Tuesday 24 August: Unexpected Day!

Hmmm… despite a highly organised programme, today didn’t turn out for me at all the way I was expecting.

At breakfast time, a senior colleague of mine, with whom I’ve worked closely at previous congresses came over to explain that overnight he’d lost the sight in one eye. He had had a cataract operation in the Netherlands a few weeks ago, and although everything had been pronounced well, a complication had obviously developed. He needed now to find a doctor and perhaps to get some treatment. His difficulty was, that he was due to deliver a paper to the conference this afternoon – would I please cover for him by reading his text in his stead. ‘Actually, Franz, no’, just didn’t seem like an option. So of course I said it would be a privilege. Whereupon he handed over his text and some supplementary papers.

So I checked out the morning programme and decided that I would skip the first session in order to have a read through of his paper. Or two. The first session was, in any case, a rather dense looking theological study to be delivered in German. The second session looked more interesting – an account of ‘Calvin’s Catholicity’. But I figured 90 minutes of preparation would be enough.
Unfortunately, there had been some delay on the photocopying of the English translation of the first paper. So unknown to me, the first two sessions were switched around and while I was in a sideroom reading through Franz’s work, I was missing the session I had hoped to attend. Heigh ho.
In the event, for one thing I was waiting a bit anxiously for GCSE news from home (which came through by text and was fine!), and for another the preparation took a bit longer than I expected, and for another I was feeling a bit peeved at missing the ‘Catholicity’ paper, and for another the sun was shining outside… so the upshot was that I skipped the second session too and spent a relaxing hour in the gardens instead, soaking up some rays.

Then, after lunch, I read Franz’s paper. It was an odd experience, but I was glad to do it. He’s a fine scholar and he had put together a strong argument for the case he was making – but he’s a Dutchman whose English (while stacks better than my Dutch!) is a bit Germanic… so I was trying to ensure it was his voice that people were hearing, while tidying up the grammar and syntax at least a bit! In the event his doctor’s appointments went well in the morning, and he was not only able to be there (albeit with a huge patch over one eye), but was able to field questions after I’d delivered his talk. And he’s been reassured that the eye will right itself in a few days.

I did attend one of the afternoon sessions, but I’m afraid by 5.15 I’d had enough for the day. My brain was full. So, now into the swing of bunking off, I took myself off for a walk round the University Campus during the last session.

Now we’re back at the accommodation, as early as we’ve managed it so far (8.15pm local time). We’re all intending to have an early night, since we’re departing by coach tomorrow at 7.00am for the kingdom of Lesotho, for a day’s excursion. Should be great.

Except of course, that it may turn out as unexpectedly as today.

Monday 23 August: Long Day!

Ok. I have to admit that was more like work. But I did get to see the site crocodile.

Our coach from the accommodation to the conference venue left at 8.10am for opening worship at 8.30, leading directly into a first session. We had a coffee break of half an hour at 10.30, lunch at 1.00 (for an hour… but in my case involving a meeting ), and another coffee break of half an hour at 3.30… but we’ve only just got back to the Lodge now (admittedly after a formal dinner at a prestigous local restaurant) at 10.00pm oui time. We certainly know that the Congress has begun.

The first main session was an overview of what was an important year last year in the world of Calvin scholarship. 2009 was the 500th anniversary of Calvin’s birth, and all kinds of events (conferences, exhibitions etc) and publications (about twenty new biographies alone!) were arranged to mark the occasion. The speaker gave us a summary of what had happened, laced with humour and salted with some wise reflections on what it all might or might not amount to. It was good to hear her emphasise that, just like all the prominent figures in the Bible, Calvin should always be remembered warts and all – he was, after all, the most vigorous preacher of the grace of God, and was fully aware of his own weaknesses and shortcomings. Among anniversary conference venues in 2009, many were predictable: Geneva, Belfast, Pretoria, Dordrecht. But others were less so: St Petersburg, Seville – and Beirut, even! We laughed at the news that a piece of public sculpture (a bust, in fact) has even been erected to mark Calvin’s cutlural contribution in… Havana, Cuba; and at the news that the American Postal Service issued commemorative stamps last year, to acknowledge the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, Gary Cooper and Bob Hope… but not John Calvin.

