The Wronging Of Otters

Holy Week has gone, but all the best reflections on Holy Week happen in its wake.

And the big question I've asked myself is, when Jesus was washing his disciples' feet (literally by the dozen), where in the line was Judas Iscariot?

Not Judas but Peter.

You see, Judas knew what he was about to do in betraying Jesus.  And Jesus knew what Judas was about to do in betraying him.  And Jesus, secure in his identity as beloved of God, gets on down and washes some feet.  You can't be demeaned if you're secure in who you are.

And while Peter is either refusing any water at all or insisting on a top-to-toe scrub down, what is Judas doing?  Is he (a) squirming at letting Jesus wash his feet in the light or shadow of his intended betrayal; (b) hard-faced so that he doesn't give a clue of his underhanded plan; or (d) actually entirely clueless that he should be feeling anything at all?

(I know, there's no © because i can't type it without Apple copywriting it)

I wouldn't rule out (d): being entirely ignorant that he's doing anything wrong and that there's so much irony and grace and being poured onto him like water that he should run screaming or cave in and confess.  The disciples I've known who've performed acts of betrayal have all been blissfully and probably quite self-righteously assured of the utter rightness of their actions.

But frankly, I don't much care.  What fascinates me - as someone who's been wronged on occasion and who's wronged others* - is that it is implied that Jesus made no differentiation in washing the feet of Judas Iscariot.  There would have been no increase in rough handling.  No skimping.  No corners cut or ankles twisted.  Had it been me, I wonder whether I'd've somehow splashed his face a bit more, accidentally dropped the sponge in his lap, or more probably said, "Looking a bit stressed there, Judas, something on your mind?" before giving his ankle a savage wrench and knocking him to the floor.  "Whoops, sorry mate…"

Jesus was human as well as God, and the temptation was there, the temptation to narrow his eyes and to hate Judas while the washing went ahead ("If anyone's feet want nailing to a cross it's these!").  And the gritting of teeth may well have been there, as a way of acknowledging the toughness of the temptation and the effort it takes to love your enemies.  Especially your frenemies.  

The likelihood is that the only way you could tell that Jesus was washing his betrayer's feet might have been that a little salt water might have mixed with the fresh as Jesus grieved.  And even then you can blame it on splashes from the basin.  "Jesus has something in his eye… must be some grit from between Judas's toes…"

If indeed Jesus looked.  He may have needed to keep his eyes down and intentionally not spot whose feet he was immersing and immersed in at any given moment.  But I suspect not.  Breaking eye contact isn't an especially Christ-like thing, and far be it, I imagine, from Jesus to let feet be anonymous, especially to one who knows us by name and the hairs on our head.  And of course Judas would have had shifty, guilty feet that had no rhythm (sorry).

So when Judas came along, second to get it over with, twelfth because he was trying to put the moment off, or seventh because that's the most inconspicuous place in the queue, there's no way of telling that Jesus knows.  No tugging, no twisting no too-vigorous towelling.  The moment passes.  A lifeline has been offered, and a lifeline has been refused.

But this is a massive lesson in loving your enemy.  Would I pass it?  Would you?  With people who've wronged me, I'm of the school that prefers fleeing the temptation to push them into the Manchester Ship Canal (figurative, not a real threat) and means I'll give them a wide berth: the best I can do.  How about you?  If your Judas came your way, could you wash those feet?

It's an unfair question, I know.  Some Judases are so ignorant that that they need telling before washing.  Your Judas may well have beaten you, assailed you, violated you.  I don't believe Jesus ushers us back into reliving terrible things.  Jesus was remarkable.

And yes, some days it's a success simply not to mumble and grumble in memory of the ills done to us.  Well done!  But when things are unavoidable, Jesus shows that grace is possible… that grace is available… and that grace doesn't always win over your enemy, but is worth pouring out for them nonetheless.

Keep yourselves safe out there, won't you?




*also… when I was typing that I was someone who has wronged others, I managed a near-fatal mistype and was almost on the point of publication when I realised I'd typed that I had "wronged otters."

I have never wronged an otter (yet) but if I did, I imagine those wronged otters would look something like this:

And there you have it.

Lost In The Good Book

It's me.  I live in Wythensawe now.  Wythenshawe is cool, as the eleventh Doctor might have said.

Bow ties and Wythenshawe are cool.

