Two Short Planks

What's your favourite metaphor or simile?  Don't worry if you can't remember the difference between metaphor and simile: I can't and it's not a necessary skill for a successful life.

But then, sometimes I'm as thick as two short planks.

That was a metaphor there (or a simile).  It's when something is like something else.

As thick as two short planks...

As dry as a bone.

As slippery as an eel.

As daft as a brush.

As strong as an ox.

As clear as mud.

As thick as... you know... that other thing...

Songwriters love a simile (or metaphor) too: 

Life is like a slow train crawling up a hill, 

Life is a rollercoaster,

Love is like oxygen (too much and you get too high, not enough and you're gonna die).

You can probably name a few more:

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog,

Like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down,

Like a prayer, like a virgin, like a motorway, like a rolling stone,

You lived your life like a candle in the wind

I'm titanium, you're a firework, so don't go chasing waterfalls...

Metaphors and similes brighten up the song and the day, as sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti.

Then they get out of control (like hair under lockdown)

Hyperbolic like the 80s song that declared:

"You say you're easy on me:                                                           you're about as easy as a nuclear war."

Invested like my favourite Del Amitri lyric:

"Like a part-time Elvis imitator, these streets I know so well                                                               have been painted beyond recognition with a temporary spell..."

Or just bizarre, like being

"pressed by love's hot fevered iron like a striped pair of pants."

Anyway, bonus points for identifying all the songs above without using a search engine...

What are your favourites?  Rappers abound with them, and one or two even make sense.  And the Beatles even claimed to be the walrus (tusk, tsk, discuss).

Jesus had a fine line in simile and metaphor, both when he talked about himself:

I am the bread of life

I am the true vine

I am the good shepherd

I am the resurrection and the life

I am the gate for the sheep

A little Old Testament knowledge is in order to get the best out of some of those.  Or some good reading round the subject.

And Jesus shows a creative flourish when he told people what the kingdom of God was...

Like a mustard seed

Like yeast

Like a farmer sowing seed

Like treasure in a field

Like a pearl of great price

Like a banquet

Like a very boring sermon going on forever                                        (no he didn't, I made that one up to show                                           just how brilliant Jesus thinks the kingdom is:                                     no duff or dull metaphors for Jesus!).

The whole Bible has some wonderful metaphors for God:

The Lord is my stronghold and my shield                                       (shield means more since we started shielding, don't you think?)

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer.

God is Father and Mother, shepherd and king

His word is a light to my feet and honey to my lips

I'm particularly fond of Zephaniah 3 where God reckons that he sings over his people, like a momma or a poppa sings over a baby in a cradle.  Look it up, it's in 3:17ish...

It's all good, because if (like me) you don't think too easily in the abstract, then these good solid tasty metaphors (and similes) are brilliant for God getting across his ideas.  Who hasn't tasted honey?  Been relieved by light on a dark path?  Who hasn't had a treasure a some point or been transfixed by something like a pearl, and wanted it so much it actually hurts?  It's especially brilliant because so often the Kingdom of God and God herself are invisible, so we need good pictures to make them more tangible.  There's that wonderful praise song by Chris Tomlin, in which he declares that God is indescribable and then spends four minutes trying to describe God anyway.  Irony and praise cohabiting - that's fantastic.

Anyway, all I wanted to ask you today was:

What's your favourite simile (or metaphor) in life?

What's your favourite one in songs?

What's your favourite "I am" comment by Jesus?

What's the most comforting or challenging metaphor (or simile) in the Bible?

Let us know!

Lucky Pants and Sugar Mice

There are occasions when churches declare a day of prayer... or a watch night... New Year or during a pandemic or else Sunday 26th May 1940 when the British Expeditionary Force was fleeing under enemy fire at Dunkirk... or Sunday 23rd March 1941 as the Nazi war machine toppled the Balkan states like dominoes.

Less seriously, as days of prayer go, there's also the vicar's MOT, when his 2006 Corsa (it has no name) gets an annual opportunity to stick its tongue out, say Aaaaaaah and have its reflexes tested.  This is happening tomorrow.

Here it is (it has no gender either)

Will it pass?  I'll pray, but in that sort of way that I pray for a parking space on the fell roads: in a deep awareness that God has other things to do, and that it won't be the end of the world (or even the end of the road) if the car doesn't quite make it.

