-wierdy magicked my dad back to life, I would surely regard it as some vile hocus-pocus and reject it - because reason demands that. Same for the Jews, I think. If  something is too abnormal that we cannot assimilate it into our schema of thought - then I think the next thing we do is reject it, and the person promulgating it. 

I have long held that the Jews, and indeed Judas Iscariot (who made the ultimate sacrifice for his 'calling'), had to do what they did for our salvation. Take them out of the equation, and the Passion would not have happened and the whole shebang would have been for nothing. As I said to the kids at school - the seed has to die before the first flower and then the fruit can be born. Do we then blame the gardener? Of course not - we celebrate their horticultural prowess. 

The story that will unfold before us in our worshipping life over the next two weeks will invite so much judgement of people. The Jews, Judas, Pilate, Caiphas, Peter, Barabbas the Centurion - and the faceless nameless mocking crowds. In our judging we judge their judging. The Prophecy had to fulfilled and fulfilled it was - with every detail perfectly played out. Judge not ... 

(The essence of my sermon preached yesterday)

Where Two or Three (or Four) ...

...groups of children are gathered together in my name, says the Lord, there I am in the midst of them

Yesterday was a remarkable day. For most of you it was incontrovertibly Tuesday, and for me too - but it was not just any Tuesday - is was 'school production Tuesday'. Those of you who read this blog more often than I do may remember the fondness I have for such events. 

During the course of the day, it was my pleasure to witness no less than four schools perform productions, sing songs, play musical instruments, act, narrate, yell incomprehensibly into a microphone and tell stories - including the Passion, death and Resurrection of Our Lord. For the Early Years at St. Mary's CE School, it was the day when they gave us Red Riding Hood, and for the older kids from St. Mary's, the even bigger kids from Mandeville Secondary School, the tiny-weenies from St. Joseph's RC Infant School and the moderately pint-sizeds from Tilehurst Combined School, they all came to the church to read and sing 'Resurrection Rock' (or, as one youngster had written on a flyer that he had designed in class - 'Resuscitation Rock'). They sang their hearts out and read perfectly (and in an 800 year old barn that makes the Tate Modern seem like a garden shed is an achievement in itself for little ones). I should note that this would not have happened at all save for the vision and skill of the excellent Brian Dipple.

I do not care what anyone says about the world, the state of the church, the erosion of respect in the young - where children are able to come together and sing their hearts out, play such wonderful music, read the difficult account of a murder and a miracle - then for my money the world is a happy and hopeful place. Dear readers, it was stunning. Three-hundred children from the ages of 5 to 19, singing with one voice, with passion - that is about as good as it gets for me. The smallest and least inhibited children engaged with the sentiments of the story, and even pulled instinctive sneers at the cries of 'Crucify Him'. The look of joy in their faces in the final reprise when singing 'He's Alive' was enough to move me near to tears, and again as I recall it now. I have said it before; children embody such perfect freedom of worship. They convey emotion in a way I wish that I could by simply the light in their faces. 

I could leave it there, but a couple of things amused me yesterday. The first is the innate comedy timing that the tiniest of children have. The little lad playing the wolf in Red Riding Hood hammed it up perfectly. He had us in stitches. He had no inhibition, and just played to the crowd. I believe that he is still just 4 years old. Secondly, a lesson for us Anglicans when inviting our Roman Catholic friends in - remember their Lord's Prayer is not the same as ours. I lead the prayers for Resurrection Rock, and as is my custom, asked that they be concluded with the Lord's Prayer. The tiny-weenies from St. Joseph's are clearly drilled in this prayer so it was like flicking a switch. 'Our ... Father ... who ... art ... in ... heaven ... hallowed ... be ... thy ... name ... thy ... kingdom ... come ...', and so on. Except they don't do the bit at the end, do they. No embolism for them. Just as I was about to utter (with microphone and ceremonial dignity) 'For thine is the Kingdom', eighty tiny-weenies, as one, yelped their 'Amen' and cut me dead. How I didn't corpse, I shall not know, but it amused the gathering no end. 

Such a wonderful, hopeful, enjoyable day. Watching the creative talents of over 400 kids, and the faces of their parents and supporters - nothing is better than that. Nothing at all. 

Perfect Remission

My spontaneous gambol through the Collect for Lent has taken me to the following places:

You Hate Nothing That You Have Made

Create and Make in Us ...

Worthily Lamenting Our Sins

As ever, I commend the Collect for Lent as a wonderfully reflective tool because it attends to many aspects of our spiritual journey. You will also note that, at the time that I write this, I have the Collect in full to the right of this box [If you are reading this in the future, you can find the Collect here]. 

'Remission' is a word that Christians use often, and mostly without any thought. We pray for the 'remission of our sins', and rightly so - but do we really know we mean? For those of you about to bounce around in your swivelling computer-desk chairs yelling "yes, Farv, of course I do", then I congratulate you, for I thought I knew too, but didn't really in truth. 

Like I did in the last post, I pondered the meaning of that word 'remission'. Like so many things, it is bound up in context. For example, speak of 'remission' to a person winning a fight with cancer and we have a taste of the word at its most powerfully wonderful. 'Remission' can also refer to the making of a payment - and here we have a very clear indicator of the payment of the Cross. 'Remission' can also refer to surrender and for me, at least, directs my thoughts to the Garden of Gethsemane. Again, 'remission' tells us of being discharged from debt, and here we wander into the territory of redemption which owes its meaning to related ideas. 

So, we have a number of very broad labels to work with here. And there was us thinking we knew what 'remission' was when applied to our sins. We have cure, payment, discharge, abatement, surrender - such a loaded and potent word that easily falls from our tongues in prayer. What is also easy to miss is that we ask God to grant this to us - that it demands no action from us (though we are, of course, called to penitent earlier in the Collect). I wonder how many people, when labouring under the terrible shadow of a cancer, have prayed earnestly to be in a state of remission. Whilst I have only had the merest scare in that regard, even then I got a flavour of the depth and anguish in that cry. To be granted remission in that case is nothing less that been granted a new life in its entirety. So it is with our cry from remission of sin. It is no less a life or death pleading. 

As I searched the Interweb for a pretty picture for this post, I found the one that now adorns it. Its graphical representation has caused me almost to think more about the word 'remission' than the Collect did. 'Mission Remission' was a campaign to raise support for cancer sufferers in remission, but the way that the word is configured in the image has touch a little nerve in me.

'Remission', in all the definitions that I have seen and read talk about a one-direction process. Something was there and then it was either in retreat or it wasn't there at all. Re-mission says more to me than that. It talks about our duty, as Christians, not just to receive 'perfect remission', but to take that out to the world. Or another way, when we receive perfect remission from God, we receive a new opportunity to re-mission in the world in which we live. In the word, there is a mandate, an opportunity to engage with 'mitto' [Gk] - to be sent out. When we pray for 'perfect remission' of our sins, we pray to receive something. What is clear to me is the implicit call then to share that with the world that may not know about this perfect gift of grace.