Sunday 27 April 2014

The Threat of the By-pass

A lane near the town where I grew up is called ‘Dark Lane’.  For a while about twenty years ago, I used to drive up it on my way to work each morning; in the bright summer sunshine it was far from dark!  However, the field-edge on the sunny side still contains the stumps of tall oak and horse-chestnut trees that were removed in the ‘seventies.  While I can just remember those trees, the hedgerow on the opposite side of the road that completed the ‘darkness’ was even then long gone.
When I moved to Hertfordshire, and began driving around at weekends to explore my new surroundings, people would suggest places I should see, and might speak of ‘going down the by-pass’ to get to them.  I didn’t understand what they meant; to me it was all one main road; the fact that one particular stretch took the traffic around a village instead of through it was lost in the history of years before my arrival, but to those who had lived here all their lives that part of the road was still – and would forever be – ‘the by-pass’.
Roads change; life changes.  There are benefits: cultivation might be easier, villages safer, journeys quicker; but there are disadvantages, too: the passing trade for the village shop is decimated; driving from A to B is further, and the journey less interesting; road names are no longer meaningful and a way of life that for centuries lived out its own co-ordinated and successful existence vanishes.
God gave the Israelites Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21).  However, by Jesus’ time, the Pharisees had expanded these into over 600 rules of life, which together made life a minefield, and in many ways missed the point of the original ten.  People were striving to keep these rules, in the hope that they could please God by doing so. 
Jesus brought a new (and better) way.  Zacchaeus was a tax superintendent who’d made his fortune by overcharging people.  But when he heard of this new way, his whole life changed (Luke 19:1-10).   There were others, too, who were persuaded to follow Jesus’ teaching.  Paul wrote to some of them in Ephesus, encouraging them to lay aside their old lives and take up the new (Eph. 4:22-24).  Sadly, there were people who, having undergone that transformation, were inclined to backtrack and follow another ‘new idea’ that was, in effect, the very slavery to the Law that they had so recently rejected (Galatians 5:1-10).  Paul’s letter to them is in a much different vein!
In a world of constant change, we must see new ideas for what they are.  We need to recognise ways that are ‘new’, even if we never knew the ones they have replaced.  We should evaluate new patterns of behaviour before following them, and also be prepared to reject them, if they try to overturn tried and tested habits that were clearly God’s way of living.  Paul wrote about this to the Corinthians (I Cor. 3:11-15).   Bandwagons abound, and it’s all too easy to hop onto one that is going the wrong way!

Saturday 12 April 2014

One in the Crowd

The pattern of my 'quiet time' each morning is to read the scriptures aloud, even though I'm alone, just as I would if I were at the lectern in church.  I read the notes that I follow day by day - presently I'm using Scripture Union's 'Daily Bread' - and then move into prayer, prompted by the Word I've just read, by one or more of a sequence of topics from mission organisations, and by what is going on in the world, in my friends' lives and in my own.

Now, when I read in church, I try to vary my voice according to what I'm reading, adding pauses where I feel they are appropriate, so as to make the listening experience of others as effective as possible in conveying God's word into their hearts.  I'm no actor, but sometimes I find myself injecting emotion into the record of spoken words, as if I were saying them in the event, as it were.  I remember being so involved on one occasion that I completely forgot the liturgical doxology that I was supposed to say at the end of the reading, and simply returned to my seat with my eyes full of tears.

This week I've been reading from Matthew, chapter 26, in the run-up to Holy Week and Easter.  As I've said, I read the same at home as I do in church.  So this morning, as Jesus finally broke his silence before Caiaphas (v. 64), I spoke His words in a matter-of-fact tone, gradually increasing in intensity.  But when it came to the high priest's response and the ensuing assault and ridicule (vv. 65-68), these were delivered with a contempt and venom that quite scared me.

How is it, I wondered, that the emotion for these insults, that condemnation, comes forth so readily?  I concluded, in prayer, that it's simply human nature coming to the surface.  It's able to do so in the safe and controlled environment of my lounge, in a way that normally would be suppressed by our culture and surroundings.  Surely it is this that is the basis of what we term 'crowd mentality'.

I found myself thinking about my own behaviour in a crowd.  Suppose, for example, I had been in the streets of Aleppo, or Kiev, amongst a crowd of people of like mind to myself.  Would I have dared to speak out against those who sought violence?  Would I have said, "Come on, now, there's a better way of dealing with these demands."?  Or would I have joined in the shouting and the fighting, hitting out and throwing stones and Molotov cocktails along with everyone else?  I think I know the answer and, along with the emotions expressed in that reading this morning, . . . it scares me!

Father God, this week we commemorate Jesus' act of sacrifice that paid the price for the sins of each one of us.  Help me to bring my hatred and violence to the foot of the cross, and leave them there along with the rest of my sins. Give me strength, I pray, to stand up for the oppressed, and the hungry in our world, without resorting to force to express my feelings and get my point across.  Amen.