Praying and cars are curious bedfellows.  When my car (it has no name because it is not a sentient thing) is struggling up The Struggle near Ambleside or making some curious bonnet noises, I will do three things:

• Pray
• Stroke its steering wheel and speak to it coaxingly (don't do this in company as my last passenger asked if we wanted to be alone)
• Turn up the music (Suburbia is good) to drown the rattling

You can rank those in order of effectiveness if you like... which is to say that only prayer makes any difference in those circumstances.  But since the engine of modern cars is a mystery to most modern people and I can't solve every problem with an egg and some pantyhose (they don't work for pastoral problems either any more) I am mostly powerless, and pretending that I have any measure of control over the performance of the engine beyond driving well is at most a faintly cheering charade.  "You can do it," I tell my car (which has neither name nor ears).  Perhaps God in his kindness accepts that as a prayer.

Stroking a steering wheel: I think that's the best picture of superstition that I have.  I'm not otherwise superstitious: mirrors and magpies and black cats and rabbits' feet and lucky underpants and the number 13 don't have much purchase on my behaviour.  I don't walk under ladders but that's because I've seen the overalls of painters.  And yet I do sometimes catch myself worrying about tempting Fate (capital F, fate) - like when I say "nothing can go wrong."  That's all about the mis-assignation of cause and effect, a confusion of correlation and coincidence and causation that every right-thinking person should eschew.  But even now I'm wondering whether writing about my MOT is jinxing the whole business - and I don't believe in jinxes.  You see how superstition lurks on the edge of our capacity to control things?

One of my favourite writers, Nick Hornby, addresses superstition brilliantly in his early book Fever Pitch about the adventures of supporting a slightly rubbish football team (all football teams are slightly rubbish even when they win because their supporters just know that they're going to lose the next game).

Excellent book.  

He tells how once, supporting Cambridge United, "Chris Roberts bought a sugar mouse from Jack Reynolds, bit its head off, dropped it in the Newmarket Road before he could get started on the body, and it got run over by a car."  That day, beleaguered Cambridge beat Orient 3-1.

A ritual, says Nick Hornby, was born.  "Before each home game we all of us trooped into the sweet shop, purchased our mice, walked outside, bit the head off as though we were removing a pin from a grenade, and tossed the torsos under the wheels of oncoming cars."  Jack Reynolds, sweet shop proprietor, watched them ruefully, shaking his head.

And Cambridge United (plucky, beleaguered and languishing, to use all the football terms) remained unbeaten at home for months.

Discuss.

That's right.  It would be an odd universe and an odd theological structure that found any connection between mice and goals.  Barking mad!  

But I keep on talking to my car, even if it only reassures me and distracts me from worry.

Nick Hornby - acolyte and believer in the world of football and with absolutely no power over the performance of his team - provides a list of things he has latched onto at different points in his life: different rituals (his word) to help his team win, to skew the world in their favour, to influence the gods of football (there are none, don't worry).  These include, brilliantly:

• Turning the radio off in the second half
• Playing a Buzzcocks album
• Eating cheese and onion crisps at a certain point in the first half
• Smoking
• Not videotaping the game

Hornby has tried lucky hats, lucky socks, lucky shirts, lucky friends (and also the corollary: friends he considered unlucky and tried to exclude from the games).  Guess which worked.

Other brands are available.

That's right, nothing, because on any sensible view of causality, it would be a very curious set of events that allowed any of his actions to affect the performance of eleven men who don't know him.  Their manager and trainer might affect their performance (skill and shouting and encouragement and hairdryer moments) and their breakfast might, but not Nick.  

I'm not mocking Nick Hornby - he whistles in the dark, on the side of the angels, it says in some of his reviews - but I'm so with him when he skewers what superstitions and rituals are all about:

"Nothing has ever been any good.  But what else can we do when we're so weak?  We invest hours each day, months each year, years each lifetime in something over which we have no control; is it any wonder then, that we are reduced to creating ingenious but bizarre liturgies designed to give us the illusion that we are powerful after all, just as every other primitive community has done when faced with a deep and apparently impenetrable mystery?"

His diagnosis of the human condition is spot on: we are so weak and there are so many things over which we have no control.  And since I don't cope well with not being in control, I will invent things to give myself the illusion that I'm a real stakeholder in football or motor mechanics.

Don't get me wrong.  I enjoy all the psychological props I can that affect my mood and performance so that I do things better - I have a very comforting jacket, I don't work as well if my socks are inside out (odd is okay), and I once borrowed a friend's jumper to give me the moral confidence to confront a bully.  They make a difference not to the universe directly, but to me.  I have quite stompy black shoes for when I'm taking a difficult funeral because they lend me standing.  Colin Baker has lucky knickers which he claims offer him at least two kinds of support.

Colin Baker: badly-treated excellent actor

What I need to do is stop talking to the car and start talking to God.  If superstition is a product of weakness and uncertainty and needing to affect the running of the cosmos, then the best antidote to it, the best prevention to the waste of energy and sugar mice and cheese and onion crisps, is knowing that I have a strong strong God who does affect things, who is working his purpose out and whose eye is on the sparrow, although his criteria for intervening in football matches, 1990 Argentinian handballs aside, is hazy.

