The Rectory Window

With authority (1:27)  'Someone needs to come in and strip out the excess' my friend said. He had asked me where a vicar came in the hierarchy of the church, and, when my answer failed to satisfy him, decided to look it up. Unsurprisingly this left him even more confused. 'It's a right old mess!' he opined, 'but that's what happens in all old organisations.' It seems that management like to have someone to manage so 'of the creation of new levels of management there is no end', as someone might put it. Jesus' authority is not this kind of structural authority. He didn't order his disciples about to show off his importance. Nor, more surprisingly, did he demonstrate his great wisdom and understanding, or at least not here. Here his authority is raw power. He defeats his enemies, driving out unclean spirits with a word, healing the sick with a touch. I wonder what the equivalent is today? In parts of Kenya you become a bishop when you have ...

The impure spirit (1:26)  My introduction to a muddy walk was near the Norfolk village of Blakeney. If you diverge from the marked paths and set out across the estuary, you quickly find yourself knee deep in a clammy black slime generously called mud. Soon on our walk anyone who attempted to remain clean was vigorously baptised until all were covered from head to foot. We had a wonderful time. In nature nothing is pure, nor is purity necessarily something to be desired. The minerals in fresh water give it taste. The impurities in soil provide the essential ingredients in healthy food. Mud is good but can look revolting.  Here impure does not mean adulterated, revolting, 'yucky' but to be turned away from God, outside his people. Why then do we assume God backs up our instinctive disgust at others' lives? We can so easily get caught up in judging their choices when the real problem is hardness in our hearts. It is not our degree of dirtyness that determines our relationship ...

Shut up (1:25)  'Shtom ta pei' bellowed my pugnacious friend just outside our door, 'Shekket'. The Israeli teenagers who had been disturbing our sleep were suddenly silent. 'What did you say?' I asked him. 'Shut your gob' he replied, 'very useful'. I didn't doubt it, though I did doubt that he'd learned it on a Hebrew for Beginners course.  Jesus is hardly less expressive with the unclean spirit. 'Be muzzled' he declares, 'Get out', dealing with the spirit in a few well-chosen words. Too often Jesus is portrayed as rather softly spoken and meek but here he seems more like my tough, northern friend. He fronts up to the opposition and puts it down. Are we guilty of holding a false image of Jesus, one that fits our own prejudices? If so, then we need to find a way of seeing him as he really is, of following him out of our place of comfort and allowing him to disturb us into new ways of living and seeing the world.

He cried out (1:24)  "'In Spirit and in truth' can be translated as 'breath and word'," our voice coach said. He was showing us how to use our bellows, as he called them, the bottom of our lungs, to carry our words so that we could easily be heard. The sound is fuller, smoother, clearer and, as a result, more attractive. 'You will no longer sound like Anne Widdecombe' as he put it. The unclean spirit's words were true. 'Jesus of Nazareth...the Holy One of God' is Jesus spot on. And yet the intent is malicious. By exposing Jesus too soon, the whole project of salvation is put at risk. Jesus can neither deny nor accept the titles so he simply shuts the spirit up.  It is all too common to use truth to get an unjust or unkind end: to expose to ridicule or to bully into submission. That's why courts require the 'whole truth', as partial or partisan truth can be even more deceptive than lies. The Ephesians are encouraged to 'know ...

An unclean spirit (1:23)  Mark was a very difficult colleague. He was capable at his job, skilled and successful, but had a tendency to be obstructive and rude to certain fellow workers. His supervisor, Peter, was a particular target. This continued for a number of years until Peter spotted a pattern. Mark was only rude to his Christian colleagues, and, most importantly, he picked on those whom Peter knew were Christians but Mark didn't. It was clear Mark knew something that humanly he could not know and Peter decided that Mark had an unclean spirit. In a moment of solitude, Peter prayed against this 'spirit of darkness', commanding it to be gone in Jesus' name. Immediately and for the next five years until Mark left the job, his treatment of Peter changed. He became pleasant and supportive. He remained difficult to other people but was no longer able to pick out Christians.  Today we often assume that the idea of an unclean spirit hides ignorance, either about mental i...

Not like the clergy (1:22)  Many years ago, a major Greek scholar was visiting an Oxford theological college. His hosts asked if he would read the lesson for the day, which happened to be this passage. He chose to read it in Greek, translating fluently as he went along. It all sounded rather like the RSV, until he got to this verse, when instead of 'scribes' he read 'clergy'. There was a sharp intake of breath, audible, I am told, to all. No one had spotted how closely the educated religious class of today, the group into which they were all being inducted, paralleled not Jesus' disciples but Jesus' opponents.   As we gain knowledge and grow in understanding of God's ways, we have this challenging path to take: how do we avoid our theology (literally 'talk of God') taking us away from our faith (our 'walk with God')? 'You study the Scriptures, but you refuse to come to me' says Jesus to his critics. Too often we trust to clever ideas,...

The Sabbath came (1:21)  'On Monday I took a meeting with the mission committee, on Tuesday I was visiting parishes to the west of the diocese...', the new Archdeacon had been asked about her week, so, quite reasonably, she was telling us that it had been busy, 'then on Sunday I covered for a sick colleague. It meant I couldn't take my day off this week, but it happens to us all doesn't it?' She sounded a bit tired to my ears - excited by the job but needing a day off like the rest of us. One might wonder if this is how Jesus felt when he worked on the sabbath, but I doubt it. He seems to have waited until the sabbath to go to work, rather than added it to his working week, so his actions are not a licence to work seven days a week, but an example to rest until the seventh day. Jesus waited for God's opportune moment, for God's sabbath of blessing. Are we brave enough to do the same?