There was a substantial paper on Calvin’s understanding of reconciliation (a loaded subject in this part of the world). The paper was given in German, and I’m afraid that in common with some others I was unduly distracted by the poverty of the English translation which had been prepared for those who did not wish to rely on their German. It was comical – some splendid typos like ‘tree positions’ instead of ‘three’ and ‘dump symbols’ instead of dumb; as well as some very clumsy, clunky English sentences: ‘Like this were to clarify, how itself that the holiness of the Christian Church in the life of reflecting their mutuality and were to do’. Even given the tortuous nature of theological German, it’s gobbledegook!

Not wishing to gloss over a very competent introduction to Calvin’s early formulations of a doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, a highlight of the day for me was a paper looking at Calvin’s whole work as standing in continuity with the medieval and patristic monastic tradition. It’s a counter intuitive idea, because Calvin had some trenchant criticisms to make of the monastic orders of his own day. But the speaker made a good case that Calvin was attempting to take the monastic life out of the monastery (or at least to plunder the monastic treasury) and make it accessible to ordinary Christian believers – he coined the nice phrase ‘the Monkhood of All Believers’. He pointed out Calvin’s commitment to Psalm singing by lectionary calendar (we had done some of that, lustily, in our opening worship, in the Genevan style), and to a daily pattern of prayer at set times (or at least set occasions, rather like the monastic office). He emphasised Calvin’s view that all Christians have a high vocation and, given the degree of accountability of citizens in Geneva to the authorities for their behaviour, posed the idea that Calvin functioned as a bit of a secular abbot. I found it thought provoking, I must say.

This evening we’ve enjoyed an official conference dinner, hosted by the Rector of the University (the Vice Chancellor). He is a remarkable man… Prof Jonathan Jansen. (He told us his father is Abraham, and his mother is Sarah and that all his brothers and sisters, like himself, have biblical forenames… except one, ‘and he’s the only decent one among us’.) He told us how he had abandoned a Christian faith as a teenager to join the struggle to end apartheid (because the church, classically, kept telling him not to engage in politics but to remember his ‘citizenship is in heaven’), only to find that the anger he developed became a liability to him in later years. ‘I’m ashamed to tell you this today’, he said, ‘but I came to hate white people’. But he subsequently came (through a journey that introduced him to Liberation Theology and Black Theology) to realise that he himself stood in need of forgiveness and of the presence of God in his life, that it was only in being forgiven that he found a capacity to forgive. It was an inspiring speech from a man with a touch of Mandela about him.

The only drawback was that the venue was c-c-c-c-cold. It’s the end of winter here. The climate is very predictable and all three days we’ve had clear blue skies, lots of sunshine and temperatures in the middle of the day in the early 20s. But in the early mornings and in the evenings and overnight, it is cold. It dips to freezing point in fact. And most of us had dressed for the conference day, not for the dinner – or had assumed that the dinner would be in a well-heated venue. But we were in an usual place out in the countryside outside Bloemfontein, in a wooden structure with thin walls. It was pretty, but not warm… and even the large open fire in the downstairs courtyard only thawed out our feet before we got on the coach to return to our lodging. My heating is on full blast tonight and I can gradually feel the blood in my feet unfreezing!

Oh, and the crocodile was a disappointment. He looks very sorry for himself, like any wild animal in captivity. He lies in his pool, which is heavily fenced in, and barely moves. Why should he? His food is tossed to him daily, and in any case, there’s nowhere to go. Must be a parable of something.

Sunday 22 August: Surprised by Joy...

With apologies to the author of the biography of C S Lewis by that name, today has been a day of joyful suprises.