Superstitions are unreliable crutches for weak humans.  Illusory, but possibly comforting as long as you don't ruminate too hard on them.

God is an entirely reliable crutch - also for weak humans (that's all of us).  Not illusory, and twice as comforting because his comfort arises from a historically plausible incarnation, attested words of encouragement and promises from someone whose credit-rating is impressive.

If you must have a crutch (and we all must) make it a good one.

So - as so often in my sermons - it's worth remembering that God is good.  "I know who holds the future, and he holds me in his hands," says a rather sweet little hymn I know.  That he works in all things for the good of those who love him.  That nothing can separate us.  

Hornby uses some fun words as well in his football-superstition spiel.  He calls things "liturgies" and "rituals," which is a good reminder that all of our "religion" (also a terrible word) and our attitudes are one of two things.  They are either gathering round a good God who means us well, or else they are attempts - subtle and unconscious attempts, I give you that - to manipulate the universe and its God to make things work in our favour.  There's a thin line between what God's grace has done (forgiven us) and the things we do to remind us of that (ten Hail Marys, which don't effect forgiveness but illustrate it, remind us to do better next time).  You can't make a deal with God where if I do x or y, God will do a or b. Why not?  Because he's already beaten us to it by launching a covenant in which he looks out for us regardless of our actions.

It doesn't invite complacency - that would be an equal and opposite error.  But it does liberate us from the old religions where sacrifices and the right words conjure the pleasure of God out of nothing.  It's the difference between being in a bad relationship with someone capricious that you want to please but haven't the foggiest where to begin, and being in a good relationship where every graceful overture, every thankful prayer is accepted with aplomb regardless of the form of words, manner of dress or church tradition.

So if you have traditions (and we all do), make sure they're not instead of this brilliant relationship with a loving and lovely God.  Make sure they're like Colin Baker's lucky knickers which put him in a place where he is on top form to live well.  Incense and genuflection and the sign of the cross are only useful inasmuch as they help us prepare for an encounter with a kind God.  (Lower church equivalents are available, ion harder to pin down.). Use them but don't be so reliant on them that if they were suddenly swept away by - I don't know, a pandemic? - you'd be stuffed without them.

Jesus (no lucky pants as far as we know, just a good sense of identity) died so we could be free, and that includes freedom from having our lives restricted by superstitions, freedom from fear that I might jinx my MOT, freedom to eat a whole sugar mice and not litter the Newmarket Road.  Put yourself in the shoes of Jack Reynolds, sweet shop proprietor, shaking his head at the wasted efforts and calories, and if you'd be baffled by someone else doing what you do, give it a good long look and then wave it goodbye.  Take a deep breath and say to God, "Yes, I'm so weak... what can I do?  It's a very good job I have a very strong friend."

Being Human

Lockdown has led me to ask quite a few questions, which have included:

• Is David Bellamy still with us?
• Which end of an egg comes out of a chicken first?
• Can you zoom in on Zoom?
• Do I look okay in this hat?

The answers to these are, in no particular order:

• No
• Blunt end first
• No, he died in December
• No-one cares what you wear any more

Match them up and win a prize!

R.I.P David Bellamy

However.  The biggest questions I have - the ones that have been hovering and/or bobbing around under the surface - came to a head with a strange encounter I had a while ago at my front door with a woman of indeterminate age behind a face mask.

She was wearing too many layers for the summer when she rang the doorbell, and I was still wearing my sequinned gold trilby.  She stood back from the doorstep, where she'd laid down two big carrier bags full of food donations for the Wythenshawe Food Bank.  I thanked her from a safe distance and smiled from under my trilby.  Just before she turned to go, she took off her face mask, cleared her throat and hawked out the biggest gob of phlegm and sputum I think I have ever seen.  Its trajectory took it against the vicarage wall about a foot from where I was standing.  Thus relieved, the name less woman replaced her mask and walked away, leaving me thinking, "WTF?!?!"  (In clergy brains, WTF stands for "What the flip?"  Obviously.)

I gave her a moment to vanish over the horizon and then boiled a kettle and gave that portion of the wall a thorough bleaching.  Even before I poured boiling water down it, it looked like a middle-sized dog (like the Littlest Hobo) had done a middle-sized wee up a wall.  How one woman could secrete such a store of sputum was a minor miracle.  But not in a good way.