What's not cool about Wythenshawe is BT Openreach being neither Open nor Reachable, and delaying my broadband connection by weeks.  It's a long and convoluted story, so there now follows a short gap in which to boo and hiss BT Openreach.

Oh no it isn't.

Thank you.  My favourite part of the whole process was being told by BT that they couldn't correct BT Openreach, whose downright mistake was holding up the broadband forever.  Kafka was ahead of his time.  I reported Openreach to Ofcom, whose website declares that they actually have no power to do anything directly, but would add my complaint to the weight of discontent and maybe do something a few stations down the line.

But Wythenshawe isn't responsible for BT, and Wythenshawe is cool.  One of my favourite bits so far is getting lost in a new parish.  This is something I'm spectacularly good at, because my sense of direction and spatial awareness and (let's face it) all-round co-ordination would make The Big Bang look like the Harlem Globetrotters.  So I go out on my bike, get very lost, and find my way home in the end.  And in doing so I find more places.  Places that I might overlook otherwise.

Today, for instance, I found HMP Styal, a women's and young offenders' institute.  Better still, I discovered The Clink, the restaurant next door.  It's a brilliant converted church that employs inmates and teaches catering skills, and reduces the rate of recidivism dramatically.  So I stopped for a cup of tea.

On the outside...

And loved it.  There's art in there, there's light and spaciousness, and I had two magnificent conversations.  One was with a family celebrating an advanced birthday with afternoon tea (they gave me a lemon meringue and I discovered that their uncle had been verger at my friend's church).  And one was a young woman turning her life round after disaster had struck and events had led her to some time in HMP Styal.  No names, but she'd been to Sunday School, been re-inspired by the chaplaincy at Styal and had plans to keep the faith on her release.  She said it'd be fine for me to bring all the South Manchester clergy to the restaurant for tea and told me what the Message were up to on Wythenshawe.

Yay.  And all because I set out to find the Manchester Orbital Cycleway and got lost instead.  Good exchange.

In the Clink.

And from there I found Wilmslow, and some fine charity shops and a riverside cycle and brilliant wedding presents for my friends who are to tie the nuptial knot this summer.

And then I came home, via all sorts of places I didn't know existed but do now and hope to revisit at length and leisure soon.  Ideally involving tea.

I've always likened the Bible - and getting your bearings in it - to this process of finding your way in a new town.  The Bible is entirely daunting, and if you open it at the wrong (discuss) page you will find a list of names, sexual assault or some curious pre-Jesus rules that God has now dispensed with. When what you really wanted was a word of encouragement.

Me, often, finding it hard going but well worth the effort.

Well.  You're never far away.  You're close.

So far, Wythenshawe-wise, I've found two Asdas, the best charity shops, the swimming pool (voyeurism is forbidden, and here it's deemed necessary to remind people of that), the library (for wifi while BT Openreach sit on their thumbs and twiddle them), the pub with two meals for £8.49, and the bakery that made my welcome cake.  There's more to come: principally a doctor and a dentist and schools and funeral directors.  And there is stuff to be done behind the doors of Manchester College (after Easter) and Village 135 (once it's built), both of which I know the locations of.

In the Bible, you find the big stuff first too.  The Gospels, hidden away near the end.  Psalm 23 and then other Sunday School favourites: Noah's ark and Daniel in the doghouse and the Ten (now defunct) Commandments and the Road to Damascus and the woman on the beast.  

But give me six months in Wythenshawe and I'll winkle out much much more: favourite little cafes and places to watch aeroplanes and the best pub and all sorts.

And if you give yourself six months in the Bible, reading a bit more regularly, you too will find yourself getting your bearings and discovering hidden gems and little treasures, places to go when you need a leg up or a heartwarming.  You'll discover the armour of God and the God who sings over you and the Jesus who weeps and the breaking down of barriers of race and class.  You'll discover beautiful psalms that seem to be written especially for you.  You'll find help and challenge and wisdom and comfort.

I'm going to persevere in Wythenshawe.  I'm going to keep getting lost and getting found and I'm going to be amazed and surprised and blessed all the time on the way.  Get into your Bible the same way, and you'll be bemused on occasion, but you'll find the stuff that warms the cockles of your heart too, and you'll be especially pleased because you found it yourself by getting lost.

Don't worry if you don't understand what you read all the time.  I don't.  I still get flashes of epiphanic intensity (that is, I learn new stuff) but sometimes I sit and wonder, "what the heck was that and why was Paul so wordy?" 

