Psalm 22

Where I was at school, the Bible was seen as a dusty rulebook of morals to live by, and The Psalms were a repository of mysterious poems designed to be chanted almost monotonously in order to stultify a room of rowdy boys during Assembly.

I doubt Jesus was chanting monotonously as he hung on the cross bearing the sins of the world, but Psalm 22 starts with the words that he spoke as darkness covered the land, and end with a verse reminiscent of his last words as he "gave up his spirit".

Could it be that Psalm 22 was given for us to mind-read the Son of God during the most crucial three hours in the entire history of Creation?

"My God, my God!"

Jesus, eternally begotten (i.e. ‘defined’ as "Son"), calls to his perfectly loved and loving father - but he doesn’t use the intimate name "Abba" ("Daddy"), as he encouraged us to, but by the name "El" ("God" – literally, "strength" or "almighty"), changing the perspective of this relationship from one of loving intimacy to one of power versus submission.

And he asks the question his whole church wants to know the answer to: "Why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?"

Jesus, the "Word of God", cries out with words, but is answered without a sound.  Instead, the source of his light – the light that he reflects so perfectly that he is "the light of the world" - is simply withdrawn.

                                                                                                                                                                                          

It was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour (Luke 23:44)

"My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest"

Perhaps this simple phenomenon of the light disappearing serves to remind Jesus of his father’s great goodness and the rescue mission they have set themselves: to deliver those who trust in God from the eternal separation their sin otherwise leads them to.

"You are holy, you who live in the praises of Israel - our fathers trusted in you: they trusted, and you delivered them.  They cried to you, and were delivered: they trusted in you, and were not confounded"

But how was this great rescue mission going to work?

Sin is not trusting in God … not trusting in God means disunity with God … disunity with God must mean separation from God … separation from God is death and hell.

How can God stop sinners going to hell?

"I am a worm and not a man"

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Scarlet is a colour symbolic of 'sin' throughout the Bible.  The Hebrew for the word 'scarlet' comes from the word for the type of worm that was crushed in order to make scarlet dye.  It follows that 'worms' are symbolic of sin too (e.g. Mark 9:47b-8, quoting Isaiah 66:23-24 "hell, where their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched").

"You are he that took me out of the womb.  You did make me hope when I was upon my mother's breasts.  I was cast upon you from the womb: you are my God from my mother's belly"

Jesus has blessed Israel, his ‘nation of priests’, for centuries.  Finally he is born ‘of the flesh of man’ into their care, forever trusting in God, in order to save man!

… So what would Israel offer towards the rescue mission?

Jesus looks around at those for whom he has been 'made sin': "I am a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head, saying, He trusted on the LORD that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him"

They that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads, and saying: you that would destroy the temple, and build it in three days, save yourself: if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!

Likewise also the chief priests mocking him, with the scribes and elders, said: he saved others; himself he cannot save.  If he is the King of Israel, let him now come down from the cross, and we will believe him!

He trusted in God; let him deliver him now, if he will have him: for he said, I am the Son of God.

(Matthew 27:39-43)

The cynic might suggest that Jesus had always planned to quote the first verse of the Psalm in order to big himself up in the eyes of those who knew their scriptures.  But, were this even thinkable (through the agony, humiliation, and bloody trauma of the crucifixion!), he still couldn’t have controlled the natural response of those spitting hate at him all around, if he were just a man.

So ‘His own’ would not help, but what about the angels?  Surely the ‘ministering spirits’ - legions of whom he has lead as their Commander (Joshua 5:14), their great Arch-angel (1 Thessalonians 4:16) – surely they would come now, in his hour of greatest need?

No, not the spirits surrounding him now: "many bulls ... strong bulls of Bashan" and "roaring", devouring "lions" with mouths open wide surround him now.

