Man borrows donkey...you'll be amazed by what happens next!

Sometimes I wonder what a culturally relevant Bible translation would be like. I think in our social media driven world, today’s reading would probably have the title: ‘Man borrows donkey. You’ll be amazed by what happens next!’


Today, as we take time to reflect on Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem, on what we now know as Palm Sunday, I pray that we will encounter God, and be amazed all over again at who Jesus is and what He was preparing to do in the week ahead.

I was fortunate to spend a month in Israel and the West Bank in 2014 and that has helped me to picture more clearly where Jesus would have been and what is happening. It brought God’s story closer to walk on the same hills as Jesus walked. So, as we begin to engage with Palm Sunday let’s place ourselves in the shoes of those who are journeying up to Jerusalem. Some people are very good at visualising scenes, for others this may be more tricky.  


Perhaps close your eyes and try to picture a dusty trail up a hill. Jerusalem is surrounded by hills. Jesus and His disciples were approaching via Bethany, which means you can’t see Jerusalem until you get to the top of the Mount of Olives, and then just in front of you, the old city of Jerusalem is laid out. Temple Mount is right ahead of you, almost level with your line of sight, but you see the hillside dropping away into the Kidron Valley, before you go uphill again and approach the huge city walls that seem so big once you are underneath them.


The road is probably packed with pilgrims coming up to Jerusalem for Passover. Three times a year the Jewish men, perhaps with their families, made that pilgrimage journey to the Temple in Jerusalem for the important festivals. Passover was the biggest festival, the celebration of God delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt. This tradition of pilgrimage to the Temple would almost certainly be more than 500 years old, and perhaps going back nearly 1000 years to when Solomon built the first Temple. The people were used to the ritual of coming together to sing their songs of praise to God. In particular, they spoke out or sung psalms 113-118. These 6 psalms (called the Hallel – prayer of praise; think of hallelujah – praise God!) take Israel through her history as the people of God. They praise God for Gods love, and care, and mercy for the whole world. For the great miracles and salvation God has done for Gods people in the past and the miracles and salvation God will bring in the future. 


The road is packed, we know from John’s Gospel that many Jews who had already arrived in Jerusalem earlier in the week had gone out to Bethany when they heard that Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. People wanted to see Lazarus and Jesus for themselves. You can almost sense the buzz in the air, because of what had happened people were supposing that the kingdom of God was to appear immediately. Imagine the pilgrims singing these psalms of God’s salvation and love, and this huge anticipation that the moment was upon them, the Messiah the great deliverer of Israel was here, the kingdom of David promised for 1000 years would be established. So this is the scene in which we hear those verses from psalm 118.


Then there was Jesus, riding a donkey’s colt, in the midst of the people. Matthew quotes the prophecy of Zechariah 9.9 that the king will come to Jerusalem riding a donkey’s colt. I don’t know about you, but there is something very comforting about seeing these Old Testament prophecies fulfilled.  It is a reassurance that even in the times – like we are in at the moment - that feel like everything is in turmoil, even in this we can be assured that God knows the end from the beginning, and that what is happening now is still part of God’s story of being at work in the world.  God is still working together with us to work all things together for good.  And so back to that dusty hillside, and the familiar words that have been sung for centuries from Psalm 118.26 change, the people aren’t singing ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD’. They are singing ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the LORD’.

Man borrows donkey. You’ll never guess what happened next! The people who saw Him proclaimed Him their King! Shall we cheer and wave our branches?



Imagine you are in the crowd cheering for Jesus, excited that he is the Messiah, the coming King.  What do you expect Jesus to do next?



The crowds will have been used to seeing kings and rulers parade into cities in royal splendour wearing their grand robes and riding their warhorses.  Do you remember when I was in Swansea at the start of February, at the same time that Prince William and Kate visited.  The streets were packed with people waving their flags and cheering.  And the police and bodyguards stopped the traffic and scanned the crowd before William and Kate got out of their bullet proof car, waved to the crowd, and were ushered into the building.   It was clear that someone important was there.  As I stood on tiptoes crushed in with people around me – a strange thought now after the last couple of weeks! – it made me think about Palm Sunday and the crowds straining to see Jesus.