Let's take a hint from Chet Baker, and Let's Get Lost...

Grumble, Mumble Or Rumble?

I find bits of Scipture very hard to swallow.  And (semi-seriously) one of the most incredible bits is not the Virgin birth, the resurrection, creation in however-many-days/aeons-it-took or a talking donkey.

Not a problem.

No.  God can do whatever he likes.  It's human beings who give me credence problems.  It's one simple line in the Psalms.  It says: "I rejoiced when they said to me, 'Let us go up to the house of the Lord.'"  It's Psalm 122:1 and it puts me in mind of dragging myself out of bed on a Sunday morning, realising that I'm about to lead some worship and meet people.  As an introvert owl - and certainly not an extrovert lark - Sunday morning worship is too early.  How on earth I manage to take wild and fun assemblies with a single crystallising point about Jesus at 8.55am on a weekday is a minor miracle.  Ditto Sundays.

Sunday mornings don't make me rejoice instantly, throwing back the Laura Ashley duvet covers and sliding down the bannisters to wake the Alderney so I can have some butter on the priestly slice of bread and perform a Morecambe and Wise breakfast preparation routine.  No no no.  It's more like that cornflakes advert about the dawn of time.  

Most of us on a Sunday.  Heck, most of us any morning.

Not usually me on a Sunday.

Certainly not any clergy I know on a Sunday.  Okay, maybe Matt.

Martin Luther wouldn't celebrate morning prayer until 11.45, and he had a point (he also had a hangover, which never happens to me).

And yet.  And yet…

The Psalmist dude is right.  By the time I've addressed myself to worship in the company of other believers, it's good, it's liberating, it's excellent.  Sunday mornings are marvellous.  They just take some effort to climb onto the merry roundabout of rejoicing, the wild whirligig of worship, the colourful carousel of choruses… what's that?  Enough fairground metaphors?

That's a miracle.  

But did you spot that I said "addressed myself to worship"?  The feeling of belonging and adoring is catching, but it's more catching when we realise that we have to contribute, participate, drag ourselves up onto our collective elbows and join in.  It's never quite an excuse to say, "I don't feel like it."  Feelings are a thermometer but not your master.  Or mistress.  Let me tell you a secret: lots of vicars don't feel like it, but if we all let our feelings have the last word, where would we be?  Well, still in bed, probably, or off down the pub.  Playing Call of Thrones in our pants eating dry week-old pizza or watching endless repeats of Game of Duty.

I digress.

It means that we need also to address ourselves to the component parts of a service.

Praise.  Singing.  We need to work (I know, four-letter word) to help the praise rise.  That's why it's sometimes called a sacrifice of praise, because it costs.  It costs us effort.  And somewhere in the Bible someone says, "I will not give to God offerings that cost me nothing"  (That's 1 Chronicles 21:24 and 2 Samuel 24:24.  Lots of 24s there).  You put nothing in, and often you get something out, because that's how God can work: generosity in the face of indolence!  So imagine what might happen if we really put all our hearts and souls and minds and strength into it?  Imagine if we made that line part of our liturgy?  And of course worship isn't directly or primarily meant to benefit us: it's to glorify God.  But praise be to God (as Peter would say) because everything is so connected that what's good for God is good for us and good for the universe.  Gosh.  It's like it was planned!

How praise often is…

…and how it could be.  You have more say in it than you think.

Prayer.  Intercessions.  We need to work to join in the prayers and help them rise up like incense at the Temple evening service.  I find other people's prayers tedious and this is the point where I am likeliest to fall asleep or drift off.  How wrong of me!  Congregational prayers are like pushing a car: you lend a shoulder, and you try to match the pace and rhythm of the chief-car-pusher (or person leading prayers). When I was a boy I'd try to help push my dad's car or neighbours' cars when the winter made them harder to start than me on a Sunday.  Sometimes I could only get a hand on the bumper and wasn't much objective help.  Sometimes the chief-car-pusher got in the way.  Sometimes they set up a pace or style that was hard to join in with.  And our prayer leaders in church need to remember they're not just talking, not showing off their oratory, not being frustrated wannabe-preachers offering a second sermon.  They're pushing a car and making it easy for people to join in.  But we need to try to join in… or to let people know how hard their prayers are to be part of.  If at first you don't succeed…

Public prayer: every little helps.

