The Rectory Window

Can the guests of the bridegroom fast? (2:19) Last year I met up with an old friend. We had not seen each other for a little while and he was a little nervous that we might have little to say to one another. As it was, it was as if no time had passed. We nattered and laughed away as if we were still two students sharing a short corridor in our first year at university. At some point we discussed when we had last met and it transpired that we had last met at my wedding 25 years before. As we look to move out of the season of Christmas, we may want to remember that we are moving into the season of fasting. No, I don't just mean Lent, which begins on the 17th of February. I mean the long gap between the two arrivals of Jesus, between the first appearance of the bridegroom and the second, between, if you like, the wedding and the return. Of course we have a taste of the joy of the permanent and personal presence of Jesus - he lives in his people by the Holy Spirit. Yet we are in a seas...

The Pharisees are fasting (2:18) What are rules for? The ancient Greeks discovered that laws make you free. A law against theft makes the thief less free of course, but it makes a lot of other people more free - free not to have their stuff nicked. All rules or laws work like this, balancing the freedoms of some against the restriction of others, though the balance is not always set equitably. At their worst, laws benefit only a few, so-called privilege, but, at their best they provide safe boundaries that enable everyone to live well. So why are our current rules not working that way? It could be that the British are natural rebels, but I'm not convinced - we're so good at queueing. No, I think it's a failure to enact laws that make sense to all, that provide the right balance between freedom and restraint, that allow for an element of self-determination while protecting the vulnerable from harm, that do not criminalise the careful while doing little to control the arrogan...

I have come to call sinners (1:17) Often we say that Christ came to save everyone, and with good reason, but when Jesus gets to air his view he tells his hearers that he has come to save only the sick. I think we can reasonably append those who realise they need a doctor. We are all in need of a saviour but only some of us realise it, and then only some of the time. The first step to getting well is to know that you are sick. This is one reason our political leaders disturb me. It is clear to most of us that there is a distinct lack of competence in our current government. The delay in the first lockdown, the eat out to help out debacle, the millions wasted on failed efforts to track and trace, the muddled messages to protect cronies, the Christmas rules fiasco. I could go on. For those with humility a mistake is an opportunity to learn, but if we fail to acknowledge when we get it wrong we are incapable of getting it right next time. An even greater danger than incompetence is arrogan...

Tax collectors and sinners (2:16) Am I alone in finding this an odd combination? It seems such an strange list - one so specific and the other so general. It's like saying that the cabinet minster was eating with lawyers and ne'er do wells. It can't be because tax collectors are not sinners, nor can it be true that tax collectors were the only profession who were seen as beyond the pale.  I suspect that both are representative. If your very profession puts you outside society you are welcome to eat with Jesus. If you are anybody who knows that they are not one of the good people then you are welcome to eat with Jesus. Funny then that the people who feel they have the right to eat at the Lord's table are rather often the opposite. It would be interesting to explore what church would look like for 'tax collectors and sinners' to really feel welcome to come in.

Eating with him (2:15) At the heart of every L'Arche community is the evening meal. Everyone, with or without learning disabilities, gathers together to eat together, breaking bread, or pizza often, to express their loving friendship for one another. Volunteers come expecting to give and leave having received, not least because the regular evening meal reveals true equality - our absolute value in God's eyes.  Today we can still eat with Christ as we eat together without judgement and without separation. This Christmas much divides us from one another so we may have to work extra hard to ensure no one is left out.

Son of Alphaeus (2:14) The most successful British soldier of WWII did not exist. His name was Captain William Martin. He was the key player in Operation Mincemeat, which may have saved somewhere up to 10,000 lives during the Allied invasion of Sicily. His real name was Glyndwr Michael, a lonely vagrant who died from eating rat poison. His body was dressed up and set afloat to deceive the German high command into sending reinforcements to Greece, leaving the Allies to invade Sicily with minimal resistance. Levi is not only given his real name but, by the giving of his father's name, is clearly identifiable to all who might meet him or his family. Such detail suggests the writer knew that some would question the truth of his accounts. Who wouldn't? His claims are truly extraordinary. When you do, he seems to want to say, go talk to Levi, son of Alphaeus. He was there too. Now there's an idea. I wonder what Levi, otherwise known as Matthew, might have to say about Jesus.

Once again (2:13) I have just been reading the story of Leah Whyte's battle with cancer and with GATA2 Deficiency. It is five years this month since she died, succumbing to the last of many complications brought on by this rare genetic disorder. Her mother Victoria Whyte writes about Leah lovingly and with deep honesty in her blog, which I came across as I searched for another story of loss ( https://victoriawhyte.wordpress.com/ ). Once again Victoria, like so many, will be returning this year to those memories both of loss and sorrow as well as to God's presence in her life. Once again, Jesus returns, first to Capernaum and then to Galilee. Maybe it was a regular route of his, travelling and preaching as he went. This time though God was very clearly present, with two lives publicly and dramatically changed. Maybe as we return to familiar things this Christmas time, easy and hard, we may also find our lives changed in unfamiliar ways.

