a blog by howard jameson @ gatheringgrace.org

Lent no 40 - there's nothing more to say

There simply isn't.

"It is finished" was true. I'll wait until the Sabbath is ended and then go home tomorrow.

Lent no 39 - say something Jesus, please...

Say something Jesus, please...

"it is finished"...is that it? Is that all? Is that the end? "it is finished"

I can bear having been wrong about you. I really did believe. I really thought you would restore Israel. I'd never seen or heard anybody like you, you know that. You know that I followed you because I loved you. I never wanted anything for myself. Being wrong doesn't really matter.

I can go back to Galilee, of course, and I won't mind them mocking me...I'll get used to it. That won't hurt for long.

No what hurts is that you stirred something in me; hope. I had hope because of you. I saw the world in a new light; we were so close to the Kingdom of Heaven, you could almost reach out and touch it. You cold smell it on the breeze as we sat on the hills listening to you, you could feel it in the warmth of the sun on our backs. And its the fact that I'll never feel that again that makes me feel the worst. Your memorial will be a desolation I will carry with me for the rest of my days.

You didn't deserve what they did to you. What harm did you do to anyone? I feel too cold to be angry with them.

Rest in peace, Lord...

Lent no 39 - we can't stay here

We can't stay here...

I'm not sure how much more of this I can bear to watch!

Come on Jesus, say something. Say something like you used to be able to do. You have to say something!

Can't you see where this is leading? Can't you see the way those who hate you are using the crowd and Pilate to get their way? Can't you see what's going to happen?

If this is part of some great plan of yours then you should have told us what we had to do! Are you expecting me to intervene somehow? What can I do? When there was a fight in the Garden you told eveybody to stop. I don't know what to do!! Say something to them, to me, to anybody!

Words were your great skill. Tell them! Tell them what you told us, perhaps then they'll believe and we'll all get out of this in one piece. Tell them! Tell them anything! Don't just stand there silent - that really isn't helping!

If this goes the way its looking then please remember me in your Kingdom. I'm sorry if I've not done enough, I really am.

Say something Jesus, please...

Lent no 38 - John 13:1-15 from a disciple's perspective

I hope you know what you're doing...

You've taken us out of the public gaze, hidden away in a small room, secretly sharing this Passover meal. When we came into Jerusalem I thought people would join us and we would become unstoppable with you at our head! The throne of David would be restored. I sang my heart out for you.

Washing feet isn't going to change the world, you know. Washing feet isn't going to see us through the next few days until we can get out of this place and back to Galilee. It'll take more than soap and a towel to win a Kingdom here. I guess you know that, that's why you are so distant again.

Maybe it was us, perhaps we put too much onto you, expecting too much. You raised hopes in us and I guess that just put pressure on you to meet them. There, I've said it, we got you wrong and maybe you got us wrong too. Maybe you even had yourself wrong. I don't know - in fact huddled away here in the dark, frightened to even open the door everything seems wrong.

I want the old days back, out on the hills - you could do no wrong then. Those were good days, and we saw amazing things happen.

Thank goodness we're leaving. I need some fresh air and to get somewhere in which I don't feel trapped, somewhere I can see who's coming.

We can't stay here...

Lent no 37 - John 13:21-32 from a disciple's perspective

I've got a bad feeling about this...

Your'e the leader, and its not good but I think you're starting to show the strain; you look weighed down, poor man. Perhaps coming into the City was a bad idea, but we had to come here sooner or later. Out in the country it was fine, we had the space to get away and talk, but here is so claustrophobic. Its almost like I can't breathe.

Hidden away in these rooms feels like we're already in prison, although if this goes wrong we'll be lucky to end up in prison. The Romans don't show troublemakers or their followers much in the way of compassion. With them its kill or be killed, and there's no way I could use a sword. If that's what you're expecting of me Jesus then sorry but you've got the wrong man.

They're watching your every move now. You can sense it everywhere we go, eyes watching, and you can be sure that word is getting back to those who want to see an end to you. They're only biding their time, waiting for a moment to do away with you without causing a scene. What will it be? A knife in the back or an accident somewhere? Animosity at our every turn, if only the people didn't just sit back and let it happen. I know they should be rallying behind you, but they just sit and wait. Wait for you to make the first move, or wait for you to throw your chance away like every other Passover idealist that's been this way before.

Surely though, you're not like that Jesus, are you? This talk of betrayal is too much. We've followed you before through some tough times, so don't turn on us. Perhaps you blame us for there not being a crowd behind you now when you need it most, but I can't see what we could have done. I left everything to follow you, so don't blame me. And what would I gain by betraying you? Pull yourself together and eat something. You look dreadful.

Come on Jesus, you were never trapped in a corner before, you always had a word or a story and you could disarm the most aggresive opponent - sometimes it was just a stare and they were silenced. I'm not sure if that's going to be enough this time.

I hope you know what you're doing...

Lent no 36 - John 12:20-36 from a disciple's perspective

I wish he wouldn't talk like that. It frightens me.