And the gloria and the creed… What do we do?  Do we "say" the creed?  "Say" the Gloria?  The Gloria is a prayer of praise, best sung in a sensible accessible tune, and when we "say" it without music, it maybe needs to be "declared" or "proclaimed" - not mumbled in monotone.  And the creed - it's a prophetic declaration of the way things really are, an act of protest against a world that would silence and ignore God and run headlong into pleasure and sin without any sense of consequence or accountability.  Declaring the creed itself is a revolutionary act - or it would be if we remembered and engaged and addressed ourselves to the business of being a revolutionary and seditious and liberating movement rather than a settled institution.

He may have said a creed… but then we went out and did it!

And when the creed has been declared?  I can almost hear God asking the big question of the day.  "And?"  "And so what?"  It's not just a long long motto.  It may have started out as a liturgical corrective to the sermon, so that it pointed up if anything wrong had been preached (in my long career I have had readers who would preach heresy when I wasn't in the building: more of that another day), but now it's a firing-up moment.

It's no good declaring that all people are created equal as a creed but being aware that everywhere we are in chains and doing nothing to free anyone.

It's no good declaring that people are made in God's image as a creed but being aware that that image is defaced by profiteers and staying silent.

It's no good saying/proclaiming/declaring the creed and then carrying on as if we haven't just aired the single most revolutionary manifesto.

We snooze?

We lose.

What would happen if we all addressed ourselves to Sunday worship?  What would happen if we used the Peace not to hug our friends but to track down our malefactors and detractors, naysayers and calumnisers and actually try to make peace?  What would happen if we actually lifted our hands and hearts in song and prayer?  I could stop grumbling, the church could stop mumbling, and we would really start rumbling…

So.  I'm going to try to start Sundays better (possibly by ending Saturdays earlier).  Lose the snooze, break the pain barrier, and mine church for all it's worth.  And then maybe one day I really will rejoice when someone says unto me, "Let us go and worship God…"

Stress Transmissions

We are surrounded, claims Hebrews, in an attempt to spur its readers on to greater faith, by a great cloud of witnesses.  I myself have never quite understood whether that means:

(a) Lots of angels and martyrs are watching you so be brilliant!

or

(b) Lots of the living are watching you, so what an opportunity to be brilliant and shine like stars as you hold out the word of God in a whole new generation… so be brilliant!

Since the upshot (Be brilliant!) is the same, I doubt it matters.  Today, I'm opting for (b) and will back it up with a tale of three Joshuas.  Or rather, three stories of one Joshua each, connected by this curious "cloud of witnesses" idea.  Names, as so often, have been changed.

Joshua 1 is my godson.  He's a little genius, and no amount of ill health or disability has been allowed to stifle his massive abilities in writing and adding and smiling and laughing.  He composes his written work by painstakingly selecting letters from a board by gazing at them and trusting that his flawed and fallible friends will get the right letters to spell out what he has to say, which is always but always worth hearing.

I visited in August and again in November and again in December, whereupon his mum asked me, "Have you been talking around Joshua?"

Apparently I had.  Apparently I'd used the word EPIPHANIC in his presence (look it up) in August, and sometime in December he'd used the word himself in a composition, getting the spelling nearly right (which only proved he'd not seen it anywhere but heard it and was spelling it phonetically) and the context almost exactly right as well.  To be fair, who knows whether I'd not been using it loosely in the first place?

Someone's always listening to you...

That a 9 year old should remember a word, spoken once, unheard and unspoken before or since, for four months and then drop it into a composition… well… it leaves me wondering what else I might have said.  Oh, and preparing other words to drop in.

You see, there's always someone listening, someone to pick up on tiny things we say, even - especially with vicars who are paid so that we can preach - throwaway one-liners.  That's the first Joshua in my crowd.

Joshua 2 is a little older and was in the realm between sleepy and wakey-wakey when the church sound system started coming through on his amp in his bedroom.  He listened in - in his pyjamas - to the end of the service: all that "thank you for feeding us" stuff and "go in peace" and "in the name of Christ."  You know.

You see, there's always someone listening, whether you're Gordon Brown or the vicar.  You may be projecting in all sorts of directions on all sorts of frequencies - body language, tone of voice - and not know.  If I can infiltrate Joshua's amp, I could be on every taxicab intercom in the north Manchester region.

