Flesh And Blood

Don't you hate it when the Bible is misused by people?  Doesn't it annoy you that God and his people are brought into disrepute by wilful and opportunistic misappropriation of odd verses within it by intolerant people who are serving themselves rather than God?  You know, as if the Bible (and the wonderful God behind it) promoted racism and homophobia and a general disdain for the poor and the other?

Tell me when I do it myself by mistake, please.

It annoys me most when I hear people use the phrase "flesh and blood."  Usually, people say they have to look after their own flesh and blood, which means preferential treatment for family members.  And while Paul (who wrote some of the Bible) is clear that we have a duty to the people under our noses, it's only a short step from "don't neglect your nearest and dearest" to "family first" to "stuff the rest of you."

Likewise, "charity begins at home" is often just a positive spin on "I look after my own," itself not a country mile away from "I'm all right, Jack" and "Get lost."

But flesh and blood… flesh and blood seems to find its origin as a phrase in one of my total all-time hashtag amaze balls really rather good Bible passages.

Isaiah 58.

The bit where Isaiah (or God) (or Isaiah) (or God) (or both) spell out what true religion looks like.  It's not religious observance.  It's not showy church attendance.  It's not having been in the same pew for so long that you can claim the indentation in the wood as your own.

It's loosing the chains of injustice, setting the oppressed free, sharing your food, providing the poor wanderer with shelter.  Go on and read it.  Best.  Bible.  Chapter.  Ever.

And the people who do those things - care for the badly-done-by, basically - don't need showy religion.    Certainly not to signify to God how they're part of his program.  Their light - says Isaiah - breaks forth like the dawn.  The Bible is crammed - or littered - with these warnings that church attendance doesn't cut it if our behaviour the other six days is oppressive, unjust, intolerant, exclusive.

Anyway, in the heart of this hard-hitting, greatly liberating chapter comes the phrase:

"Do not turn away from your own flesh and blood"

and God and Isaiah don't seem to mean your immediate family.  Your own flesh and blood will be the whole human race.  Jesus said something about who our neighbour is (spoiler: everybody).  There's even that lovely dirge we used to sing in primary school: "and the creed and the colour and the name won't matter…"

Much of the EU debate has raged around how we might be poorer if we remain/leave.  Very, very little - shamefully little on behalf of the majority of campaigners on either side - has been said about how this country might help others.  There's a terrible, wrong assumption that of course we want to close our borders, of course immigrants (refugees, migrants, everyone who can't stake their birth to a corner of the UK) are trouble, of course we deserve better just by dint of popping out of our mother's womb on this sceptred isle.  What on earth happened to hospitality?  Responsibility?  I hope the UK I see in this debate isn't every local community writ large.

And people talk about a Christian country, as if a Christian country were one in which only Christians were allowed in.  My friends, that would be a deeply unChristian country.  Ever since God's people found themselves with borders, God has been clear that the measure of a country's spiritual health is its treatment of people who have no other help.  Widows and orphans and strangers and aliens.

Being a Christian country isn't about denying other cultures a way of life.  It isn't about imagining that being arbitrarily born in a place gives one rights or makes one superior.  Being a Christian country should mean that we care for the sick (ah! the NHS! love you) and look after the less able (hello ATOS) and do something marvellous and constructive when people arrive whose own home has become untenable through civil wars and fundamentalist governments and air strikes.

I don't always know what.  I can't crunch the numbers.  But I know that when we turn aside - from human need, from a Big Issue vendor, from drowned bodies on a shore - we become a little less Christ-like, a little less God-like.  

But when we address ourselves to the poor and displaced, the outcome to our hearts is different again.  Isaiah 58 is chock-full of promises:

If we do away with oppression… if we stop pointing the finger… if we call time on malicious talk… if we spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed…

then

our light will rise in the darkness!

then

our night will become like the noonday!

then

our needs will be satisfied in a sun-scorched land!

then

we will be like a well-watered garden.

And our reputation?  We will be called Repairer-of-Broken-Walls, Restorer-of-Street-with-Dwellings.