The bovine imagery alludes to cherubim (compare Ezekiel 1:10 "they four had the face of a man … a lion … an ox … an eagle" and Revelation 4:7 "a lion … a calf … a man, and … a flying eagle" with Ezekiel 10:14 "the face of a cherub, … a man, … a lion, and … an eagle") – and who was the 'guardian cherub' of Ezekiel 28:14?  The one who deceived Eve and became ‘the accuser’, Satan.

Furthermore, lions, when described in reference to their mouths being open and aggressive, point our minds to think of demons, whilst Bashan appears to be Satan’s playground - the mountain he set up in opposition to Zion.  Deuteronomy 3:11 speaks of "Og king of Bashan … remnant of giants", and Amos 4:1-2 proclaims to the "cows of Bashan who oppress the poor, who crush the needy … they shall take you away with hooks, even the last of you with fishhooks"!  Who is that ‘last’ taken away with fishhooks?  Ezekiel 29:3-4 "I am against thee, Pharaoh king of Egypt, the great dragon that lieth in the midst of his rivers, which hath said, My river is mine own, and I have made it for myself.  But I will put hooks in thy jaws, and I will cause the fish of thy rivers to stick unto thy scales, and I will bring thee up out of the midst of thy rivers, and all the fish of thy rivers shall stick unto thy scales".

No, "there is none to help"  Even the gifts of the Holy Spirit leave him:

Life drains from his body: "I am poured out like water ...  My heart has melted away within me … you lay me in the dust of death" (see Revelation 22:17 "... the free gift of the water of life")

Power drains from his body: "My bones are out of joint ...  My strength / power is dried up" (see Luke 4:14-15 "Jesus taught in the power of the Spirit and everyone praised him").  This truly is his moment of greatest weakness: bones are symbolic of strength, but his are "are out of joint" … although, crucially, they are not broken, as we can read in John 19:33,36 "But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs ... for these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken.’"  This is an important statement of God’s ultimate power in his greatest ‘weakness’ - his victory in his death.

"Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me"

There is a third group of witnesses around him: the reference to dogs is also seen particularly in Revelation 22:15 ("Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood"), Matthew 7:6,15:26-7 ("Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you" and "It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs … yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table") and Exodus 22:31 ("You shall be consecrated to me. Therefore you shall not eat any flesh that is torn by beasts in the field; you shall throw it to the dogs").

It is important that Gentiles – who had never been part of "Israel" - are present here too: Jesus' death heralded "the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages" (Romans 16:25), that "a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in” (Romans 11:25) to take their place as faith-filled "fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel" (Ephesians 3:6).

So what will the Gentiles surrounding Jesus offer towards the rescue mission?

They were the ones who would "pierce my hands and my feet ... stare and gloat over me" (described in John 19:36-7) and "divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment" (described in John 19:23-24).

So who can Jesus turn to?

"You, LORD, do not be far from me.  You are my strength; come quickly to help me.  Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs.  Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen"

This is not only a request in faith but also a prophecy and an encouragement in faith: "I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you - you who fear the LORD, praise him!  All you descendants of Jacob, honour him!  Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!  For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but HAS listened to his cry for help"

Then Jesus answers his own question in the beginning: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Remembering the rescue mission that he, the father, and the spirit agreed as they yearned for the love of their beloved creation, he proclaims: "From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows: The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the LORD will praise him (may your hearts live forever!), all the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him (for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations), all the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him (those who cannot keep themselves alive), posterity will serve him - future generations will be told about the Lord."

The final verse - "They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!" - sounds very much like two verses towards the end of the Bible:

"The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, "It is done! "  And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.  And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great" (Revelation 16:17-18)

Interestingly, this followed by a severe earthquake, which was attested to in Matthew 27:51,54 "And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent.  Now when the centurion, and they that were with him, watching Jesus, saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying, Truly this was the Son of God!"

Then, right in the middle of some of the most beautiful and glorious verses speaking of the purpose of the cross, there is Revelation 21:6…

He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life."

Mark 14:1-9

Sermon shared with Southfields Baptist Church, 11th Mar






So, what I would like to do this morning is to really get into this passage in some detail.