I had been telling people over the last couple of weeks that I was expecting to find some of the contrasts in South Africa disturbing – between white and black, rich and poor in particular – and that I expected to be exposed mostly to white wealth in the first half of my stay here and mostly to black poverty in the second half. Actually, the reality of black poverty has been opened to us by our wealthy white hosts from the outset.

Bloemfontein is part of South Africa’s Afrikaans heartland. It’s in what was, after all, the Orange Free State. This is hardcore Boer country – the part that gave Kitchener and his colleagues such a hard time 120 years ago. And our conference is being held on a University Campus (in fact, still called the University of the Free State). Most of the students and staff (but not all) are white, as you would expect; and the University plant is every bit as privileged and posh.

But first thing this morning one of the options presented to us before the official start of the Congress programme was to visit a Sutu-congregation: a church in a local township, whose services are held in the local indigenous language. About a dozen of us went first to a recent church plant, where we were applauded one by one as we conference delegates introduced ourselves. We were asked to do so in our own native language. So I was the boring one, relative to colleagues from, say, Taiwan or South Korea. The Dutch and German delegates could make themselves understood, at least a bit, because of the proximity of those languages to Afrikaans – which at least some of the Sutu speakers seemed to know. The biggest cheer was reserved for an American who had served for some years as a missionary in the Congo, when she greeted them in what was obviously an African language.

The poverty in the township was startling. No doubt things are better now than 30 years ago, and no doubt there are parts of the world where the poverty is still more extreme. But we have nothing like this in England. Many buildings are still made only of corrugated iron. Most dwellings, packed tightly together, are simple single-storey boxes of breeze-block or brick, maybe 5m by 5m, with a corrugated iron roof, often weighted in place only by more breeze blocks and brick-piles. Inside there may be one room, or two or possibly three; no more. Many homes still have outdoor toilets. Most of the township roads are not metalled, but are still just dusty, rutted tracks.

We went on to a full-scale church service. It was a bit odd to sit through a 25 minute sermon of which I didn’t understand a word… it was an exposition of Jeremiah 23.1-9, all very impassioned, but all incomprehsensible because it was all in Sutu. Somehow the language barrier mattered much less when it came to the hymn-singing. Not only could I sway gently to the music (I was probably among the less inhibited of those present, but it felt a bit like sharing the dance-floor with a bunch of teenagers at a disco: if you can’t compete, and imitation will look phoney, you’d best just do your own thing in a relatively inconspicuous way!), but I could also clap to the rhythm (which seemed like the most natural thing in the world in this context, which I don’t often feel at church in England). Even for a person as cerebral and verbal as I am, the meaning of the words didn’t matter too much – the joy in the church was contagious.

Then, after lunch, another joyful surprise… I found that my beloved Newcastle United’s first home game of the season was live on terrestrial TV. So I spent a delicious 45 minutes watching us go 3-0 up against Aston Villa. (I relied on a text from home, however, to tell me the final score was as the Congress began at half time. It was 6-0 – I’ll put that again since I won't often have opportunity – it was 6-0.) This was to be surprised by joy a second time in the day.

The Congress opened with two sessions: a brief act of worship, with the sermon (again, contrary to my apparently prejudiced expectations) delivered by a black pastor, and again with a black gospel choir singing before and after; and then an opening lecture, delivered by Dr Dolf Britz, a member of the theology faculty here and our principal host. He spoke movingly about his conversion to the evil of apartheid and about his painful recognition of his part in bolstering an oppressive structure. This was the third and biggest surprise of the day: ‘I didn’t just steal the land of the indigenous people’, he said, ‘I stole their lives’. He was exploring this against the context of Calvin’s treatment of Isaiah 61.1, and his understanding of Jesus as the fulfilment of the prophecy: ‘the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners’. It was hard not to think of Nelson Mandela in connection with the final clause, and about Archbishop Desmond Tutu in connection with much of the rest.

And did I mention that Newcastle won?

Saturday 21 August: Bains Game Lodge, Bloemfontein

This is work. Honest.

