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.

My Browser History

Have you been clapping the NHS?  Stopping on a Thursday at 8pm and clapping and honking and cheering and letting off fireworks in support of our brilliant Health Service?  And will you hold the government to account as we move forward, so that the clapping isn't just a substitute for the funding that it needs?

Clapping the NHS got me into trouble, of course.  It was about 6.30 in the evening of the day of the first big round of applause, and - being me - I'd forgotten whether it was 7 or 8pm when I was meant to stand foursquare on the doorstep and put my hands together.  So I googled it.

My big mistake was in googling "NHS clap" because as well as discovering the true time, I also found myself with a number of images of the other meaning of the word clap... and that was more than I bargained for over my omelette.  Thanks for that, google.

And so, just like that fine woman in Stairway To Heaven, I was reminded that sometimes words have two meanings... and this is worth considering before you add to your browser history.

Anyway, I clapped.  And I'm still trying to get those other images out of my head.

Other words have more than one meaning... and some words have meanings that change over time.  In recent times we've often declared that something on the internet has "gone viral..." and that's less funny now.  I'll bet that's a phrase that's going to vanish quietly in these weeks.

Other things that might vanish include this:

Corona beer from Mexico is currently out of production because brewing isn't a necessary activity under Mexican law.  In days to come, will it return, or change its name?  Corona simply means crown, as in:

• coronation
• coronas of the sun
• coroner (that's an officer of the Crown)
• coronary arteries (they encircle the heart like a crown)

and every Friday when I was a boy we would have two bottles of Corona pop delivered by Mick the Co-Op milkman:

Way back, the Corona pop logo was seven old bottles arranged as a crown, thusly:

Anyway.  Mick would deliver two random bottles on a Friday alongside the six pint-bottles of milk jangling in the beige crate.  Imagine the excitement of rushing down to find which flavours he'd brought us!  One of them was usually lemonade: there were lots of home-made shandy drinkers round my way who enjoyed drinking something that tasted like the slops tray in the Red Lion.  But lemonade I always found a little bit vanilla... ironically because once Mick brought cream soda by mistake and that was waaaay too vanilla and sugary.  Can you imagine me being a bit hyperactive?  No, me neither.

Hang on, I may have digressed a bit...

Corona pops (which brilliantly grew out of the temperance movement in Wales in the 1890s) enjoyed huge success for a century and was bought first by Beecham's and then Britvic and disappeared as a brand in the 1990s, although the factory where it was first produced in Porth is now a recording studio and still called the Pop Factory.  How brilliant is that?

So, the Corona pop name being defunct, the owners are not presently scratching their heads in an office wondering whether and how to rebrand a drink that shares its name with a nasty virus.

In Mexico, however, they have a challenge on their hands.  And I'm sure other Corona products - we saw Corona tomatoes last week - are in a similar cleft stick/gum tree/creek.

Thankfully names and words can change their meanings and overtones.  When Dickens chose to call one of his most enduring characters Ebenezer Scrooge, it was a joke: Ebenezer means "stone of help" (It's in 1 Samuel 7 in the Old Testament part of the Bible) but from page 1 of A Christmas Carol this new Ebenezer is nothing of the sort.  He's likelier to stone you for taking half a day off and dock your coal allowance than to be anybody's stone of help.

So powerful is Dickens' story that we wouldn't now name a baby Ebenezer (which is Goode).  The name has completely changed its meaning and what it conjures up when we hear it.

Elsewhere, Jesus tells the story of a good Samaritan, and where previously the name Samaritan had meant people who sold out God and assimilated with the world, second-class cousins to God's holy people, 2000 years of telling that story have led Samaritan to become a compliment and in 1953 to the Revd Chad Varah founding the Samaritans.  The rehabilitation of the word was complete!

We live in a curious age where some people - and some politicians - and some newspapers will use words for ill, and particularly words like refugee and asylum seeker and immigrant have been tarred with a nasty brush.  The news that the first (hopefully the last) three doctors to be killed by Covid 19 were all immigrants to this country - two from Sudan and one of Pakistani origin - comes as a stern corrective to people who would demonise and spread hatred.  The news that the UK fruit and veg harvest is at a certain risk because of a lack of immigrant workers reminds us that we need the world.

Immigrant simply means that someone has taken the initiative to up sticks and move a good distance, sometimes to help, sometimes to look after family.  Refugee simply means that someone has fled an awful place or awful treatment.  Asylum seeker simply means that someone has looked to our land and judged it better and fairer than where they were.  I'll take that compliment on behalf of the nation.

If anything, in a time when there is more xenophobia and racism about that in much of living memory, we can seize these words of bravery, words of courage - words like immigrant and asylum seeker and refugee - and fly them up the flagpole with a touch of compassion and pride.  They should be words that imply effort and courage.  Have a go today.  Read some stuff about immigrants (not on the Daily Mail website thanks) and find out some famous immigrants from history who came here, saw things differently and gave their all for their adopted home.  Start with:

Isambard Kingdom Brunel

George Frederic Handel

Sigmund Freud

Michael Marks (and Spencer)

Alex Issigonis (designer of the Mini)

Rita Ora (from Kosovo as a baby)

Wyclef Jean (refugee from Haiti)

Omid Djalili

Albert Einstein

Jesus

and now - having fought to the end to defeat coronavirus, those three doctors:

Adil El Tayar

Amged El-Harwani

Habib Zaidi

Use this crisis and your time and conversation so that we emerge into a world where demonising immigrants and legitimating racism are both unacceptable, and where meeting someone from somewhere else in the world inspires in us curiosity and admiration at how far they've travelled and how much they've risked to look after family... or what they've endured and escaped.

If Jesus and Dickens can change words, so can we!