First of all I want to identify the two main groups of people in the passage, ...then I just want to try to really get into the minds of these people - to identify WITH them, ...and then I want for us to be able to see where it's all gone wrong for them, and why Jesus praises the woman so greatly.
But I'll start by setting the scene a bit.  It’s easy to gloss over parts of the story without a second thought but I think it will help to immerse ourselves in the details for a moment…

So, it’s two days before The Passover.  Now, The Passover was the great New Year celebration for the Hebrews.  It was given to them to celebrate new beginnings.

It was given to them both to remember the new beginnings God gave their ancestors - in The Promised Land of Canaan - after rescuing them from the slavery and oppression of Egypt.

But it was also given as an opportunity to look forward to the new beginnings that God will give all of his people - in The Promised ‘New Heavens and New Earth’ - when he rescues us from the slavery and oppression of sin.

Now, if we look down at verses 1 and 10 (just outside of the text we've had read), we have two groups of people awaiting this new year celebration in our story: the “Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law” and Jesus’ disciples, eating with him in Simon’s house

I’d just like to spend a little time getting into the minds of each group of people, using our understanding of Scripture.

First of all we’ve got the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law - what are they thinking about?  What do they think of themselves?  What is going through their minds?

Well, these guys are looking forward to leading the nation in the pomp and circumstance of the traditions and rituals built up around this event.  They’ll be looking forward to getting their glad rags on – looking pretty tip-top as the nation looks to them to lead the event … and then: the feasting!  ...Roast lamb with all the trimmings!

Of course all of this costs money - but the revenue they’ll make from the seasonal swell of tourists and pilgrims will more than cater for all they could need or want.

This is all of prime importance too, of course: this is 'The Religion' (the way of doing things) that God has given us – this is how we please him.  And, clearly, the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law are the special, deserving, righteous ones entrusted with the important administration of these rituals.  It is important to get them right … and those shouldering the burden of this great responsibility should be looked after – financially, and in any other way they might need looking after.

But, society today isn’t what it used to be when God gave Moses The Law, is it!  So, in addition to taking tithes, it’s necessary to supplement the Temple income.  And why not use the very resource that the Temple has plenty of: sheltered space?  If we hire that out to market vendors selling sacrificial animals and birds and flour and oil, as well as light refreshments and snacks for the weary pilgrim, everyone’s a winner!  The pilgrim doesn’t have to travel with all those bullocks and hins of oil and ephahs of flour, which reduces “sacrifice miles”, local businesses are given a much needed boost in these austere times of Roman occupation, and the ministers of the Temple and the Law are kept in a manner to which they have become accustomed.

It’s a good system!  It works!  Let’s not rock the boat.

And if anyone else rocks boat … well, they will need to be dealt with: pay off the Romans for a start … and then use the Romans to deal with any individual upstarts who might object.

Speaking of which, that Jesus fellah, with his constant criticism of ‘The System’, is exactly the kind of trouble-maker who would come in and drive our precious vendors from the Temple courts and put our more A-list clientele off giving ‘much’ in tithes.

He is – actually – going to ruin everything … and, seriously, The Passover is a key earner for us.  He needs to go.

… “But...” (if we look down at verse 2, here) “not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”


The second group of people are Jesus’ disciples - what are they thinking about?  What do they think of themselves?  What is going through their minds? 

Well, this second group of people see through the first group of people and their ostentatious leanings, thanks to Jesus, who has opened their eyes and exposed their misdeeds.

This second group of people are true heroes: they loyally follow their itinerant, rebel leader – a teacher rejected by the teaching establishment in authority – with nowhere to lay their heads at night and surviving day to day by eking out the accrued savings and meagre earnings of the handful of women amongst their number.

They mingle with society’s outcasts: the poor, the leprous, the prostitutes.

At The Revolution that their leader is clearly and inexorably leading them on towards, they will be the next generation of leaders who, taught well through their years in the wilderness, will lead in a whole new way of justice and righteousness.