I want those on my tombstone (if I can manage it) and I want them on the UK's coat of arms - that we figured out that the only way to be great in any way at all is to be carers, above and beyond whatever call of duty we think we might have.  Greatness doesn't lie in looking after your own flesh and blood, but in looking after everybody's flesh and blood.

There are great things about Great Britain: increased acceptance within our borders is the big one.  But to be properly, usefully, truly Great, we need to look beyond, and down and across, and seek the kingdom of God before the United Kingdom.  We could light up the dark night of international politics by being a beacon of hope and welcome.  Our own night might even become noonday in the process.

Anyway.  Flesh and blood.  Christian country.  It's all words.  It's only the actions that mean anything.

Rich, Ripped And Royal

Back to superheroes, people, and in my time I've pretended to be Superman and played the brilliant comic creation Supersmashinglovelyman.  I hope no pictures exist of that.

But who's my favourite superhero?  Who do you think I rate most highly from the Marvel/DC world?  And who's your favourite superhero?  The Human Torch?  Mr Fantastic?  Sparky The Battery Boy?  Mr Boombastic?  Ok, I made two of those up...

I'll tell you mine in a minute.

But first, I recently walked out of a superhero film at the cinema.  It was Captain America: Civil War, it was an hour in, and there'd been some extended conflict between Captain A, the Black Panther, the Winter Soldier and some other dudes I wasn't caring very much about.

Part of the reason for leaving was that the film didn't bother with the courtesy of "Previously on Avengers" or somesuch.  Casual viewers like me were just baffled.  Don't tell me that a film weighing in at about two-and-a-half hours can't muster two minutes to bring us up to speed on things.  Friends managed it.  Doctor Who manages it.  Even Coupling managed it.  But Captain America?  No such luck.

Except I did.

So I was baffled by events.  But more than that, let's look at its superheroes.

Captain America.  He's a buffed-up fellow, to say the least.

Iron Man.  He's a millionaire geezer who's basically joined the powerful by being rich, who has more money than sense and if he gets a bit trashed he just digs not very deeply in his pockets and rebuilds his super suit.  Heavens, sometimes he sends his suits in as automatic drones, I think.  He doesn't even bother showing up!

Iron Man.  No sympathy.

The Black Panther.  He's pretty quickly unmasked as… the crown prince of an African nation.

And these are the people I'm meant to sympathise with or cheer on?  Rich, royal and ripped.  Frankly, that appeals about as much as this football sport where people fork out big money to watch 22 overpaid millionaires run around a field.

It doesn't end with the Black Panther.  

There's Batman.  A rich man with a big shed and a butler.

All the bravery money can buy.

There's Superman.  Pretty well invincible, only ever interesting in the presence of kryptonite.

Superman.  Get a neck!

Problems of the royal, ripped and rich.  Spare me.  I don't watch the Kardashians either.

And the big reason, then, is that they simply don't connect.

Whereas my favourite superhero is…

…

(drum roll)

…

It's Spiderman.

Web-slinging, wise-cracking Spiderman, yesterday.

Sure he has some powers (bitten by a radioactive spider, so it's fortunate they weren't experimenting with radioactive worms or cockroaches that day), but otherwise he has no huge inheritance.  He earns his cash as a photographer with a grouchy boss.  He has women trouble.  He has an elderly relative to look after.  He's human.  He's us.

In my youth I recall reading the story of the origins of Spiderman as an idea for a character, and how Stan Lee was almost persuaded not to publish him after someone asked, "Who wants to read about a superhero with problems?"

But the answer is, we do.

Proper problems of laundry and love, rather than the massive existential problems that Superman and Batman have.  Wangst, I believe they're called, making much out of some massive ideology that the rest of us have no time for because we have to earn our living and put the recycling bins out without the help of Alfred.

Spiderman is actually in Captain America: Civil war, albeit briefly and some time after I left the auditorium.  Ah well.  maybe he swung in to tell them to lighten up and to stop whining about their first world problems, and that anyone else would kill to be ripped, royal or rich.  Oi!  Avengers!  Shut it!