But I confess it's as much pleasure as business ever gets. I arrived safely in Bloemfontein this afternoon and am now settled in the conference accommodation at the Bains Game Lodge (www.bainsgamelodge.co.za -- take a look, you know you’re curious). So here I am, sitting in the late afternoon sunshine under a clear blue sky beside an open air pool, with giraffes and zebras and various other game just out of sight.

The conference begins tomorrow. This is the 10th International Calvin Congress. It meets every four years and brings together scholars with an interest in either the theology of the French reformer, or the history of his time, to review research progress in the interval. A long time ago (it really does begin to feel like a long time), this is the area in which I completed my doctorate – but I’ve had difficulty staying up to date with the subject and I’m expecting to do a lot of catching up in the next six days.

Calvin was born in Noyon, France, in 1509; he left that country as a religious exile in the early 1530s and spent most of the rest of his life acting as a sort of Chief Pastor and City Theologian in Geneva, where he died in 1509. He was probably the first ‘protestant’ (though he would not have known the word) to articulate a coherent theological account of the Christian Faith for non- (or anti-!) Papal churches. For various reasons (most having to do, in my view, with developments in later ‘Calvinism’), he has unfairly become a bigoted and tyrannical figure in the popular imagination. In fact his writings are passionately rooted in the grace of God, giving them (especially if you make allowances for the bloody age in which he lived) an extraordinarily world-affirming and life-affirming flavour. I’ll be attempting to drip-feed into this blog some of the gems in Calvin’s thought over the next week or so.

The journey on from Dubai was pretty uneventful. I slept some of it, or snoozed anyway in half hour bursts. We left at 4.40am local time (1.40am UK time) and arrived in Johannesburg at 10.00am local time (9.00am local time). The flight path basically took us down the east coast of Africa… over the Gulf States and then Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania, before moving inland over Zimbabwe. We flew, so the computer consoles at our seats told us, right over Dar es Salaam, and Harare, among other places.

I had a three hour stopover in Jo’burg – during which I think I was probably conned (though not too expensively), over some excess baggage charges. A porter had attached himself assiduously to me in baggage reclaim, and (genuinely helpfully) had guided me through the labyrinthine halls to the right check-in for my onward flight to Bloemfontein. But there he’d had a conspiratorial chat with the check-in staff, and had apologetically explained that my bags were too heavy and that she wanted to charge me an excess fee. I duly handed over a credit card, which was swiped (I mean, through a card reader; I don’t mean it was nicked!). I asked what the charges would be and he (not she) explained that it would be one figure if applied to the card and a second figure if paid in cash. Like a lemon, I opted for the lower figure and paid cash. It was only as I walked away that I realised that i) I had no receipt; ii) I had no proof that any charge was due; and iii) I may yet discover that I paid both by credit card and in cash. Not to worry. Haviing already had a glimpse from the plane of the poverty in which many black South Africans are still living – the townships are visible from the air – it’s hard to escape a feeling that a little appropriate redistribution of the worlds wealth was taking place, that’s all.

The good people of the University of the Free State met me on arrival, and delivered me to the Bains Game Lodge, where I arrived soon after Pakistan had sealed their Test victory over England – and in time to follow the afternoons Premier League football. The Chelsea-Wigan game (6-0) was on terrestrial TV here, when it will not have been in England.

This trip is work, though, I repeat – honest.

Bloemfontein-bound

I’m an hour into a four-hour stopover at Dubai International Airport, after a six hour flight from Birmingham, en route to South Africa. When I set off, England were comfortably placed at 130 for 2 on the third day of the third cricket Test against Pakistan. By the time I landed we'd collapsed to 221 for 9. Hmmm.... From here it’s another seven hours to Johannesburg and then an hour’s hop to my initial destination at the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein. I'll find lots more to say about that in the next few days, I guess - but basically I'm combining a conference on the legacy of the reformer John Calvin (on whom see my blog to celebrate his 500th birthday last year, at http://petewilcoxblogspot.blogspot.com/2009/07/calvins-500th-anniversary.html) with a visit to the Diocese of Matlosane, which is partnered with our own Diocese of Lichfield.