No adulation for cold, bookish intellectualism for them!  No, their praise will come hard-earned at the coalface of serving the poor and widowed no matter the cost … for they have already given up everything to follow Jesus!


So, we see two groups of people anticipating this great new year celebration of The Passover: on the one hand, the national authorities, ordained by God to lead the ignorant masses through the mysterious ways of God … and, on the other hand, the enlightened servants of the down-trodden, throwing off the shackles of convention to do good in the name of God.

… And yet – the first group are hell-bent on killing the Son of God, and the second group do not consider him worthy of being honoured by his own creatures as The Great High Priest of God, King of all Creation.  What has gone wrong?

It takes a woman (so neither Chief Priest or Teacher of the Law, nor one of The Twelve) to show them - and us.

Who was this woman?  We’re just given the briefest information about her in Matthew 26 and here in Mark – can we see, in verse 3?  Basically that she has just spent a considerable sum of money on making Jesus smell nice; she has entered the house of an 'unclean' leper, and, crucially, Jesus ensures that her praise is everlasting.

Let’s just explore this for a minute or two.

So, Simon, being a leper, is likely to be living in the equivalent of a leper colony.

Lepers, by virtue of their ‘unclean’ condition would have had pretty limited career opportunities.  Most careers in this time (particularly being prior to the “Telecommunications Age”) are going to necessarily involve personal contact – be that trading or banking or tax collecting or working on the fishing boats or on an ox plough team - there just wouldn’t be as many opportunities to just pick up the phone or get onto email and conduct business from the couch!

But personal contact with lepers requires a special cleansing routine afterwards and, frankly, who wants to have to do that after every purchase or meeting or sealing of a contract?!

So this particular community is likely to be poor.  This woman would have had to have carried this alabaster flask from whichever fashionable perfumerie she bought it in, through the leper colony slums, and into Simon’s house.

If we look down at verse 5, our church NIV Bibles tell us that the perfume cost more than a year’s wages.  This is helpful, but I’m always keen not to just take the translators’ word for it - who knows where they got that from?  I want to use the Bible to understand the Bible.

So the original text, as translated in the King James for example, says that it was worth 300 denarii.

Now, of course, I don’t know what current exchange rates are, exactly, but – using the Bible to understand the Bible – Jesus, in telling the parable of The Good Samaritan, seemed to think that 2 denarii would be sufficient to keep an inn-keeper’s mind on the task of looking after the man set upon by robbers, whilst trusting that the Samaritan would keep to his word and come back to pay the difference next time he had the opportunity to make the Jerusalem-Jericho trip.  ...These days, Premier Inn’s best offer is £29pppn!  ...Using these calculations, the woman’s perfume is worth a cool £8,850 – if you'll pardon the pun, not something to be sniffed at!

Actually, a friend who would know recently told us that a simple hospital bed with a shared nurse costs closer to £400 a day - this alabaster flask would certainly not be something one would want to be flaunting around the poorest part of town!

… And it's not something you’d want to use up all in one application … especially on someone else’s head ... no matter how smelly that head might be!

… Unless, that is, the head belonged to one who had already given you all you ever needed, and who had promised to give you all you could ever want forevermore (… including, should you so desire it, more nard!)

So the costliness of the nard gives us an idea of how this woman valued Jesus.  But why nard?  Why not gold?  Or a nice case of wine?  Or a donkey?  (He was about to be in need of one of these over the next day or two!)  Why this ointment?

And why did she pour it on his head?  Most guests have their hands and feet washed … having one’s head anointed speaks of something a little deeper going on.

It may be that she knew exactly what was going on here: that Jesus was going to Jerusalem to be the Passover lamb, sacrificed for the salvation of the family of God.  It may be that she wished to express her anticipated mourning by preparing Jesus’ body for burial, perhaps knowing that she might not be able to honour him in such a way after what was, after all, going to be a very public death.

If we look at verse 8, Jesus certainly says that she did what she did for his burial.  The question for me is whether she knew exactly what she was doing or did Jesus use what she was doing in her ignorance as yet another pointer to what he was about to do.