The Littlest Hobo, starring London

That wasn't the question, though.  The question was: how can someone donate so much food (brilliant deed) and then gob up my front wall?  Should I remember her generosity or her spitting?  And what was the spitting about?  It was incongruent with the regard for distancing and the wearing of a face mask.  It was worse because my prejudices think that women spitting is more unseemly than men doing it.  I have a friend who needs medically to discharge his mouth-ballast regularly but he manages to do it in quiet ways in discreet places.

In true Hugh Grant style, I didn't mention her spit as she went, although I felt it put camels and llamas  and Spit the Dog - and her - to shame.

A less reputable and socially useful dog.

But.  Human nature!  A bit like her projectile spitting, it's right up the wall, isn't it?  

The really interesting questions of lockdown are not "How are seagulls coping?" or "What's the effect on the environment?" but are about human nature.

Line up, then, for the quiz of the year!  Forget eggs and Zoom and gwappling David Bellamy's gwapenuts, I have a list of questions which are all about being human and resident on planet Earth in 2020.  Have a go at puzzling out some of these.

Those people who hoarded toilet rolls and pasta and hand sanitiser: was it panic buying or was it sheer selfishness?  Greed or desperation?  Was it fear?  What does it say about the human race?

And those people selling hand gel at hugely inflated prices: are they exceptions to the shine of human nature, or are they more representative?

On the other hand, we've been clapping for the NHS and thanking both key workers and baked potatoes.  I rang my bike bell vigorously for two minutes out on my exercise cycle through Bowdon last week.  Is clapping necessary?  Is clapping enough?

A baked potato.  Thank you!

And with the heroes on one hand and the hoarders on the other, has your view of human nature gone up or down in lockdown?

What about forgiveness?  Will you remember the shops that tried to sell you loo roll at silly prices and boycott them?  If there were a large chain of pubs that hadn't played fair by its suppliers and staff, would you remember and give them a wide berth?  If a political party had denied the NHS adequate funding for a decade, would you remember at the next ballot box?  Is everything forgiven and forgotten (translation: pushed under the carpet and denied and "it's time we drew a line under that").

I've had less work to do in the past eight weeks.  I can no longer justify my existence by what I achieve.  Has your identity taken a knock as well?  I'm trying to learn what I often preach, which is that God loves me just because, and not because I've clocked in for stupid amounts of hours this week.  How does that change the way I live?

And if this is healthier, how can I keep up a sensible hourly workload in 2021 and beyond?

Why is it so hard to cut your own hair? 

And can I win a sunflower-growing competition against a seven year old girl?

Have you seen people who think they're the exception to all the rules about lockdown and staying safe?  Where does that belief come from?  

And why do I keep finding it as a temptation in my heart as well?

Why do so many people have trouble with 2 metres?  It's the height of Richard Osman.  Lots of people I see would have trouble squeezing Janette Krankie between them.

Can YOU spot the difference?

Why is it okay for Dominic Cummings to drive 260 miles and break the rules?  If the people in charge can't observe their own guidelines, what hope is there for any of us?  And why will we probably let him get away with it?

What's the kindest thing you've seen in these days?  And what's the kindest thing you've done?

What things that seemed really important in February have been shown up as not very valuable at all?

And what things have you discovered we should value more?

Does banana go well with pears in the vicar's Crimble Crumble?

Do you miss Sunday church?  Besides all the safety stuff, would you like it to be different when it comes back?

Have online resources and BBC services been scratching where you itch?

What's helped you in the moments when your mental health has been a bit wobbly?

Are you sleeping more or less?  Is that good? (Clue: I am sleeping more and it is excellent.)

Enough questions... unless you have more that you'd like to ask.

Answers... well, you think about them.  Just before lockdown I was in the middle of a good trawl of Genesis 1-11, preaching on and thinking about the place of the human race in the world.  It's peppered with instances of brilliant human behaviour and disgraceful human actions.  God declares us very good and laster on rues the day he ever made us.  Noah sort of saves the human race and then celebrates by getting off his face and kicking off whole new sins (these were the days when you could invent an original sin as well as Original Sin).  One man declares that he will return hurts 77-fold on anyone who slights him.  The human race decides to build a tower to dislodge God.  Sin crouches at the door, passing the buck is invented.  Methuselah dies of old age in the year of the flood but his son actually drowns in it while his grandson climbs in the ark.  Basically, read it all and see what it says about us.

The story of Noah we don't tell the kids so much 

What a mixed bag.  The story that emerges is that human beings are capable of so much good but also of so much evil, so much selfishness.    Entitlement - a horrible thing - isn't a 21st Century invention. 

Lockdown has shown me one more thing, and that's just how much hypocrisy and selfishness I have the capacity for.  How easily I could and can justify things.  How much of a plank is in my eye even as I level my sights on the manifold misbehaviour around me. 