This is my third visit to Dubai, but I’ve yet to get out of the airport. But then, the airport is vast: a city in itself. It must surely have taken over from Singapore as the air-gateway to the southern hemisphere and the east. When I was last here, in 2008, it was a building site. Planes had to land about a mile from the main terminal, and everything depended on shuttle-buses.

Now it’s state of the art and huge – 200+ departure gates, to all kinds of exotic destinations in China and the Far East, Australia and New Zealand, all parts of Africa and the Indian sub-continent… all those cities we’ve heard of, but wil almost certainly never go to… Hyderabad, Dar es Salaam, Osaka, Jakarta. As a result, the aiport is just a great place to people-watch. Every skin colour and ethnic group passes by and every imaginable language can be heard. The facilities are terrific – not least, laptop charging points here there and everywhere, with free wifi (or weefee as I discovered recently it is pronounced in France).

I’m flying with Emirates. Very comfy for a long haul. The journey today took us east from Birmingham over the North Sea, across the Baltic and over Poland, then turning south over Hungary and then Turkey, Iraq and Iran, to the Arabian Peninsula… Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Dubai.

Flying over Iraq felt odd – not just because of the recent history (and the withdrawal of the last US combat troops just this week), but because of all the ancient (and for me, especially the biblical background). We flew over the River Tigris, which gets a mention in Genesis 2. Modern day Iraq is ancient Ur of the Chaldees, and Babylon – and of course Babel, which brings us back to this amazing multi-cultural, multi-lingual airport!

A sermon preached at Lichfield Cathedral on Sunday 13th June 2010

A meditation on the story of the sinful woman who anointed Jesus (Luke 7.36-8.3)

Anyone who has anything to do with Jesus of Nazareth ends up asking, ‘Who is this?’. So here’s how that question came into focus for me.

My name is Miriam. Like half the women in Galilee, I’m named after the sister of Moses. I’m also a sinner. A public one, I mean: shut out of the synagogue on account of my lifestyle. You don’t need to know the details. Let’s just say that all my adult life I’ve got used to men treating me as an object and women regarding me as a threat. I’ve got used to living without much intimacy or friendship in my life. I’m not asking for pity though. I’ve made choices knowing the consequences – and financially, anyway, I’ve done alright. But always to be an outcast, never to belong, that was hard. It’s different now. I could never have imagined doing what I’ve been doing these last six months, living the way I’m now living, or belonging the way I now belong. Now the men I’m with treat me with respect and the women have embraced me as a friend, as a sister even. I can’t tell you what that means to me. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’d heard of Jesus weeks before he turned up in our city. He’s been preaching and teaching in the region for a year or so and he’s widely thought to be… well what exactly? That’s disputed. A rabbi obviously; no-one argues about that, because he teaches with such authority. Most people also regard him as a prophet because he’s not afraid to challenge authority or defy convention. That’s not normal for rabbis, at least round here. But to me, he’s more than a prophet. And here’s why.

The day Jesus came to our city, there was great excitement. People flocked to hear him in the synagogue, to which I of course couldn’t go. To be honest, I don’t usually have any desire to go where I’m not wanted; but that day I felt left out. You see, Jesus has a nickname. He’s called ‘the Friend of Sinners’. He eats with tax collectors and touches lepers, which most religious leaders won’t do. That intrigued me and I did want to see him.

Then I heard he was eating that night at the house of Simon the Pharisee. Simon more or less runs the synagogue. He’s the most devout religious leader in the city. And he’s rich enough to lay on a feast. Plus his house is big enough to hold a crowd -- and loads of people would be there. The great and the good would be invited; but in our culture, at big banquets, the door is left open so neighbours can just turn up and sit around the edge of the room, listening to the chatter and soaking up the atmosphere. So I decided to go. I knew I’d not be very welcome. But I also knew it wouldn’t be easy for them to throw me out. This way, I’d at least get to see Jesus and maybe hear him too.