But what did they see?  A poor man in simple clothes, riding a colt.  The crowd welcome him as king, but he rides in humbly.  The crowd would expect him to lead them in confronting the Roman authorities, to reclaim the kingdom of Israel, to exert power in a human way. But this is not what we find when we click through on the ‘Man borrows donkey’ story. We are amazed at what happens next because it is not the story we thought it would be. The triumph of God was never going to be one established in human terms of military or political power, the strong overwhelming the weak.  The triumph of God comes in Jesus making himself vulnerable, of allowing himself to be killed, and showing that it is not a love of power that ultimately wins, but it is the power of love.  Jesus loves us through death and out the other side.

Matthew tells us that when Jesus entered Jerusalem the whole city was stirred and asked ‘Who is this?’  I think in some ways we are beginning to see the world asking a similar question in the midst of this unsettling time.  


One Italian doctor has written: “Until two weeks ago, my colleagues and I were atheists. It was normal because we are doctors. We learned that science excludes the presence of God.” Then: “Nine days ago, a 75-year-old pastor was admitted into the hospital. He was a kind man. He had serious breathing problems. He had a Bible with him and impressed us by how he read it to the dying as he held their hand. We, doctors, were all tired, discouraged, psychologically, and physically finished. When we had time, we listened to him. We have reached our limits. We can do no more. People are dying every day. We are exhausted. We have two colleagues who have died and others that have been infected.” Then he and his colleagues realized, “We needed to start asking God for help.” He testified, “When we talk to each other, we cannot believe that, though we were once fierce atheists, we are now daily in search of peace, asking the Lord to help us continue so that we can take care of the sick.” The 75-year-old pastor died. The doctor finished by saying, “Despite having had over 120 deaths here in 3 weeks, we were not destroyed. The pastor had managed, despite his condition and our difficulties, to bring us a PEACE that we no longer had hoped to find.”

The News at 10 had Archbishop Justin Welby on to ask: “Where is God in what is happening?”  With the closer awareness we have of death, and in a world turned upside down, a lot more people are asking: Who is this Jesus?


And perhaps we need to ask ourselves the same question.  Who is Jesus to us? 

The crowd wanted God to be and act in ways that met their agenda, we can often do the same.  But God doesn’t just ignore that. God listens to all our prayers. God encourages us to realise we are loved, forgiven and blessed. And over time we begin to realise that is not because we deserve it, or we are particularly special, it is so that we can love others, forgive others and bless others in Jesus’ name. 


When life seems overwhelming, problems too big for us to overcome, like Jesus dying when we thought He would be King, we can trust that God is involved and at work for us and with us. Appearances can be deceptive. 


Man borrows donkey. And He is King. But so much better than anything we can ask or imagine. 

Faces

I was so engaged in Tanzania with the smiles and openness of people’s faces. It was so lovely to see the joy and laughter pouring out of people, and on the flip side to see when people were bored, fed-up or sad.  The contrast to the UK where people seem much more 'closed' was striking.  I wonder if this openness is partly due to the absence at the moment of cameras, and to a degree mirrors...  Following the #liedentity conference I was thinking about our obsession in the UK with our image.  Studies, for example, show that people take an average of 7 minutes to post a selfie, this involves selecting one image from a number of photos, applying filters and choosing good hashtags. I wonder how much this attention to how we look impacts on how we control our facial expressions?

People have often told me I smile a lot.  Even getting off the aeroplane this trip one of the air hostesses stopped me and said 'thank you for smiling - every time I saw you you were smiling'.  Is it really that unusual?!

Having seen the faces of people in Tanzania, I cannot really remember seeing people looking anxious. There were certainly plenty of things to potentially be worried about there with the level of poverty and limited infrastructure. The existence was much more day to day and felt to me much more outside personal control. There was a big contrast with the situations of relative affluence around me in the UK where we believe to an extent we can provide for ourselves and control our lives.  I wonder how much this illusion of control is anxiety inducing?  When Jesus talks in Matthew 6.24-35 about not being anxious food or clothes but instead seeking first the kingdom of God, the passage ends: therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
We in the UK and those in Tanzania all have plenty of troubles to face, some similar and some different, but we are all meant to be living lives in partnership with God and each other.  To do this well we have to be vulnerable, and to be vulnerable is to shake off the desire to control both our image and our independence.  A carefully controlled image will only ever separate us from others, as it becomes harder to maintain integrity between our inner life and what we allow others to see.

