It involves a lorry.
I knew about Jesus. I got a B in my GCSE Religious Studies. There was a kerfuffle, because the examining board effectively accused the school (lovely little comprehensive in the West Midlands) of getting an adult in to write our assignments. Oh, and of using John's Gospel when we were only supposed to have read Luke. I mean.
Of course, knowing about Jesus isn't the same as actually knowing him. Gosh no. And as I proceeded through A-levels life was quite hard. Teenage disillusion. Needing to get away but not being sure I'd have the confidence to. And the first signs of the depression-stuff that has intermittently poked its head over my banisters.
Onto the lorry. Or indeed under it. For one day I was making my way home from school, across a pedestrian crossing on the junction of Tynings Lane, Paddock lane and the Walsall Road. It must have been after 4, because the usual lollipop lady - Gloria, fantastic woman - had gone home. But traffic was light, so I didn't wait for the green man.
A wiser man than I...
This turned out to be quite a revealing mistake.
I must have been tired, or down, or something. My footsteps must have been dragging. Or maybe I didn't care much. Whatever, as I crossed the second half, there was suddenly a lorry bearing down on me like a wolf on the fold, honking its horn like there was no tomorrow. Which there may well not have been if I didn't move sharpish. And I didn't move sharpish. I sauntered. I have a vague memory of the face of the man at the wheel, but I may have made that up since. I was aware of suddenly being the centre of attention of all the people waiting at the bus stops on either side of the road.
Good advice...
Did I die? Was I squashed to a stain on the asphalt? Smashed to smithereens?
[Spoiler, sweeties: I'm still here, and still in one piece.]
I made it. I probably gave that poor driver a heart attack. But as I'd been sauntering across the road, looking quizzically at the lorry as I went, I realised that my weariness wasn't the weariness of a hard day at maths. It was world-weariness. It was the notion that if life ended here, it wouldn't be such a terrible thing. Make no mistake, I'd never step in front of a lorry, then or now. Life is precious! People would be sad! It would be selfish! But. But but but. If a lorry were to be bearing down on me like a wolf on the fold and I didn't move out of the way, and I was squashed to nothing… well, these things happen. I wouldn't put on a spurt of speed to escape the thundering wheels of the juggernaut of fate.
So that was me in the early 1990s. The crystallisation of the idea that I didn't care much for life, and it didn't care much for me. I was probably listening to too much Marc and the Mambas as well.
A few weeks later I met Jesus. At a carol service, which is a deeply unlikely place to find Jesus, behind all the carols and stuff. But I did. I found Jesus, and he made sense, and his story made sense, and the only possible response was to bow the knee. To become a Christian on the spot.
And things began to change.
Make no mistake, there was no rainbow, no dancing Care Bears, no sudden transformation. The old was gone. The new had come. I was forgiven, adopted, welcomed home. The effects have taken longer. And I still feel sometimes that I haven't the energy to move, but not with a lorry in the offing these days.
And a part of my conversion, a part of my life with Jesus is that I had a favourite verse for a long time. It's in John 6, after Jesus has fed 5,000 or so people with the contents of a Transformers lunchbox, but then when he talks about being the bread of life, people abandon him in their droves. They just walk away. And Jesus turns to his friends and he asks them - in who knows what tone of voice - "What about you? Will you be going too?"
Simon Peter - for it is he - is honest. He doesn't deny the difficulty of the things Jesus teaches and claims and recommends. He doesn't pretend this is an easy road he's taken to follow Jesus. Instead, he says:
"Where else would we go? You alone have the words of eternal life."
Again, the Bible is maddeningly short on adverbs. How does he say it? Resignedly? Wryly? Encouragingly? I don't know.
On my good days, I follow Jesus because he's brilliant. Compassionate, wise, skewering human experience with his words, forgiving, you know, dying for us. All that.
On my less good days, I follow Jesus because what else is there? No-one and nothing else can save or heal or reconcile me, either to God or myself. So I'm sticking with him.
Today's a good day. Great lunch and good company and good prayers and old sermons and a brilliant film at the cinema* and a phone call from a friend. Today I follow Jesus because he's magnificent and because there are good times with him and his friends.
But who knows about tomorrow?
And who knows about you? You don't have to follow Jesus for the noblest reasons. He keeps me from lorry-related squashings. When I'm down, he's no instant solution, he's the best that I've got. And even when I don't see it, that's pretty damn good.
And that is the tip of the iceberg of Jesus and me. I'm sure we'll speak of him more. Talk to him - or yourself - for a moment or two about why you follow him. Or why you don't just now or just yet or just ever.
*Scouts Guide To The Zombie Apocalypse, since you ask.
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