What if she didn’t know what she was doing?  What might have been going through her mind?  Let's get into her thinking...

First and most importantly of all, she knows that Jesus has come to save his people - this lies at the heart of everything - it’s what his name ("Jesus") means: "The Lord saves".

Beyond that?  Well, we’re 2 days from the Passover - she knows that this is all about the sacrificial slaughter of an innocent lamb for the salvation of all who are covered under the blood of the lamb, historically symbolised by daubing the blood over and around the front door into the house.  But this was a family thing, administered by the household - if Jesus were to save the whole nation of Israel he would have to make a sacrifice appropriate for the whole nation; he would have to administer a ‘sin offering’, … in which a young bullock is sacrificed by, specifically, an ‘anointed’ Priest.

What else might be going through her mind?

Well we know that recently Jesus has been talking to his disciples about this final march on Jerusalem, when a sacrifice would be made that would save Israel.  The gospels tell us that the disciples didn’t really understand this but were too afraid to ask him about it.

I wonder if this woman, hanging out on the fringes of the discipleship party, has picked up gleanings of these conversations, come to understand what the disciples did not - that her beloved Jesus (the real Great High Priest) was on his way to administer the mother of all sacrifices in the Temple - and so decided to honour her beloved saviour herself with a proper anointing ceremony.

… This is all speculation on my part.  Either way, whether an anointing given before time - because she couldn’t serve him in this way later - or whether an anointing given without fully understanding what Jesus’ role was in what was about to happen, this woman did what she did out of her unashamed love for him...

A love that surpassed her understanding of Scripture; a love that surpassed her passion for the poor; a love that surpassed her desire for even just his gifts (like the perfume).

And this is how she shows us the problems with the two groups of people I mentioned earlier: they had taken FROM Jesus rather than taken Jesus.



What does this mean? ...And can I stand here with a finger-point at them, secure in the knowledge that I'm any different?

In the first group, Jesus had offered himself in the Scriptures and the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law had taken the Scriptures but not Jesus.

We surely don't do this - do we?

Well, the church through history has.

The Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law and subsequent church leaders and teachers down the ages have fallen foul of this: the invention of “Purgatory” and the practise of extracting ‘indulgences’ ...

... (do we know what these are?  "Purgatory" was a place invented to explain how people could die whilst sinning and still get into heaven - it was a place where individual sins are purged from an individual before he or she can be found worthy of entering God’s presence.  And ‘indulgences’ were payments to the church of man-earned currency in order to be some kind of substitute for purgatory in an individual's sin repayment plan.)

... so the invention of Purgatory and the practise of extracting indulgences are only two examples out of a myriad in which all the different church denominations have led the way in making the fulfilment of Scripture about the individual Christian rather than about Jesus.

Ok, that's the church ... but what about me?

Well, for my part, I can't tell you how many times have I found myself being reminded, with great relief, that God’s enjoyment of me is NOT compromised by the hundreds of ways in which I have not loved him already today, from hating the bin-men for waking me too early to not having a ‘Quiet Time’ this morning!

When we take the Scriptures and take Jesus out of them, we have to fill the void with ourselves.  So WE become the ones fulfilling Scripture … the problem is, we DON’T fulfil Scripture!

We’re NOT the ones who live righteous lives and so can carry our beloved through the judgement to eternal life with the Father.  But all the while we refuse to take ourselves out of the focus of Scripture and put Jesus back where he belongs at the centre of Scripture, we whip ourselves up into a frustrated frenzy of adding law upon law, trying to square the circle of making Scripture about us.
 
The second group of people - the disciples - are offered Jesus in the practical service of others in love.  This group had taken the practical service of others in love but not kept Jesus as the focus of this.

We surely don't do this - do we?


Well, the church through history has.

Disciples and subsequent Christian organisations down the ages have fallen foul of this: our colonial history is littered with stories of missionaries succumbing to the grasping attitude towards natives of the sailors and settlers with whom they travelled.  Modern urban folklore is equally littered with stories of how Christian workplaces suffer the ‘office politics’, back-biting, and gossip of their non-Christian counterparts.