What can I say?  Take a good honest moment to embrace your own humanity, with all the noble promise it contains.  Take a moment to own up to it as well, with all the flecks of selfishness that it is shot through with.  We're stuck with being human, we're blessed by being human and a little lower (but definitely lower) than the angels and a lot lower than Good and yet still the crown of all creation.

I'm not sure what the legacy of the spitty woman is - generosity or yeurgh - either in my eyes or in God's.  Kindness and crassness walk hand in hand in humanity.  But I can work to make my legacy a little kinder.

Special Guest Tracey Rawlins Says:

I do love my music.  It's not to everyone’s taste.  I cut my teeth on Dusty Springfield and Gene Pitney but I'm a child of the 80’s, the New Romantics, beer bottle tops on my shoes and a good dollop of Stock, Aitken and Waterman.  My station of choice is Radio 2.  

Mr Rawlins prefers 6 Music.  During lockdown we are united once a week for a few minutes by the Big Singalong when each BBC Radio station chooses a song.  Radio 2’s choice is usually quite middle of the road singalong feel-good.  6 Music can be a bit “left-field” but I go with it.  I'm pottering around the bedroom ready to sing along before I do the 15 second commute to the office when ColdPlay’s Fix You comes on.  It stops me dead in my tracks.  

When you try your best but you don't succeed

When you get what you want but not what you need

When you feel so tired but you can't sleep

Stuck in reverse

I sit down.  That’s me!  That’s how I feel today!  I didn’t sleep much, a difficult day or two whirring round and round my mind.  My whole job is about being alongside people and bringing people together.  I can’t do any of that right now.  In fact, nothing I do seems to be right.  I'm a failure.  I'm stuck in reverse.  Could it get any worse?  

And the tears streamed down my face.  Hot and wet.  Lots of them.  Through them and yet far away I could still hear the music with slightly different words playing:

I will guide you home 

And ignite your bones.  

And I would love to fix you. 

And there were more tears and I felt wrung out and exhausted.   Instead of wiping my face and rushing to be on time for work, I just sat.  Still.  I felt a bit more sorry for myself and a bit more wretched.  “Oh God, what am I going to do?”  More to myself than God to be honest but of course He hears everything doesn’t He?  The song had long since finished but I could still hear “I would love to fix you”  With a big sigh, I put Morning Prayer on the App on my phone.  Better make an effort and all that.  But no. I was stuck in reverse.  Couldn’t get past the first 3 lines.

I gave up and went into the office – aka the box room.  It’s a chaotic sight – papers on every surface, textbooks in specific piles on the floor – need to read/would like to read/will probably never read. 

On top of the printer was my Bible.  Discarded after sorting out Sunday School material at the weekend.  I leafed through it and remembered Matthew 11 v 28 - ‘Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”  I read a bit more either side of that particular verse.  Is it true?  Do I really believe it?  My Bible is NIV translation but there are many more translations and sometimes it's helpful to compare them.  I switched to the internet and found a different translation :

 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

Sound familiar?  Tired? Worn out?  Burned out on home working, home schooling, worrying about bills and where the next meal is coming from? 

All of those things and a million others, right?  I've heard lots of people comment that the Earth is healing herself at this time – less pollution, wildlife being seen in unexpected places, skies bluer.  What about us?  Are we using this time to heal?  To rest and re-charge?  Or, as I have been doing, have we just got busier doing different stuff?  

I've learnt this week that doing and doing, churning out lots of paper and emails doesn’t really make a difference if we’ve no heart for it because we are tired and exhausted.  It's not what we would want for anyone we care about – it's certainly not what God wants.  In the Bible we read many times that Jesus went off by himself.  It’s OK – it’s allowed! 

Moving into a weekend and a Bank Holiday next week, I'm going to slow down.  I'm going to invite Jesus to walk with me when I force myself outside for 20 minutes, to work with me whether I'm writing a report or doing a video call.  I'm going to read my Bible more and watch how He does it.  Jesus was very sociable so I don’t think that will mean I have to do everything in solitude unless I want to.  Being with Him isn’t enforced like this lockdown.  With Jesus there is always choice.  

Obviously this will take me a while and I'll get bogged down and tired again like we all do.  But He will be waiting.  Ready to fix me again: I just have to ask.  There’s room for more than one music choice isn’t there?  Along with finding a new rhythm of life I look forward to learning those “unforced rhythms of grace” that Jesus offers.  

Because as the ColdPlay song says:

If you never try you'll never know 

Just what you're worth.

One-Man Slow Motion Zombie Apocalypse

Hello again!  Yesterday on the Wythenshawe Team Facebook page I asked regular visitors to identify this clerical artefact:

As my acquaintance Victoria Coren Mitchell said, "Gee, that's a nut-scratcher."