Go Spiderman, especially in his underrated incarnation played by Andrew Garfield.  "Don't come in!" he shouts at his Aunt May as he tries to hide his costume in his room in the two-bed condo he shares with her, "I'm all kinds of naked!"  Now there's a problem.  And when he gets home, it's more often his costume is ripped than he is, and he gets to sew it up by lamplight, much like Father Mackenzie, darning his socks.  

A real person recovering from fighting for others.  BUPA health plan not included.

Where was I?  Of course, Spiderman has that in common with Jesus: neither is rich or ripped, and Jesus puts aside the royal side of things in order to be born in hay, raised with splinters, live with idiots and die in agony.  No Alfred, no Batplane, none of that blarney about Jor-El.  He could call on battalions of angels… but he doesn't because that would be cheating.  That wouldn't be incarnation.  That wouldn't be identifying with us.  Jesus chooses to live like common people, chooses to do whatever common people do.  And while it's true that if he called his dad he could end it all, Jesus doesn't.  He's no tourist.  He's here and he means it, and he lives like us and suffers like us, so that finally we have a hero we can identify with.

Batman wanders round muttering gnomically and darkly to himself.  Largely incomprehensibly, too.  Superman speeds in, speeds out.  

Batman vs. Superman.  Be honest, who gives a monkey's who wins?

Spiderman, however, he stops to banter.  And tellingly, he's your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman, two adjectives that would have Batman turning in his grave and Superman raising an eyebrow.  How vulgar, belonging to people.  How vulgar, belonging with people.

But it's what Spiderman does, and it's what Jesus does.  And I'll take that common vulgarity of mucking in and staying like us anyday.  Jesus loves us, never lords it over us.  Long live heroes who share our problems and are heroic nonetheless.  It shows it can be done, and I may even stay til the end of the film…

Jesus: strawberry and halo never in evidence during earthly time.  Or at all, probably.  Human face, always.

Meet Your Hero!

Well hello there.

Do you have heroes?  And have you ever had the chance to meet them?

In a purely name-dropping way, here are some of the people I've met: Richard Whiteley, Carol Vorderman, Susie Dent, Barry Norman, Noddy Holder, Alexander Armstrong, Richard Osman, Jon Pertwee, that Cain Dingle off Emmerdale, a woman off Corrie and another woman off Corrie.  Oh, and Tony Wilson.

And I once saw Bradley Walsh across a crowded plaza, but I was quite busy giving a balloon-animal-seller the heebie-jeebies.

It wasn't this man.  But the horse is familiar.

But was I star-struck?  I was not.

More or less all of those were in proper contexts (that is, filming Countdown and Pointless - more name-dropping).  Some were at funerals and weddings.  Tony Wilson was just walking down Deansgate, and I just nodded, and he nodded back.  Yay.

But there were two occasions when I met people who are closer to being my heroes.  To whit, Mr Tom Baker and Mr Neil Tennant.  Dr Who and the singing half of the Pet Shop Boys.

 Classic work.  But would you interrupt their day?

Mr Tennant was browsing in Waterstone's bookshop in Durham.  Mr Baker was putting shopping in his car boot on a Tesco car park in Maidstone.

And there's the dilemma.  To disturb, or not to disturb?  

It's me.  Of course I didn't.  Rude to.  Book-browsing and boot-filling.  Why disturb such lovely moments?

Plus, of course… what if one's heroes aren't the gentlemen they should be?  What if the fruity tones of Tom Baker were employed in telling me where to sling my hook?  What if the gently nasal voice of Neil Tennant were employed in grumpy response?  Would I be able to listen to Left To My Own Devices in the same way again?  Would I be able to watch Image Of The Fendahl?

And I confess, more than any other considerations, I stayed quiet and walked on by both times for the simple reason that meeting your heroes can be destructive and disappointing.  That's not anything I want to risk.  Of course they have feet of clay.  I don't idolise or elevate them, merely really enjoy their work.  