You'll never guess who I had on my intercom this Sunday morning...

What a crowd of witnesses.  How it grows.

Joshua 3 had a huge crush on me.  Poor soul.  Great taste though!  Your clueless host, however, didn't realise until years later.  And naturally it wasn't my impressive six-pack or tree-trunk-like upper arms that had him mad about the boy.  It was - he says - kindness and a smile.

Heck.  I was transmitting on frequencies I didn't really think I had.  

Textbook lovelorn.  Sorry mate.

(He's over it now, but he realised that no man could ever match up to me and he joined an enclosed order of monks and will never be seen again.  Not all of that is true.  Guess which bits I made up.)

I transmit, and largely, it seems, to people called Joshua.  It was another Joshua in the Lakes who wanted to talk about faith and declared he wanted to ask me about Jesus, since I was clearly the least Christian leader in the house.  That was my scepticism at cut-and-dried faith shining through in an otherwise scarily sorted ethos of faith.  I'll keep that guttering fire burning.

So.  I transmit.  I'll try to see what I'm sending out, how I'm seen, what this unseen crowd of witnesses are seeing of me.  Hopefully it'll all be good.

What are you transmitting?  Light of the world or misery of the month?

And you transmit.  I know Christians who transmit so much kindness and acceptance and welcome.

And I know Christians who transmit judgment and disapproval and prejudice.  We gays (and lesbians and trans folk and minorities and people with secret pasts and frankly everybody) audition you to find who's ready to love.  You are transmitting on all sorts of levels, and the unseen cloud of witnesses is discerning who you are.  Trustworthy or not?  Arms open or folded?  Face lit up like a Christmas tree or looking a lot like a smacked arse?

So hey.  Transmit well.  Because by your fruits, people really will know you.

Be careful… but be brilliant!

Elaine Paige's Laughter

Happy New Year!  My apologies that the Christmas blogs ended earlier than expected - there was a job interview and I was offered a new post so I didn't manage a New Post here… and then it was actual Christmas…

Anyways.  What do vicars do after church?  

Well.  We put Elaine Paige on Radio 2 for a few minutes, then remember that (i) I hate show tunes and (ii) she has the world's second most annoying laugh.  So we turn her off.

In the nicest possible way, stop laughing!

This last Sunday, I went hospital visiting, and as I sprinted up the steps to H ward, I discovered that someone had spilled half a mug of tea (or possibly the whole of a small cup of tea) on the middle landing.

Unfortunately I discovered this by skidding on the spillage.  There were no witnesses, so take my word for it that my recovery was worthy of Torvill and/or Dean.  Torvill mostly, I think.  But having Bolero-ed to a safe stop, I had to think of other, less nimble and agile users of H ward steps, whose tea-skidding misadventures would end with broken hips and torn ligaments, so as I made it onto the corridor I also found two nurses and reported the tea.

Elaine Paige is back, this time with scissor kick and jazz hands...

With a smile.  They weren't the tea-spilling culprits, so hey.  

"Is there much of it?" they asked.

Yes, about half a cup, I said.  Or maybe a whole cup, if the cup were very small, like one of those posh china ones.

"Sugar?" asked the nurse.

Hmmmmmm.  No, I said, it didn't feel especially granular underfoot.

These are some of the best conversations.  I only just managed to stop myself having a mishap, I volunteered.

"How did it look?" asked the nurse, so I demonstrated my Bolero and facial expression.  Mild expletive omitted.

"Do that again," she requested, so I did.

Sorry.

How brilliant was that?  Three professional people having fun in the pursuit of preventing further accidents to the less lithe.  The spill was quickly wiped up. 

Dramatic reconstruction. 

The nurses held the door for me, but I was going the other way.  "I could have been in one of these beds," I said.  "I'm a bit tired, so if there's an empty one I may yet have a lie down."

"I'd join you," said one of the nurses.  I don't know whether it was flirtatious or just acknowledging how long these angels had been on their feet, but it was a good point of humour as we parted.

Not like this at all.

That's what vicars do after church.  We flirt with nurses.  My friend Chris says I flirt with everyone, but (i) that's just friendliness and (ii) I certainly don't flirt with anybody I might actually fancy.  That would be too much like common sense.