Almost immediately three lovely people from the church I attend - Clare and Brenda and Lorraine - declared that it must be a clerical collar.  The white stretch of multiple-use plastic that clergy wear around their neck to signify service and open-ness to duty, joy and conversation.  One of these:

Lorraine and Brenda and Clare, you are unfortunately... wrong.  You have fallen into my heffalump trap.  The QI klaxons are sounding in your ears.  I must admit I misled you a little.  Would you like to see the bigger picture?

Ok.  Photographed in Manchester Piccadilly Station one Sunday when I was on a blind date, here it is:

The prize goes to Nicholas Campbell for correctly identifying the base of a coffee cup.  And not just just any coffee cup.  This is a Marks and Spencers coffee cup.  It's clerical because, you know, "More tea, vicar?"

Nice work, Nick.  I'll buy you a coffee (offer expires next Sunday).  Brenda and Clare and Lorraine, thank you so much for playing. If we weren't on lockdown you could call round and tell me what a naughty rotter I am.  Thank you so much, though, for putting yourself out there.  You rock.  Easter eggs all round!

Point being: it's difficult when you don't know the whole story.  It's tough when you can't see the bigger picture.

That's true with people too.  Last Thursday I found myself in Baguley Tesco (other stores are available, and other stores may actually have a phone signal) at the weekly NHS applause.  Tesco have stuck helpful arrows on the floors to indicate a one-way system (although they should have learned from their car park that Tesco customers are not brilliant at arrows.  Or parking.  Or the Highway Code.  Or not parking in disabled bays without a blue badge.  Or the parent and child spaces.  Anyway, I digress).  Basically, it's like Ikea now.  You have to visit everywhere to get anywhere and if you miss something then the loop back to find it is... well... loopy.  I only got Branston's pickle on the third attempt.

I was pottering down the soft drinks aisle in search of orange juice for smoothies when 8pm presented itself and the clapping began.  It was a little thin, but hey.  And while I was clapping, a little fellow of indeterminate age (about 78, I thought, with a tough paper round) came ambling towards me... not clapping... and walking against the prescribed direction of travel!  With a flagrant disregard of social distancing looming, and as an Englishman of the first water (ie I can't complain in restaurants), I kept on clapping and gave him the passive-aggressive Paddington Bear hard stare so beloved of this country.  And he kept coming.  It was like a one-man septuagenarian zombie apocalypse in slow motion.

My inner Basil Fawlty/David Mitchell hammered at my brain with a brilliantly cutting monologue that made it no further than my head (and about a dozen people I've regaled with the story, getting bigger every time).  "Hello? HELLO? I'm sorry, have you heard of social distancing?  Two metres?  There's a virus... it's been on the news.  Maybe you've heard of it?  And maybe you've seen these arrows on the floor?  I mean, did they not have arrows when you were a boy?  There's one on the Bayeux tapestry and that's from 1066 so I'm sure you must have seen one at some point.  Anyway, which end of this arrow do you not understand?  The blunt end or the pointy end?"

Me, left to my own devices.

Instead of which, of course, I waited until the end of the applause and then backed up so he could amble or shamble past and risk infecting himself or somebody else.  Like I say, a bit English.

But really, I've been in situations where you take people to task and they come back with some piece of information that I didn't have, and that bigger picture suddenly makes me ashamed of having spoken up, and I want the floor to open up and swallow me (in the direction of the arrow, obviously). So in Tesco I wondered whether he was partially sighted and couldn't see the arrows, or as pressured by the newfound difficulties of shopping as I feel, and declined to say anything.  He lurched on, actually lurched, in a way that made me think he was probably a war veteran fallen on harder times and some piece of shrapnel was lodged inside him from a battle where he'd saved countless lives and so he should be allowed to disregard arrows and keep-off-the-grass signs and jump the queue at the post office.

But yeah, in the absence of a bigger picture, I had a go at being charitable.  Because, in the words of a famous motto that somebody somewhere said:

The bigger picture helps.  As a vicar I sometimes get the terrible responsibility of taking someone to task, and the question I always ask myself (and should maybe ask them) is: "Why are you being so gosh-darned difficult?  Is there something I should know?"  After all, when I'm being awkward as all hell it's usually because I'm tired and feeling misunderstood and undervalued and some good deed has not gone unpunished.  Or gone awry.

You can think of a dozen, a hundred, a thousand things in anyone's backstory (or morning so far) that throw light on why they're behaving as they are, being difficult or demanding, demeaning or diminishing you, defiant or destructive.  They've been pooped on already today and they're unconsciously intent on pooping on the next person they see.  Illness or pain has taken away the insulation of the day.  They've been let down and aren't letting anyone else have another go.

What battle are you fighting?