We have never seen anything like this (2:12) I was privileged many years ago to visit Morocco. Against expectation, Casablanca is dull. Marrakesh by contrast was mind-blowing, with its ancient main square, the Jemaa el Fnaa, bordered on one side by the labyrinthine souk and on the other by a five star hotel. One evening we took ourselves out for street food and to take in the atmosphere. Sheep eyes were being eaten and snakes charmed. I even got involved, juggling for the snake so it wove in and out of the flying balls. We were two narrowly educated school boys and we had never seen anything like it. Jesus' watchers had just such an unexpected scene brought to their door. They were at home in their own town and in a moment all that they thought to be true was turned on its head. Here was a man who could forgive sins at a word and heal the sick in an instant. Nothing could have prepared them. Sadly, we are so familiar with these stories that they no longer have this effect on us, bu...

Go home (2:11) On 13th May 1981, Mehmet Ali Ağca fired four shots at Pope John Paul II as he was being driven across St Peter's square in his white jeep. The Pope suffered severe loss of blood from the two shots that hit his torso, while Ağca was immediately apprehended by the Vatican security chief, aided by a group of spectators. Ağca was sentenced to life imprisonment but later was forgiven by the Pope and returned home to Turkey. John Paul II survived but thereafter went around in a bullet proof Popemobile, like a museum exhibit in a glass cage. Everyone could still see him but it would take more than a lone gunman with a revolver to get at him again. Jesus gives the paralysed man two commands, pick up you mat and walk, and make your way to your home. The first is so he knows for sure he has been healed. So what's the second? Is it so everyone else knows for sure that he has been healed. Maybe by now Jesus has already given up on secrecy. Or maybe it is that Jesus knew the ...

I want you to know (2:10) I just watched the most excruciating interview with President Trump. In it he is confronted by the 1000 a day USA death toll from COVID-19. In response he points to the statistic of deaths per confirmed case, one for which the US looks to be doing better than other countries. When the interviewer points out the obvious flaws in any argument for success with dealing the pandemic based on such nebulous data, Trump appears to flounder, not as you might expect with the facts but with comprehending the argument at all. He appears lost with so little grasp of how such numbers work as to be entirely incapable of reasoning based on them.  Jesus did not want people to be confused by the arguments. He wanted it all to be so obvious no one could mistake the truth. So he gives irrefutable evidence to support his claim to be able to forgive sins - he heals the paralysed man, instantly, with a word. There is no need for complicated argument or tricky statistics. Even th...

Which is easier (2:9) At school I was told that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. I was even told that this definition stems from Euclid, who wrote that a straight line is the "breadthless length which lies evenly with the points on itself". I was surprisingly pleased to discover in Geography that the shortest distance between two points on Earth is not marked on a map by a straight line but by a curved one (technically the arc of a great circle). This meant that my flight to Chicago crossed the frozen wastes of northern Canada, which was also exciting. The phrase 'which is easier' can equally have a double meaning. It is easier to say 'your sins are forgiven' because no one will know if they're not, yet for all save God it is impossible to do. It is harder to say 'get up and walk' as failure is a bit obvious, yet it is easier to do, for today a simple hip operation can get you back on your feet. However, like my straight...

Knew in his spirit (2:8) In 1963 a young Edmund Gettier published a two page paper in a little known journal under the exciting title 'Is justified true belief knowledge?'. It cannot have been much more than 600 words long, but in those few lines, with just two examples of lucky knowledge, he exploded into fragments the commonly held theory that knowledge could be defined as a belief (something we hold to be true) that is justified (we have good reason to hold it to be true) and true (accords with reality). After Gettier, despite many attempts, no one could any longer say what knowledge was with any certainty. To know was just that, to know, and no more.  In some ways this seems to leave us dangling, adrift from any secure connection to reality. In another way it reminds us of what all wise people always knew, that in the end you just know that something is true 'in your knower', or, as here, 'in [your] spirit'. In the face of the chill wind of circumstance or t...

He's blaspheming (2:7) I spent an educational few minutes looking up Shakespeare's best insults, in the hope of making a comparison with the scribes' attack on Jesus, only to find that they were almost universally unrepeatable. Mind you I quite liked 'Why what's the matter that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?' Probably not the best way of eliciting a happy response but a lovely description of grumpiness. The scribes, by contrast, do not seem to be seeking to insult Jesus. They used careful logic to conclude that Jesus' forgiveness of all the man's sins can only be interpreted as a claim to be God. They had spotted, using reason, what no one else could see. Sadly their conclusion led to anger not faith. Funny that. Even when it becomes clear that the only logical interpretation of Jesus' life, death and resurrection is that he is God, many still turn away. Reason only gets us so far. Next comes faith.

Thinking to themselves (2:6) One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century was one John Nash. The subject of a wonderful film A Beautiful Mind,  he struggled with severe mental illness, while discovering a hugely influential mathematical theory known as the Nash Equilibrium. A form of game theory, it enables the prediction of ideal strategies in anything from traffic light programming to penalty shoot-outs to avoiding tit-for-tat armed conflict. Indeed we have to hope Brexit negotiators are up on its key principles. One can never know how closely connected were his genius and his delusions, but internal reasoning has its glories and its flaws. These scribes were trusting their reasoning when it came to the actions of Jesus. They seem unable to see beyond the limits of their own minds. How often is that true of those who encounter the claims of Christianity or the person of Jesus? We do not need to give up reason of course, but sometimes we do need to allow Christ and the H...