... That's the church ... but what about me?

For me, I know that every day a child at my school will suffer a symptom of my forgetting that Jesus is the reason I’m there - whether that be that I just can’t take the time to make sure that they can cope with the work I’m setting them or whether it be me shouting at them for talking out of turn in class.

When we take the font of all love out of the centre of this service, we fill the void with ourselves … but WE are NOT an unquenchable overflow of love … so the service becomes duty, and duty becomes chore, and all the while we grow bitter and grasping as our innate resources are expended without replenishment.

It’s so interesting: Jesus said that the whole law can be summed up by: “Love the Lord your God …” - which the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law have corrupted - and “love your neighbour as yourself...” - which the disciples have corrupted.

(… By the way, before we get too precious about the disciples, let’s not forget the difference between Jesus’ reply to the response of one of his disciples on hearing of Jesus’ imminent death - “Get behind me, Satan!” - and his reply to this woman in verse 9: “wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her”)

But here’s a question: how do we proclaim the gospel in the light of this?  DO we remember this woman?  Do our Alpha courses or Christianity Explored courses mention this woman?  If they do, HOW do they mention her?  What do they say about her?

I suspect that, however WE proclaim the gospel as we see it, it only ends up being fully and most truly proclaimed when the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to how beautiful and joyful it is when Jesus is indeed the centre and focus of whatever we do.

And how liberating!

For those who love the Bible (the Scriptures ... the “Law and Prophets”) … for those who love looking into the Law and meditating on the Scriptures - how wonderful to do this PURELY to know Jesus more!  How wonderful to be able to share heart-warming discoveries or reminders with others in conversation (… or in preaching opportunities!)

For those who love to serve others, bless others, and do good to others - how wonderful to do this PURELY to make Jesus known better to those we are serving!  How wonderful to share in the goodness of his gift of loving through the very act of serving others.

Whilst we are in the flesh, we will - every day, most probably - be like the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law in some areas of our lives and like the disciples in others.  Thank God that there are still times when he reminds us of who he is and how much he loves us and, unintentionally … helplessly, we are like the woman: free to enjoy his grace, his gifts, his love, his protection, and his praise forever.

This is how I would like to finish, with the encouragement that even though we will daily fall like either the Priests or the disciples, yet - because of his love for us - we enjoy the everlasting praise of Jesus.

... But I know that some of us like some challenge to our current state, that we can think on through this week.  Well, how about this, from verse 6: “Leave her alone” (...from the King James version: “Why trouble her?”) “… she has done what she could.”

Can we look upon our brothers and sisters in Christ and the peculiar ways they might live out their faith, love, and worship of Jesus and, as long as it doesn’t cause brothers and sisters to stumble, just let them be?

In Matthew 21:16, Jesus quotes Psalm 8:2 at the Chief Priests and the Teachers of the Law, telling them how God has ordained praise from the lips of children and infants - these little people who have yet to learn about the restrictions of social conformity.  Let us, too, enjoy the variety and quirkiness of Jesus’ family as HE does … 

... as Jesus does … the one who, at the cross, gave his body to be broken, like the alabaster flask, so that, like the alabaster flask, abundant riches of sweet life everlasting would overflow with abandon.

Let me finish by praying for us to this limitlessly generous God ... 

[I then went on to thank God for his abundantly rich, sweet gifts of life and love everlasting for all of us who have responded to his approaches, without discrimination, to thank him for the beauty and richness of a world full of differences and diversity, and to ask that we'll be made more like Jesus - by Jesus - including in the way we enjoy all the many ways that each of us is different to one another.]

"Christianity is a crutch"

Jacques Callot's "The Beggar with a crutch in Profile", with thanks to www.art-wallpaper.com

A common accusation levelled at Christians (whether spoken or unspoken), is that Christianity is a crutch - the implication being that Christians are not as strong as non-Christians at dealing with what life has to throw at them.