I love that class of people, the ones you can talk to a little and be reminded you're human.  Where connections can be made.  Nurses and charity shop staff and vicars - we have dog collars to invite people of various mental hues to talk to us, and to explain why we sometimes smile and say hello to complete strangers (and so that when schoolchildren run up to us in the street and shout hello, it's easier to explain to their parents how their child knows a single man in his middle years.

Who've you connected with recently?  And does the world know that you're open for business?  Today's gospel reading was the baptism of Jesus, when heaven opened and God spoke, saying "this is my Son, with whom I am well-pleased."  The sermon was about words of encouragement.  And I wondered whether we all knew just how brilliant it is when a person of grace talks to you.  It really can be like heaven opening.  Without the dove, but certainly with our words - sometimes burblings about tea, sometimes profound musings on prayer, but always worth connecting with.

Heaven opens.  Stuff happens.  Be part of it.

20. In Their Faces

Finally, Magi.  Wise men.  

I love these guys.  They have by far the best theme song, that one about "we three kings of orient are" which I feel would work well recorded by Blur in their cheeky chirpy Cockney phase: "Field 'n' farntin, moor 'n' marntin, follerin' yonder star… oooooooooooooh!"  I love how children don't know the verses but launch enthusiastically into the chorus again and again.

So.  Wise people.  Not necessarily men, not necessarily three.  But apart from that…

Not necessarily these three.

Could you cast yourself as a wise man?  They find their way into Matthew's gospel - Luke, for some reason, is less interested by them.  And yet in several ways they fit the profile of the outsiders that his gospel champions.  Maybe it was the wealth that did it?

Any road up, the Magi are foreigners.  Not even Jewish foreigners!  They're probably Zoroastrianists, which is a religion I can't even spell, let alone explain.  It is one of the world's oldest religions, "combining a cosmogonic dualism and eschatological monotheism in a manner unique... among the major religions of the world."  So now we're clear on that.

One of the reasons these funny foreigners with their funny accents and their funny clothes were received so well was because they brought presents.  You'd be surprised how much suspicion can be dissolved if you've got gold.  Or myrrh even.  Or, as our lovely primary school children would have it, Frankenstein.  Or Frankincest.  That one.

Well, those gifts maybe go some way to counterbalancing their strange funny foreign ways.  And maybe go a tiny step towards making up for clodhopping into Jerusalem and bringing down the wrath of Herod on the heads of a number of toddlers.

But what if you're just strange and have no gift to bridge the gap?  What if you feel disqualified because you have no gift to offer?  What, as the song goes, can I give him?

One of my favourite nativities (okay, one of my least favourite, coming a long way behind every angle one I've enjoyed in primary schools in seventeen Christmases in holy orders) is The Flint Street Nativity.  It's an ITV thing, I think, in which grown-up comedians (Josie Lawrence, Ralf Little, Julia Sawalha) play primary school children putting on a nativity.  Neil Morrissey - him off Men Behaving Badly and its curious sequel Bob The Builder - he plays the third wise man, the one with the frankincense.

Except.  Except he has a lisp.  Imagine.

So he brings frankinthenth.

That's the right Morrissey.

And he's mercilessly mocked by another wise man for his speech impediment and told he'll be sent to the specialist unit, so he spends much of the hour and the play hiding outside under the school climbing frame in the rain, desperately trying to say "Frankincense" without lisping.  And he can't.  Not to save his life.

Do you ever feel disqualified because of what you can't do?  Or looked down on by anyone because you can't quite do something?  I can't kick a football straight and my sense of direction is terrible.  I have a major learning disability when it comes to driving (that's my phrase) a canoe, although that's mostly about learning in a large group under pressure.  I can punt.  But I can't do those slider puzzles to save my life.  

Can do.

No can do.

What will Neil Morrissey do?

In the end the three wise men turn up at the Flint Street Nativity, and the first one declares, "I bring you… the gift of… gold."  The second declares, "I bring you… the gift of… myrrh."

And Neil Morrissey, soaked through, holds out his slightly limp package and - after a long pause - says…

"I bring you…

… the gift of…

…

…

…more myrrh!"

Way to go, Neil.  In your face, mockers.  In. Your. Faces.

And if anyone ever looks down on you, in or out of church, just remember: more myrrh.  Find out what God's given you and come on in.  The people who look at you disdainfully?  Screw them.  Don't fit in with their ideas just to keep them happy.  Rock their boats.  In their faces.  They're not worth your energy.