So.  No.  But if you're reading, Mr Tennant, Mr Baker, hello.  Respect.  All that.

This human hero avoidance has repercussions in the spiritual realm.  Or rather, it impacts my faith.  Basically, sometimes, I don't want to disturb Jesus in case he's… less than I thought he was.

There.  Said it.  Irrational, because he's not.  Not less.  He's more, so much more, so much much more than all we could ever imagine.  And yet I hang back, just in case.  What if…

In the words of my favourite ever Christian songwriter Chris Rice (check out his stuff, it's honest):

Mr Chris Rice.  Hello there!

I need a hero

Who’ll dare to find me

Fly to my rescue

And crash through the wall

Announce my freedom

Bring me to my senses

Gather me into his strong arms

And carry me off. . . to safety

Well, I don’t quite know how to do this

But Jesus, I can’t save myself

So here I go calling out for mercy

And crying out for your help

(So if you hear me. . .)

I need a hero

Please dare to find me

Fly to my rescue

And crash through the wall

Announce my freedom

Bring me to my senses

Gather me into your strong arms

And carry me off.

Something like that.  My own self-reliance is really a form of captivity to pride… my own refusal to believe that I matter to Jesus is simply a form of missing out on all the good stuff.  And Jesus isn't Superman (more on that next post!), either in DC Comics or Nietzschean thinking.  But he's there, and his presence scares away the monsters and dispels the darkness and gives hope in dark nights.

Not like this at all, thankfully.

Please remember that, and please pray that I might remember it too!  Find him, run to him, crawl to him if that's how you are when bad stuff strikes.  Jesus isn't my boyfriend or my bromance, but he's certainly the strong kind tender figure I need when the night falls on you (baby).  

Maybe a bit like this.

And if I may quote some of my favourite atheist bands, Del Amitri:

But as day turns to night there's this hopelessness to fight

When I think that I might not make it through

Sometimes I just have to say your name

To hear it hanging in the air, to know it sounds the same

And sometimes when I'm blue, I know just what to do

To keep the blues at bay you know I only have to say your name

When I've used up all my patience

When your letters have been read twenty times through

I can drink all the wine in this place of mine

But it ain't no replacement 

It ain't no replacement for you

Sometimes I just have to say your name

To hear it hanging in the air, to know it sounds the same

And sometimes when I'm blue, I know just what to do

To keep the blues at bay you know I only have to say your name

Say that name.  See?  That's the one we need.

Penguins And A Pantomime Horse

One of my roles in life was film-making on a teenage outdoor pursuits venture.  And one of the things you could safely and easily spot in these short films was a certain indebtedness to The Mighty Boosh, The Goodies and Trevor and Simon (fantastic fact: Simon's mum used to go to my church.  She still goes, but it's not my church any more).

These explain a lot.

And as my friend Rob said one day - probably after a curry lunch and from the back half of the pantomime horse - "Why am I always the arse-end?"

Me and Rob, yesterday.

Good question.  My argument was that I was bringing a certain je ne sais quoi to the front end, taking horseplay to new frontiers of horsery.  And - not to put too fine a point on it - "shut up and get back in there.  We're on a tight schedule and breathing is a luxury."

So.  Rob.  Sorry mate.  That was deeply inequable.  In-equin-able.  I'll make it up to you one day.  Although, considering how many soakings, shaving-foam-pies and desperate indignities Rob had heaped upon him in those halcyon days, I suspect the posterial permanence of his position is the least of his grievances (but see our early 21st century film, "Rob's Internal Monologue").

Back to the penguins.

And if you've ever watched that parade - a "waddle" - of penguin males marching across the frozen wastes of North Manchester Antarctica then you may well have felt some pity for the ones at the front, bearing the brunt of the weather.  Or the ones at the rear getting their penguin bum-ends frozen off.  Or the ones at the sides, where the countervailing winds are bitterest.  Do these extreme penguins envy the ones a-waddling at the heart of the huddle?  Is there pushing and shoving and lobbying for a warmer walk?