And I'd like to say, as a Christian - and despite considerable personal pride - that they're half-right!

It's interesting imagery, the crutch.  It totally goes against phrases such as:

... "stand on your own two feet" ... "stand out from the crowd" ... "what do you stand for?" ... "stand up and be counted" ... "to take a stand against something" ... "stand there and take it like a man".

What do these phrases mean?  What do they individually mean and what message, collectively, do they send?

Just picking these few examples:

"stand on your own two feet" has implications of independence - the ability to make decisions and get jobs done without the say-so or assistance of others;

"standing out from the crowd" is about being bolder in what makes you as an individual different, rather than what you have in common with those around you;

"what do you stand for?", "stand up and be counted", and "to take a stand against something" are all about lending one's personal strength to a cause or belief or action;

and "stand there and take it like a man" smacks of fronting up to what's coming - taking personal responsibility for one's own actions and not hiding behind someone else or shifting blame.

What all of these have in common is that they are all about independence.  Even the ones that sound like they are uniting a community actually focus on the independence of individuals: "what do you stand for?" really asks "what is important to YOU?"  And "stand up and be counted" and "to take a stand against something" implies a standing out from the crowd in the face of a united 'other'.

Naturally, this independence is MOST worthy of our thoughts and efforts.  We totally believe in our independence and the inherent 'rightness' of a life in which our independence can be utterly realised.

Who are my heroes as I've grown up?  James Bond, Ethan Hunt, Superman, ... individuals who have such broad skill sets that they don't need anyone else to come and help them in areas in which they're weak, because they have no such thing!  They are utterly independent of anyone else.

What about now I’ve grown up?  What do I - overtly or covertly - judge other people for?  How about crying in public, asking for help (without covering it with the pride-preserving euphemism of "delegation"), seeing a Counsellor or Therapist, taking State handouts or charity, ...?

And it does, indeed, fly in the face of the total and utter dependence on God that Christianity teaches ... so, in that sense, Christianity is very definitely a crutch.

But I do object!  And I object on two grounds.

The first is the underlying assumption that non-Christians are capable of standing where Christians are not!

This is simply not borne out in real life.  But it is also where my agreement and disagreement with the phrase meet: whilst Christians may be walking along with a crutch, that's not to say that non-Christians do not need a crutch too.

To continue the metaphor, we are all, alike, drunk on the dream of our own complete independence from anyone else.  'Legless', if you will.  'Paralytic', in fact, from the same root as 'paralysed', meaning unable to stand.  We have seen the escape from God that independence would bring, and we have taken great gulps of the dream.  And, in doing so, we have made ourselves blind-drunk ... blind to who God is and all the benefits of leaning heavily on him.

The difference, then, between Christian and non-Christian is this, and this only: the Christian has, at some point, acknowledged that the repeated approaches of the AA counsellors must mean that they really love him, and has willingly been taken off for rehab.

I say "this and this only" because no Christian can ever get away with believing that they are, in this life, the finished article!  It's probably helpful, at this stage, to point out that the Christian is not yet rehabilitated but rather - as it were - on the "booze bus": on the way to certain and eternal rehabilitation, and getting treatment on the way!  This means, in practice, that non-Christians will both see the Christian relapse into the drunken blindness of believing in independence from God AND see the Christian calling out, from the booze bus, trying to persuade others to trust the AA counsellors ... to stretch the metaphor to breaking point!

I do have one more big problem with the concept of Christianity being a crutch, and that is that the terms 'Christianity' and 'crutch' both sound so impersonal and inanimate.

'Christianity' sounds like a system of rules, morals, and philosophies that a certain group of people follow because their up-bringing has led them to believe that this one particular system is the only workable way to get everyone to live peaceably with each other.

This very much smacks of the 'crutch' - an inanimate object that I pick up and lean on when I need it for the one job for which it was designed, and then put down again when I'm done ... and the relationship between me and the crutch goes no further!  We have nothing to say to one another, the crutch and I - no common interests, shared life experiences, or sense of worth, other than that my manipulation of the crutch, done well, will stop the embarrassment of falling on my face in the street!