#liedentity

Today I have been at the #liedentity conference run by the Diocese of Gloucester (click here for more details). The campaign around this hashtag is addressing the growing issue of negative body image and the resulting mental and physical health difficulties especially for young people. The message the campaign is promoting is that who you are is more important than how you look. Not that appearance doesn't matter, but our image-focused society is over-emphasising this. 


I was struck by the degree of inevitability of this shift with the advent of social media. When our relationships are conducted at arms length, and often now with people we don't physically meet, then the image we project has the potential to become much more significant than our character. And yet what came out so strongly today was that when young people were given the tools and opportunity to say what they valued in each other the real basis for deep friendship and true identity was revealed.  And of course it was never about the way someone looked.


So my challenge coming away from today, that I challenge you with too, is to be less lazy in my conversation, particularly with young people.  If I really value the person I am talking to, it is not enough to say, 'that's a pretty dress', or 'love that jacket on you', or 'that makes you look so slim'. These are nice things to say, but they are all about valuing appearance.  What about asking why they chose to wear them, or just go for a different conversation starter: what has made you smile today? What's the best thing about living here? What were you thinking about when you woke up this morning?


The Christian story is one that believes in the uniqueness and value of each person, and is totally committed to healing and restoring relationships between us and God, between each of us, and between us and creation.  This is only possible when we know, value and love who we are, and are truly interested in knowing, valuing and loving others. So take a risk, be vulnerable, and get to know someone deeper than through their appearance.

Bad habits, holy orders

I wonder if you watched the recent Channel 5 series: Bad Habits, Holy Orders? For 4 weeks it followed a group of 5 young women as they went from 'selfie' driven lives that for most included hard partying, regular one night stands, and high-spend shopping, to life in a convent with a group of nuns. In some ways the story followed an expected trajectory, shock at being separated from phones and makeup, and adapting to living simple lives of prayer and practical work with very little spending money. Then rebellion and handling the motivations behind that, all of which resulted in quite a moving growing relationship between the women and the nuns.  However it was the third episode that struck me at quite a profound level.

The nuns sent the women off on 'mission' to other convents where they were to help out with work amongst elderly people and homeless people.  For most of the women it was the first time they had spoken to people who lived such different lives to them. And quite a beautiful thing happened. Each young woman, in her own way, began to find herself. And for some it was quite a dramatic transformation.  And it helped me realise this....the culture that we find ourselves in is one that wants to consume us. Our image is graded by the level of positive response it receives, our value is determined by the amount of money we can spend, our personal attractiveness is based on swipes to the right or number of sexual partners. For the young women on the programme the gap between the person that was being consumed and who they actually were had almost become unbridgeable. These women were giving what they felt the world wanted to consume, but the bridge back to finding themselves was to really give of themselves. 


The young women could take or leave the prayer and being part of the worshipping lives of the nuns. What they deeply needed was the love of a 'stranger' someone not compelled to love them, but someone who loved and valued them as the women they were beneath their appearances. The nuns were concerned for the who the women were becoming, they were concerned for their characters, and to encourage them to really think about what they valued. For me this is the gospel, the good news of God. The bible talks about God looking on our hearts, not being concerned about physical appearance or what others might say about a person (see 1 Samuel 16.7 or John 2.25 for example). Why is this important? Because God truly knows us. The gospel tells us that God created us as good people designed to be in relationship with God participating in the divine life where each person is valued for the unique place they have in fulness of life for all people and all creation. This fulness of life means being able to give of who you are out of love for God, love for others and love for yourself. 


The narrative of our culture which says 'give me what I want' is a narrative that consumes, not fulfils. For the young women on this programme, the gospel brought transformation, because it showed them the freedom that comes from a new narrative, a story of self-giving. A self-giving that reveals and fulfils who we are.




The series is still available here on catch up: http://www.channel5.com/show/bad-habits-holy-orders/