He has to make his mind up. He can't have all this "glorified" stuff and then these words about death. The dead are gone and that's an end to it. And the more he talks about death the more anxious I get. In my head its all clear. He is the Messiah, the chosen one of God, and I can see him restoring Israel. He's a man of the people, not like the stuffed shirts in the Temple with their clever words and fine way of speaking. But in my heart its different, and sometimes I can't see how he's going to pull this off. If he's going to throw out the Romans and get rid of the hypocrites in charge then he needed to spend a bit more time recruiting some people who were good in a scrap and not people like me.

We've seen Jesus in action, we've seen him and followed him. Its the way he deals with people, loving them and challenging them that impresses me, and dead people can't do that. Oh, don't get me wrong he's no push-over. I've seen him face down some real tough nuts. You don't mess with him, but when you see who he's up against there's only one of him and a handful of us.

Even so, we sure made a noise coming in to Jerusalem and celebrating Jesus' arrivel, but that was hardly plain sailing. We were just lucky that we managed to disappear into the streets before the Romans turned up, or maybe that's his plan - to confront them once and for all. I just wish he'd give us a better idea of what he's up to.

Passover is almost here, and that's usually a time for crackpots and self-publicists to make a big scene. I just hope he doesn't get caught up in all that. Sure there's a buzz. People have at least heard of him; good things, some of the amazing things he's done. Last week we had supper at Lazarus' house and everybody knows about him!

He seems so distant sometimes and I'm starting to worry about him. Pressure does things to people. Coming into the city is either a bold move, or the last throw of the dice for a desperate man. I've got a bad feeling about this...

Lent no 35 - the final week begins

We had a play in Church at the end of last week. It was interesting and the actors had done a really good job (as had the locals who had done most of the work setting it up). Sadly, though, like every other depiction of the events of Holy Week it seemed destined to fall short. Usually dramas fail to tell the story of Holy Week properly because too many other stories intrude...

...the story of Jesus as an indecisive and fearful man, unsure quite who he was...

...the story of Jesus as the mystic visionary who was misunderstood...

...the story of the macho heroic Jesus who died to beat violence at its own game...

...the story of Jesus as the sad, burdened down man destined to undergo a horrible death...

They all fail because they all tell the wrong story - or they try to tell the right story but use the wrong metaphor.

Lord Jesus, as I try to walk with you through this Holy Week, open again my eyes and ears to your story - the true story of humanity created, fallen and then redeemed. Break my heart and then make it again new, shaped like yours.

Lent no 34 - stranger in a strange land (part iii)

Next day back at the office you have a guilty secret that is worse than knowing nothing. You have remembered and you have spoken about God and you have prayed...and if they know, or even suspect, you wouldn’t know until they came for you. Trying to be normal is exhausting!

You start your work calculating efficiency increases in the power stations of the western seaboard to demonstrate year upon the year the unstoppable progress of the might of Socialism and the free people’s of Europe and Asia combined into the largest single combined movement of humanity in history. But how to stand against this force - surely the only outcome is that somebody will suspect and alert prying eyes and ears. Minute variations in behaviour will be monitored and recorded as later evidence.

Bible stories you remembered from your childhood keep coming back to you, especially Daniel -   the young man in a foreign land praying in his room despite the threats of his foes, and dreaming of the Son of Man coming on the clouds. Stories of exile - always exile and always struggle.

But another story is there too, one that Daniel and the others had merely been looking forward to.

You are back on your beach holiday and everybody had been laughing; laughing on the beach and on the way home and then, almost at the point of no longer being able to breathe, Mummy and Daddy had been pretending to dance around the tiny caravan - and suddenly the laughing had stopped. The chain necklace that had belonged to Granny was no longer around her neck. She cried and started to search the caravan, and Daddy riddled with guilt ran down to the beach to try to find where we had all been playing. Everybody was upset. So you walk slowly back to where you had all crossed a stile between the beach and the fields, and there, amongst the long grass, you find the delicate chain glinting in the sun and still holding its precious prize, the cross that had been round the neck of your Mother and her Mother too.

But for a time all you can do is roll into a ball on your knees and squeeze the cross in the palm of your hand to keep it safe, your clenched fist wetted by your dripping tears. You are not going to let go of it and lose it again.

That night, back in your apartment, you pray again and find yourself on your knees and rolled into a ball, holding on to the memory of the necklace as tightly as you the child had held onto the necklace itself.

You are holding onto the Cross for all its worth...

Holding onto the Cross for all its worth...

Holding onto the Cross...

The Cross...

You were the unwitting hero of my story for the last three days. How was it for you?

With our reflective and introverted thoughts during Lent it is easy to overlook the immense cosmic nature of what Christ did on the Cross. Would you look to the Cross to bring about regime change (or at the very least politicians’ heart change)? Would you trust the Cross to change you? If the Cross was all you had to hold on to how would you fare?

Lord Jesus, as we approach Holy Week we pray that you would make us aware of the depth of love shown on the Cross and the strength to withstand the storms that it provides. 

Saviour, keep me near the Cross. I won’t forget the love you’ve shown.