Then I had a mad idea. I was thinking about that nickname, ‘Friend of Sinners’, and how weird it is for a holy man. There has to be some danger, surely, that Jesus will be misunderstood and that because of the company he keeps, he will be dismissed as a sinner himself. I’m not a religious person and I don’t claim to know about these things, but to take that sort of risk seems like the mark of a true prophet. So I got this urge to do something for Jesus, to thank him, to let him know that his stance matters. But what do you do for a prophet? Well, in our tradition, you anoint him. Sometimes an idea hits you which leaves you no real choice: as soon as you think of it, you know you have to do it.

I had some perfumed oil. In my line of work, I needed it. I laughed out loud when I realised I was planning to anoint a holy man with oil I’d bought with um… immoral earnings. It seemed fitting somehow for a 'Friend of Sinners'.

I waited until I knew the meal would be in full swing. I could hear the noise of the dinner two streets away. Once or twice I nearly turned back. But then there I was, at the door of the house: on the outside, looking in, as ever. I waited a second to get my bearings, scanning the room as I leaned against the doorframe. It wasn’t hard to work out which was Jesus: he was immediately on Simon’s right hand side, and he was speaking.

It would have been so easy just to stand there and listen, but I knew that if I didn’t act at once I wouldn’t act at all; so I crossed the room. The murmuring, as people caught sight of me, was predictable. The hubbub grew as they realised I was approaching Jesus; that was predictable too. What I hadn’t anticipated was how hard it would be to get to Jesus’ head. I knew the guests would be reclining, heads towards the table, feet stretched out behind. But the dinner guests were packed together so tightly that short of climbing over a forest of legs, I couldn’t get near Jesus’ head. I ended up stranded a bit helplessly at his feet. I was feeling a bit foolish about that, and in my embarrassment, I couldn’t even get the stopper out of the perfume bottle. And I panicked. I’d so wanted to do this. It’d seemed important to do it. But now I felt I’d made a mess of it, like I’d made a mess of my life. So I burst into tears. Floods of tears. Great rivers of tears streaming down my face, and falling on his feet. At which point I lost all my inhibitions. If I had a reputation as a loose woman before that moment, I had it twice over afterwards. On impulse, I let down my hair (at which there was an audible gasp, which I can still hear in my head, because we don’t do that in our culture, not outside the bedroom). Simon actually flinched. I saw him draw back and wince, as if my actions were physically hurting him. I fell to my knees and – I know this sounds silly – started trying to dry Jesus’ feet with my hair and then I was kissing his feet, which I probably shouldn’t have done, but I did, and then I remembered the oil, and I poured that on his feet as well. And the most wonderful thing was: Jesus didn’t flinch.

As you can imagine, by then all conversation had stopped. Everyone else was in complete silence. They were all waiting, I was waiting, for what Jesus would say. I remember thinking, now we’ll find out if he’s a 'Friend of Sinners' or not. If I’ve got this wrong, I’ll have to leave the city for good. Jesus must have rumbled my reputation. He’ll have read it in the faces of the other guests the moment I entered the room. I had meant to anoint him with dignity but now I’ve gone and acted with such abandon. If Jesus rejects me, I was thinking, I’ll never live it down.

But he didn’t reject me. He told off Simon. It took a moment or two for me to realise that’s what was going on, but by the end it was dead clear. Jesus compared me with Simon, and applauded me.
In all, Jesus spoke five times. I can remember every word. First, he turned to his host and said, ‘Simon, I want to say something to you’. That was odd in itself. There we were, waiting for Jesus to pass judgment on me, and he just got our attention by telling us he had something to say. By then my hopes were already rising. My gut instinct was that if Jesus was going to condemn me, he’d have done it at once. So when he said he wanted to speak to Simon, my heart began to pound in expectation.