Us, today, we're less likely to disqualify ourselves because of race or religion, but we can all think of reasons why we don't think we belong.  But God casts his net wide and opens his door beyond the hinges' limit to include us regardless.

Us lot, however unworthy we think we are, whatever we think might disqualify us, we're on the inside now, whatever you're bringing to the party.  And our work is to bring other people from the outside into the inside, to turn the world upside down and inside out.  To let people know it's okay not to bring frankincense if what they've got is more myrrh.  And if our church isn't shaped right to let new people in, then our job is to knock down some walls until people can come in regardless of who they are.  

Wise men: possibly scruffy seekers after something.

And if some traditional lot of snooty-nosed people look likely to get to those outsiders first with a frown and a disdainful sneer, a patronising air and the sense that they might be about to police the boundaries, then get in ahead of them.  Don't let the church be run or represented by the stuffy.  It's our church too.

19. Sweatier Than A Shepherd's Jockstrap

Where was I?

Oh yes.

We can cast ourselves as almost anyone in the Nativity story at different points in your life, and we can look fruitfully at how God weaves what look like disadvantages and challenges into his unfolding story.  You could cast yourself as Gabriel, busy with errands.  You could cast yourself as Mary, undignified with a huge belly.  You could cast yourself as Joseph, just about holding things together in a bamboozling world.

What about a shepherd now?

You can cast yourself as a shepherd because God has also cast… he's cast his net wide to invite everyone in to the story, everyone into the stable.  

There are all sorts of reasons why - hearing this story properly, for the first time - you'd be shocked to discover who else is on the guest list.  No Pharisees, no teachers of the law, just shepherds and foreign miss men (and anyone passing by the stable).  From the very start, the life of Jesus and the kingdom of God is open wide to pariahs and the unacceptable.

We forget that.  We forget that because we all know the story, and we've made the deeply unlikely entirely cosy.  What's cosier than a tea towel and more towelling and a dressing gown cord?  But what was smellier and sweatier than a shepherd's jockstrap?

Not how the Blessed Virgin Mary greeted the shepherds, we hope.

But remember.  Shepherds.  Like security guards or nightclub bouncers, it's a job that you can do if you've spent some time at Her Majesty's pleasure when no-one else will look at your CV.  Some of the shepherds may well have been ex-cons (that's how Moses wound up shepherding in Midian, by having killed an Egyptian and fled for the hills).  Or totally uneducated.  Or born on the wrong side of the sheets and sent off into the hills to be forgotten (good question: why was David shepherding when Samuel came a-looking for a future king?).

Certainly rough.  Probably smelly.  

And who's the modern equivalent?  That set of people would certainly include scruffy people with dogs on a string, or the people whose Tourette's keeps them out of polite society, or the sex offenders trying to forget and to live quietly.  People who - if they sat next to you in church - would have you checking your purse and trying not to breathe through your nose.

Jesus welcomes everyone.  God makes a point of welcoming everybody.  The invitation to shepherds says, more clearly than sky-writing or spelling it out in tulips, EVERYBODY WELCOME!

Simple as that.  No sub-clauses.  

And let the welcome spread from our noticeboards to our faces.

That's the tagline of my present church, the beautiful St Mary's in Moston.  I take very slight umbrage to the statement, not because I'm less than inclusive, but because all churches say that everyone is welcome in principle, but when it comes to practice you may find that everyone receives a warm welcome, but for some it's warmer than others.  

My real beef is that there are groups of people - and I'm not just talking LGBT but that's top of my list - who've learned to treat this "everybody welcome" schtick with the suspicion it sometimes deserves.  When you're not welcomed, or when some aspect of your personhood is not welcomed, that devalues the "everybody" and the "welcome" - and it means that it's no longer enough just to say it.  We need to show it.  "But it says on the sign…" is not excuse enough for not going out and being proactive.  It's our job to show we mean the stuff we say and pin up on notice boards.

(armchair not included: actual seating may vary… okay, it's pews)

So if people in the world have been reasonably led to believe that they're not quite welcome, it is our responsibility to show them that they are welcome here.  Divorced and single, bereaved and gay, trans and asylum seeker, tattooed and pierced and fresh out of prison.  

Yes, your notice board says EVERYBODY WELCOME.  Good on you.  Now make sure people know that it's true.  Break some walls down yourself and pave the way with welcome mats.  Use your imagination… your press… your everything…

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