What battles are the people who drive you up the wall fighting?

What battle is Mr Tesco-Customer fighting?  A soft answer to other people's bloody-minded difficulty doesn't just turn away wrath, it also opens up the chance to unpack things, and address the real troubles.  This man's real trouble wasn't that he was walking the wrong way.  There was more to it, and on a less fraught and more spacious occasion I might have engaged him in jocular conversation of the non-Mitchellian kind.

Jesus performs a wonderful little miracle in Mark 8:22-26 (read it!), healing a man of great visual impairment.  Pointedly, Jesus seems to take two attempts at it.  After his first pass, the formerly blind man claims that he can see people but they look like trees walking.

Trees, walking.  Yesterday.

Jesus makes a second pass and this time the man can see clearly now (the trees have gone!  He can see all obstacles in his way!).  But of course, Jesus being Jesus, he didn't need two attempts.  He's making a point to his disciples, who are having trouble seeing him clearly and what kind of Saviour and Messiah he is.  In particular Simon Peter has been making that half-right-half-wrong declaration where he spots that Jesus is the Messiah but then tries to stop him going to the cross.  Jesus is making the point that there is always further to go to see the bigger picture, and he both rejoices that Peter has seen so much but also tells him off for seeing so little.

I'm Peter.  I see some things but I'm completely blindsided by others.  I can have moments of insight (provided by the Spirit!) but also lengthy adventures in missing the point.  And I know that people have sometimes been harsh with me because they haven't stopped to wonder why I was being an asshat in a certain way on a certain day.

Man (and woman) traditionally passes on misery to man (and woman).  It deepens like a coastal shelf.  But instead of getting out as quickly as we can, we can try to understand other people's bigger pictures - not in a nosey way for our own knowledge but in a gentle way for greater understanding and kindness.  I need to keep going back to Jesus and asking him to help me see a bit more clearly, so that when I do finally take people side for a quiet word, it's a helpful one, not just about stopping them doing something wrong but all about getting to the root of it.  That way lies redemption rather than resentment, empathy instead of enmity.

If you get the chance, watch the brilliant film A Monster Calls.  It actually has a walking talking tree in it!  It's all about a boy who isn't ready for the bigger picture and who receives three visits from the Monster telling him three stories that he doesn't properly understand because he doesn't have all the backstories.  He keeps on jumping to conclusions until the moment he's ready to see the bigger picture, listen to the backstories... and that's when his healing begins.

A Monster Calls: possibly the best film in the world.

Lockdown gives many of us more chance to think about each other.  To wonder how other people in our family or congregation or whatever are doing.  What battles people fight and how they're exacerbated under lockdown - trying to be a "good" parent, struggling with one variety of autism or another in a world of broken routines, victims of domestic abuse, mental health troubles that are heightened by all this stress and uncertainty, guilt at not having to work while other people are putting in extra extra hours...

And if you can spot your battles, maybe talk to someone - friend, family, Jesus - about them so they make more sense.  The biggest bigger picture I need to understand is my own: what's pulling my strings, what's jerking my chain, what rattles my cage, what pushes my buttons.

That way, I may come out of lockdown kinder not just to anarchist anticlockwise shoppers, but also to myself.  And kindness is what will see us through these days.

Loving Lord Jesus, be kind to me and help me be kind to the people I love, the people I find it hardest to love, and to myself.  

Amen?

What's Your Nickname?

Do you have a nickname?  Or did you have one years ago at school?  In my class at school we had a few guys with nicknames - and despite it being a mixed-sex school it seemed always to be the gentlemen who had nicknames.  Admittedly most of them were unimaginative: Webbo, Banksy, Jonesy and Shakey were just variations on surnames (yes, I went to school with Shakespeare).  But there were slightly (only very slightly) more interesting ones.  We had a Hilly Helmet (on account of his haircut), a Nelly (which is a short step from Neil), a Mugsy (I don't know how he felt about that, it was a bit Bash Street), a Taff (he was Welsh and that was probably racist), a Mammal (best not to ask) and the resident straight-A student in the class was called Prof.

And that was me.  So I got off pretty well in those days.  I was fairly sure some people were spelling it with two Fs but what can you do?  It's basically good to be remembered and named for something positive. 

 Donny Osmond modelling the Hilly Helmet look.

So pity the poor disciple Thomas.  He has a few lines in the gospels but his rise to prominence is largely on account of one of his less brilliant days.  Thomas isn't there when Jesus appears to the ten disciples in lockdown.  Maybe he's gone out for essential shopping or his hour's worth of exercise, twice round the Temple and back?  More realistically, maybe he doesn't grieve well with others and is elsewhere, nursing a private grief.  Either way, missing meeting his faithful friends turns out not so well for him.