Lent no 33 - stranger in a strange land (part ii)

You are still unsettled as you return to work the next day. Fridays are much like other days and you dread another ten hours of monotonous figures. More than anything, though, you are dreading lunch. The food is as terrible as any other day. You know the decision you made in the early hours and the person you would see at lunch today. You also knew this was starting a train of events in progress which could only end in disaster.

By 12:30 your stomach is a knot and you feel sick - in fact the tasteless broth they serve as food is the last thing you can face, but you know you have to go. You make a bit of a mess dropping some trays and cutlery which gives you just the right reason for losing a couple of places in the queue to manoeuvre yourself next to the girl you have been aware of for a while. There is something about her height and her colouring (as well, you realise at this moment, her age) but especially in the clumsy way that she tries to pronounce some of the more guttural Russian words that makes you know in your heart that she is English too - or at least you hope so, and in your half-awake reasoning of eight hours earlier this made it important for you to talk to her.

But talking at lunch so as not to be heard was never going to be possible, but you manage to slip her the piece of paper with a time and place written on it in as good English as you could remember yourself.

That evening she is there at the tube station and on the way home amidst the noise and crush of the carriage you are able to talk. For once you are relieved to have a delay in the darkness caused by another power outage, but her memories frighten you even more than your own. Yes, she is English and, like you, brought over soon after the invasion. Being of a similar age she too has very few memories of England back then, but she remembers something that you had buried even deeper than warm summer holidays.

She had on one or two occasions visited the museums in the city that had been established in some of the old Churches in order to demonstrate the corruption of the Clergy and the horrors of the ignorance of the religious. You had heard stories of Christians meeting and being beaten up or imprisoned and you always wondered what had happened to that really nice man you used to exchange smile with, but surely those types of stories were just meant to be a bit of a threat - that didn’t happen surely. She had been trying to find other Christians to meet and to pray with. Oh God, this is not good. Hang on, was that a prayer?

You recall as a child kneeling in Church, eyes almost closed and hands together and the sun shining in at an angle through the stained glass, but this is more than a memory of something you’d seen. Along with it was that warmth in your heart that you haven’t felt for forty years, a sense of being loved and a softness to life that was so generous. 

You return home your head spinning and your mouth dry. That night you kneel by the side of your bed, eyes almost closed and hands together. What if the room is bugged or there are cameras? That’s too late now.

God of my memories, God of the sunshine, God of warmth and the sea. Where did my childhood go? Where have you been? How can I find you, so far from home. Oh God, this is not good...

Lent no 32 - Stranger in a strange land (part i)

You wake - immediately alive to any noise or movement in the room. The cold seems to be cutting deep into your bones, but years of the fear of being watched have trained you not to make any sudden movements. You mustn’t look round to see the clock or to check the side of your mouth for a tell-tale trickle of saliva, at least not yet. Concentrate, keep still. You are, after all, analysing the monthly statistics of production from the many nuclear power stations around the coast of western perimeter of the Soviet Republics. This is what you do all day, pretty much every day.

Day-dreaming is something of an escape for you, but this time was altogether more serious. You are used to disappearing into a long list of numbers and percentages and just letting your mind go into neutral whilst keeping your finger moving up and down the columns, in case anybody is watching - and these days when you don’t know who your friends are you would have no chance spotting anybody who might be an enemy until it was too late.

You collect yourself and shuffle as you would normally do when working in stillness on a bitter winter’s day, you lean back to stretch and this gives you an opportunity to glance at the clock on the wall to your right. Twenty minutes! Twenty minutes you were lost in memories. Another stupid mistake like that could be fatal.

You take your time - be careful now. Start adding another column of figures and listen. There are still no sounds around you other than fifty or so other people doing more or less the same as you; adding, calculating, reporting (and probably day-dreaming too in secret). No sounds of dreaded footsteps from one of the overseers approaching your desk from behind ready to shout and hit, or worse. But what was it that had triggered memories you’d forgotten you even knew? The left hand-most column is a list of names of places where the power stations are situated and there, about half way down is the name that made you stop.

You had been there as a child. In fact the memories that had made you stop work had been of the last summer before the Russians had invaded the West - so long ago now that you can hardly remember anything at all. Rock pools on the beach on a warm summer’s day, salty skin and sunburn but freedom, hours and hours of warmth and freedom and laughter too. When was the last time you heard laughter like that? The invasion had happened so quickly and violently and you had been too young to realise what was going on, but you knew your parents’ fear and then there being some sort of selection process that marked you out for the Civil Service in the capital of the Empire, and you were brought to Moscow and a state orphanage for those to be enculturated with the Soviet way of thinking. You remember so little of your home now, just a memory of that beach and a sadness that it would now probably be in the shadow of a reactor (and contaminated for an eternity if it was like any of the others you had heard rumours about). So many nuclear power stations and yet still never enough power to make these offices warm against the bitter Moscow winter.

That night you set off for your apartment still trying to look like everybody else, cold and tired, but you ware troubled inside.

That night you hardly sleep; tossing and turning trying to fence those dangerous memories in - you know they can only lead to trouble, but they keep coming. If only you could keep warm and stop remembering...