The second thing he did was tell a story. I think I knew where the story was going before Simon. It was a story about two debtors. No; really it was about an unlikely debt collector who freely forgave two debtors, simply because they couldn’t pay. One owed about two months’ wages and the other nearly two years’. I knew at once which one was me. ‘When the creditor cancelled the two debts’, Jesus asked Simon, ‘which one loved him more?’. Simon didn’t answer very confidently; but we all knew it must be the one with the greater debt.

When Jesus spoke a third time, you could have heard a pin drop. He started to compare Simon’s behaviour with mine. I was still kneeling there, not daring to look up, still clinging onto his feet. Three times, Jesus pointed out the meanness of Simon’s welcome, and each time he drew attention to something I had done. ‘You gave me no water for a footbath, but she has washed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair; you gave me no kiss of greeting, but she’s not stopped smothering my feet with her kisses; you gave me no olive oil for my head and face, but she has anointed my feet with her perfume. Why?’, he asked, ‘In her case, it’s because she senses her sins are forgiven: this great outpouring of hers is an outpouring of love and thankfulness. This is an act which is only possible for those who have felt the touch of God’s forgiveness. But someone who has never known that forgiveness (or thinks they have no need of forgiveness), shows little love and still less thankfulness’. You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.

And then Jesus spoke to me. Twice actually. Until then he’d been speaking about me, gesturing at me. Usually I resent being treated as an object. But this was already different, and then, as I say, he did speak to me. He addressed me personally, tenderly. First, he said the thing I most needed to hear in all the world, and he said it for all the world to hear: ‘Your sins are forgiven’. That startled everyone; me included. That’s when they began asking ‘Who is this?’. A few meant, ‘Who is this, who seems so at ease even declaring God’s forgiveness?’, but others meant ‘Who does he think he is, claiming to forgive sins? That's God's job’.

Now here’s a funny thing. I looked up at this point. I was pretty sure I’d see Simon grabbing the opportunity to reassert himself by ridiculing Jesus’ right to declare forgiveness. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t looking outraged at all – just thoughtful.

And then Jesus spoke again. To me, a second time. ‘Your faith’, he said, ‘has saved you. Go in peace’. I don’t know much about faith. But I do know this: Jesus has set me free to become the person I was created to be – by accepting my tears and my kisses, by reading my heart and blessing what he read there, by telling me I was forgiven, he set me free. He said my faith saved me. I say, he saved me. Is he a rabbi? No question. A prophet? Surely. But to me, he’s now my Saviour.

One last thing. My story doesn’t end there. You see, I’ve joined his community. There are about twenty of us on the road with him. I was right in a way that anointing Jesus would require me to leave my city. But I was wrong to think I’d leave because I could never again belong. In fact I’ve left because I’ve now found a community where I fully belong and am completely accepted.

The extraordinary thing is, it’s a mixed group, men and women. On the road, travelling together. And the contribution of the women is valued. A few of us are actually using our wealth (me now included) to provide for Jesus and the Twelve. He calls us (the women) his partners, co-workers with him in the mission to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom. He says we minister to him. After what I’ve been used to, it’s a bit of a shock to be in a community where women are taken seriously and treated as equals. Following Jesus is going to be like that, I reckon: pretty much constantly a bit of a shock. I’m not naïve. I know there will be dark days in times to come; but the vision of the coming kingdom of God, of a day when love will finally drive out fear, when women and men, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile will feast together at God’s eternal banquet, well that’s a cause to live and die for. For that, I’ll follow my Saviour come what may. I wouldn’t do it for a rabbi. I wouldn’t even do it for a prophet. But for a Saviour… Well, wouldn’t you?

Good Friday Electricity Fast

The Wilcox household experimented last week with a new (to us) way of observing Good Friday. Well, Good Friday afternoon to dawn on Easter Day actually. We kept an 'Electricity Fast'.