When Thomas hears them all say that the risen Jesus Christ has stood among them, Thomas takes an understandable and sceptical line, which paraphrases well as, "You wishful-thinking hallucinators!"  So unless he can see Jesus and tangibly prove that this crucified man is alive again, "No way Jose!"  I respect that.  And I respect that a week later when he actually does come sheepishly face to face with the good shepherd, he follows his own logic and declares, "My Lord and my God!" and he worships.  Good man.

The Bible doesn't record that Thomas did stick his fingers in the wounds, 

but it makes for good art.

My perennial complaint on Thomas's behalf is that all this logical behaviour serves only to earn him a nickname that has stuck: Doubting Thomas.  History has a bit of a downer on the guy, and it's not fair.

He sticks with Jesus for three years when other people abandon him on account of tricky teaching.  But do they call him True Thomas?  They do not.

He asks the big questions about heaven and earth (John 14: read it!) and other people are glad that he did because they pave the way for Jesus' best sayings.  But do they call him Honest Thomas?  They do not.

He travels (we think) to India to spread the gospel (and possibly China and Indonesia) and he ends up martyred.  But do they call him Brave Thomas?  Well, in India, yes they do, but the rest of us?  We do not.

Thomas gets stuck with an undeserved nickname and an undeserved reputation, all off the back of one (actually quite sensible, sane and reasonable) moment.  

Imagine if your reputation and nickname came from a moment you'd rather forget?  Some of us would have x-rated nicknames.  Imagine if everyone harked back to your silliest moment, rather than your greatest day?  We wouldn't leave our houses!  (Yeah, okay...)

But it's human nature to recall the mistakes, and it's insecure human nature to throw them back at people.  When I first led Book of Common Prayer Holy Communion - in one of those tiny books with busy print and everything squashed together in one paragraph, I managed to miss out a line.  Everything else went well, but I missed out one line.  Everyone at St Chad's Bagnall shook my hand warmly as if they knew how nerve-racking it was, but one gentleman in tweed approached me, said, "You missed a line," and turned on his heel and went.  Ooh, thanks.  (But I bet that will be the one slip that he wishes never to be remembered...)

St Chad's Bagnall: an excellent congregation

I feel for our organists and guitarists and flautists in the Team, because you can play 999 right notes, but if you play just one duff note, which is it that people remember?

People do have a habit of rubbing it in.  If Thomas was fussed, then 2000 years of being called Doubting Thomas might get him down.

But Jesus?  Jesus never rubs it in.  He gently invites Thomas to stop doubting and believe.  He knows Thomas inside out and he knows why he has a hard time believing, and he's not about to rub it in.  He simply offers a way into belief, and Thomas leaps at it.  Done and dusted, forgiven (if indeed anything needs forgiving: I suspect not) and forgotten.  And Jesus looks at Thomas and sees the next set of good works that he's prepared in advance for him to do: first in Jerusalem, later in India.  Rock!

This is important to hear because in a world where we beat ourselves upon for our mistakes and where other people are ever-ready to remind us of how stupid we can be (in my case that is very stupid indeed), we need to hear that we're forgiven.  The whole point of the cross is that Jesus rubs it out: every mistake, every sin, every spiteful response of the past.  Jesus never rubs them in; Jesus always rubs them out.

Mistakes: rubbed out by Jesus.  Thank God for that!

You may need to hear that twice as loud this Easter because many of us are stuck (blessedly or otherwise) with family, and there's no-one like family to either lift you up or bring you down.  No-one like family who know you so well and can needle you so badly and remember your misdeeds and throw them back at you when tempers fray.  

So it's a good job that we also live with Jesus Christ.  It's a good job he's on lockdown with us, because he rubs it out and points us to what we can be rather than what we once were.  He calls us friends rather than sinners and he lifts us up to what we can be rather than dragging us down to where we might have fallen before.  Jesus rubs it out.  He never rubs it in.

We need that.  We need that because families sometimes prefer to see us as we were rather than imagine us how we can be.  The best family in the world can become a sitcom at the drop of a hat, in which Captain Mainwaring will never be other than a pompous twit, in which Inbetweener Jay will never be other than a vulgar boaster, in which Basil Fawlty will never learn.  But with Jesus in lockdown with us, there is the chance to change, offered to us by someone who knows what we can be and doesn't need to knock us down or drag us down.

There's a bit of me that will always be Prof (with one F).  But don't bother calling me that because it's really the past, and what we all will be... well, it has not yet been made known.  Human eye has not seen and human ear has not heard what God has prepared for those who love him...

This'll be my Jesus.

Let Jesus rub all that rubbish out, and make space for the glorious future that you have with him.