True Christianity is so UNlike this, there is no way to even start to compare the two concepts.

The Christian is an adopted son of God the Father and brother to - and co-heir with - his son, Jesus.

The church is the very bride of Jesus, betrothed to one whose love - proven to her by his laying his life down for her - is exclusively hers forever.

Each Christian is IN Christ, and so enjoys the love, approval, and cherishing that God the Father has for Jesus, his son.

And the church has the strength of God himself, with God himself, through our being sealed with God the spirit ... and it is in this strength that the Christian does, indeed, stand.

Yes, Christians do also stand ... but not in our own strength - we stand ON "The Rock", a name for Jesus himself, who will not be moved by human hands or the powers of anything in all of creation unless he wishes to be moved (he once famously said: "if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, 'move from here to there,' and it will move!")

One day, Jesus will return, every eye will see him, and every straight, standing leg will buckle and bow as we, having strived so long and so hard for independence from him, see and immediately know him in all his good, good love for us, and find that we can no longer stand, so ashamed will we be of our strivings against such a love for us.  At that point, those who have spent their lives seeking him will be lifted up to be with him, whilst those who have spent their lives avoiding him will get what they've strived for: complete independence from God.

I mentioned, at the beginning, one image that the 'crutch' goes against is the "stand there and take it like a man" idea of fronting up to taking personal responsibility for one's own actions and not hiding behind someone else or shifting blame.

When Jesus returns there will be those who have believed in this way their entire lives, and so that is the way they will go: they will be held responsible for their own actions, and there will be no-one to hide behind.

There will be others who have found that they CANNOT stand independent from God and still find goodness in life ... and they will be "hidden IN Christ" - warmly and unreservedly welcomed into Jesus' own status of "loved by God".

Jesus stood before Pilate and was killed, separated from God the Father, so that we need never be - we can count that death as sufficient for us too.

He then stood amongst his disciples, having risen from the dead, so we who are IN him have effectively risen from the dead too.

And even now he stands: "I stand at the door and knock.  If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will eat with him, and he with me" (Revelation 3:20)

My first blog...

Encouraged to join the 'great cloud of witnesses' in their 'praise' ('telling') of the love of God for us, I have decided to try blogging.  It seems to me that God unites those in his family into a 'body', and that body surely works best when each part communicates clearly to each other ... so I'm going to enjoy reading what others have to say, post the odd thought of my own, and see what feedback I get from other parts of the body (or others who are genuinely seeking the truth).

I am also interested in education, particularly in telling our children about this beloved creation in which we live, taken from Jesus' side and waiting for a return to full union at The Wedding.  So I would like to try to put thoughts 'out there' for others to judge against scripture and add to, edit, or refute, with a view to, one day, gathering collected wisdom on how to "put Christ back into the curriculum" on a discussion forum website with sections broken down into different areas of interest, such as subject matter, philosophy of education, discipline, school size and structure, etc. - this blog will be a mixture of material that might eventually find its way onto that site, and other musings that will just remain as musings.

I chose this particular blog title as I think it stresses the freedom of the gospel covenant: we offer no ‘works’ in which we might boast (one doesn’t boast in surrender!) - we just trust him enough to ask him to reveal to us the truth ...

... then we just trust him enough to seek who he really is, to see if he really is trustworthy with all that he claims to be trustworthy with (i.e. my life and eternal destiny!) ... 

... then we just trust him enough to knock at the door to his home, because we have found him to be so trustworthy that we concede that it is safer inside his house than outside ... 

... and, then, as the doors to his home are flung wide to welcome us in, we trust him enough go in to his home to be with him forever.

“Don’t let your hearts be troubled.  Trust in God, and trust also in me.  There are many rooms in my Father’s house.  If this were not so, I would have told you. I am going to prepare a place for you.  When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am." (John 14:1-3)