It seems not.  It seems that these penguins work together.  It seems that within the waddle, our flightless feathered friends are, indeed, friends.  They circulate, spending some time at the heart to warm themselves up and take a breather from the blizzard, and then a stint at the hintermost boundaries, yes, getting chilly, but yes, giving a break to those who had previously been on the frosty fringes.

Being largely black and white, it's hard to spot from a distance.  But it happens.

Does it happen in churches too?  Are Christians practitioners of the penguin protector/protected pattern?

Well, are they?

Good churches, I guess, are largely full of people who are broadly aware of each other's needs, so that when someone needs a break from the rigours of life, there are people who will cosset and huddle and squeeze in with a pastoral wing and an offer to lighten the load until the crisis passes.  When problems pile in or bereavement looms, when depression saps or some kick in the teeth has been delivered, we need people to stand around us.  And when our brothers and sisters are laid so low, we need to step up to shelter them.

There's something about it in Ecclesiastes where the geezer (that's a theological term) says:

 Two are better than one,

    because they have a good return for their labor:

 If either of them falls down,

    one can help the other up.

But pity anyone who falls

    and has no one to help them up.

 Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.

    But how can one keep warm alone?

 Though one may be overpowered,

    two can defend themselves.

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

It's like he'd seen penguins already!

You need help sometimes, and I need help sometimes as we waddle along with Christ.  It's a cruel cold world, and without each other, we'll just wander off into the wilds or else lie down and stop caring whether we live or die.

I've been in need of a huddle quite often, and I'm massively grateful for the people who were there to hem me in behind and before, in the style of God (I think that's a quote from Psalm 139.  Somebody check, please).

And there you have it.  This week's last (well, probably last) penguin blog.  

Be distinctive… 

Live sacrificially… 

Look after each other…

So much to think about… get out there and be all penguinish for Jesus, ok?

 

Putting Your Fun On Ice

Did you manage to match the penguins to the names?

These are Galapagos penguins.

 And these are rockhoppers.  Or maybe macaroni penguins.

 While this is a chinstrap penguin.  Who knew?

This is a little blue penguin, so-called because… erm… I'll get back to you on this one. 

These are strictly Emperor penguins

This is a Gentoo penguin.

And here's an Adelie penguin.  I hope I got all of those right...

And so we decided penguins aren't monochrome, and Christians aren't monocultural.  As with Desmond Tutu, we're to be God's rainbow people.

Anyway, how fast can a penguin go?  They can toboggan about at speeds upwards of 20mph, and all the evidence suggests that they do it for fun as well as progress.  Penguins have no land predators, so there's no need for speed.  But they slide along having the whoopiest time of their lives!

Who needs flight?

And then they give it up.

Male penguins give up that slippery life of feathery frolicsome fun to look after the egg.  You'll've seen films of huge huddles ("waddles") of penguins crossing the North Manchester antarctic tundra at about 2mph, all to preserve that one single egg that they carry in such unlikely fashion on their feet.

Who'd do that?  Well, lots of you, I guess, if it meant looking after your young.  Wyth-It thought a bit about the sacrifice it would be - giving up all the streamlined sliding to waddle, for the sake of someone else.

And of course from there we thought about how Jesus did it.  How Jesus left heaven (which I suspect is a bit five-star rated on Trip Advisor) and slummed it down here, just so that he could save us, re-connect us with God, and offer us a whole new set of possibilities.

I mean, this earth is good.  God made it, and God di'n't make no rubbish, good readers.  It's not like Jesus was coming on down to complete squalor.  He came down to a mother's love and to the occasional lie-in and to wine and laughter and he chose a time that predated reality TV, so in many ways it was better than today (but with less good anaesthetic should you need it).

Nevertheless, it's a step down.  It's a 33 year step down, with crucifixion guaranteed.  And puberty, which is as bad.  And wisdom teeth.  And siblings, who divide opinion.  And Thursdays.  And teething and sore bumbum.  And rejection, a bit of a flogging, some betrayal and a long trip carrying a cross-bar.  So, you know, not entirely idyllic.