We owe the idea to a childhood friend of mine, Dave Bookless. Dave is National Director of Arocha UK -- a Christian nature conservation organisation. Forty years ago he and I were sandpit playmates in Bangalore, South India (where our fathers were colleagues on the staff of an Anglican Theological College). We haven't been in regular contact over the years, but last month he kindly agreed to deliver one of a series of Lent Lunchtime Lectures we had arranged at Lichfield Cathedral. It was a memorable occasion (in fact all five lectures were excellent). In the course of his presentation he happened to mention that he and his family had for some years now found the practice of an annual electricity fast something challenging and rewarding. It was one of those moments for me: as soon as he'd said it, I knew I'd want to try it.

Cathy didn't take much persuading. Maybe she's used to my mad schemes. The boys were less enthusiastic; but they are astonishingly loyal to their Dad and patient with me, and in the end both entered into the experiment pretty whole-heartedly. Broadly, the plan was to mark the hours in which Jesus was dead (ie, 3pm on Friday to dawn on Easter Day) by doing without electricity. The idea was not only that the subdued atmosphere in the home and longer hours of darkness would fit the time of the Christian year, but that in the process we would make a small gesture of protest at our consumer society and its heedless use of the world's resources. The two things felt like a good fit.

We didn't prepare carefully -- Holy Week was pretty hectic and Good Friday came up on us in a bit of a rush in the end. In advance we did agree not to cut off the power from the fridge or the freezer, but that we would do without computers, lighting, dishwasher, washing machine, microwave and kettle etc. Once we were underway, it became clear that we hadn't thought through the question of battery power. We hadn't gone round removing batteries from clocks and I decided not to remove my watch. That might be a useful experiment in itself some time, but it felt like the sort of thing which would take some thinking through and couldn't easily be tackled spontaneously. We didn't unplug the landline telephone -- but we did agree that we would make no outgoing calls except in an emergency. We would still answer incoming calls however. Not wanting to impose my own spiritual disciplines on the boys, I also suggested that the front room might be an amnesty area, where (with the door closed etc) they could retreat to watch tele, boot up a laptop etc. The mobile phone was a tough one. Again, we decided no texts or outgoing calls and no recharging either!

As the weekend unfolded, we did cut ourselves a bit of slack. Our shower is electrically operated and while it would have been possible to do without (our bath water is gas heated after all even if the thermostat which controls it is electric), we decided to make an exception of it. And I confess to using my mobile phone to keep in touch with the football results on Saturday afternoon... (I hadn't worked out in advance that our 'fast' hours included a period in which it was possible that my beloved Newcastle United might clinch promotion to the Premier League -- and in the end I couldn't bear not to follow progress. Shallow, I know.)

What was the impact? Well, our evening meals on Friday and Saturday were wonderful: candlelit and special somehow. I missed the kettle -- though boiling up water for tea and coffee was easy enough on our gas cooker. Six times during the fast I inadvertently flicked a light switch and had at once to turn it off again. I didn't realise how much of a reflex this is. I enter a dark room and reach out for the switch. It's even a reflex to turn 'off' a light you've remembered not to turn on. Twice I did this leaving the bathroom. Even though the room was dark and I was carrying a candle, I pullled the the light cord as I went out and filled the room with light. I missed the electric blanket. We live in a big house and the bedroom is hard to heat. Getting into a cold bed was probably the biggest hardship. And I was quite sobered to discover how much time I spend at my computer, especially dealing with emails. It has become instinctive to me, whenever I return home, to head into my study and check the state of my inbox. It was good to interrupt that pattern long enough to take note of it. To their credit, the boys disciplined themselves considerably: they didn't use their computers (as far as I'm aware) or their keyboards and electric guitars. The tele did get some use, but only after 6pm. That was a refinement introduced by the TV user himself, not by his parents!

And of course, on Easter morning it was wonderfully to be able to use the kettle and to switch on the lights -- and a CD player. Recorded music was the other thing we hadn't used for 36 hours and the combination of the CD player and the lights felt like a fitting celebration of Jesus' resurrection.