Jesus, it says in Philippians 2, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage.  Rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross!

Whenever you read the gospel, that's Jesus walking when he could be flying.  That's Jesus working when he could be loafing.  That's Jesus, living the extra mile.  That's him, that is.  You can excuse him a good nap in a storm-tossed boat and the odd bit of impatience.  

And our attitude needs to be the same.

What does that look like?  I need constant reminders that hunkering down with people is what Jesus would do.  The church needs constant reminders that we're not here as some aspirational club but as a movement to sit alongside the weariest and make a difference, even when we think we could be flying or hanging out with the frankly beautiful people of witty repartee and hipster clothes.

Be like those penguin fellows.  Think upon the sacrifice of Jesus - not just the crucifixion but the whole 33 years - and see what it looks like when we sacrifice our time or dignity or popularity or salary to do some of the same stuff as Jesus, to follow his trajectory and to spot that extra mile.

We're not done with penguins yet.  Yes, they're not all black and white.  Yes, they put the ice back in sacrifice (see what I did there?).  But there's more…

Come back tomorrow to see that huddle waddle...

Everything I Know About Life I've Learned From Penguins

Hello.

How did you go on with the Penguin Quiz?  Let's see how many p-p-p-points you p-p-p-p-picked up.

1.

This is Feathers McGraw from Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers.

2.

This is Chilly Willy.  You wouldn't believe what I found when I googled him/her.  Oh, you would?

3.

This is the Penguin off the Penguin books.

4.

This one's Frobisher, comic strip companion to Colin Baker's Doctor Who in the mid-1980s.  If you got that, you should probably get out more.  Or stay in more.  Either is good.

5.

This is Pingu, and yes, he's mopping up his sister's urine.

6.

These are Penguin chocolate bars.

7.

These are the Penguins of Madagascar.  Their names elude me.  A man's brain has only so much space, and I find I still know the words to Don't Turn Around by Aswad from 1988, so remembering four penguin names is clearly not a possibility.  My terabyte is all used up.

8.

This is Mumble from Happy Feet.  Of course.

9.

From the popular Octonauts series, this is Peso.

10.

And finally we have Wheezy the Penguin from Toy Story.   2, mostly.

Penguins, it emerges, come in all shapes and sizes, from the Little Blue to the Adelie to the Rockhopper.  Emperors and Kings.  Galapagos penguins.  And there was me thinking they were a monochrome population the world over.  Can you match the following pictures to their breed?

1.

 2.

 3.

 4.

 5.

 6.

 7.

There's a chinstrap penguin, a macaroni penguin, an emperor penguin, an adelie penguin, a little blue penguin, a galapagos penguin and a gentoo penguin.  If nothing else, please get the chinstrap and the little blue right…

Penguins may be largely black and white, but they're certainly not monochrome…

…and neither are the followers of Jesus.  Much as people might like to dismiss us, much as the new atheist critics like to use a broad brush-stroke to generalise wildly, much as some would like to choose the worstest silliest Christian ever and consign us all to perdition off the back of that one, we're just not.

Followers of Jesus come in more shapes and sizes than penguins.  There are those of us who love exuberant worship, those who love reflective worship, those who love both…  There are followers of all ages and shades of everything.  

Basically, be proud of your diverseness, whether you like a literal six-day creation or a billions-of-years affair; whether you love organ voluntaries or some gentle strumming or some wholesome Quaker silence.  

Don't let critics tar you with one brush.  Surprise them

And don't let any other Christians tell you that the church has a narrow DNA either.  Last time I looked, the only qualification needed for being a Christian was loving and following Jesus.  Nothing else.  Don't let anyone disqualify you - and don't disqualify anyone else.

As for penguins, it doesn't matter if they look like Craig David

or Dennis Healey

they're still penguins.  And whatever your shade of belief or belonging, nothing stops you belonging to Jesus in your diverse glory.