What is Truth?

 

“What is truth?”, Pilate famously asked Jesus. It has, perhaps, become one of the really pressing questions of our age, particularly as we see so many politicians openly lying. On becoming Prime Minister, Boris Johnson was asked about the critical problem of Social Care. He replied with great confidence that he ‘had a plan’ yet, even as he said it, it was obvious that no such plan exists. In the USA, President Trump is infamous for his take on the truth, whilst dismissing everything he does not agree with as ‘fake news’. Even as he lost the recent election, it came naturally to him to lie and say that he won.

Last night I was privileged to attend a meeting on American politics, given by an expert in political communication and delivered from New York via Zoom. It was a private meeting arranged by my old school. The lecturer said that America is deeply divided, with each side following its own version of the truth. Each side has its own media, which feeds, reinforces and shapes what is seen as truth. He said that we all have the ability to filter out what does not conform to our world view. In passing, let me note that this might well be the reason why some bishops were not able to see what was wrong with such a person as Peter Ball. So, to go back to American politics, neither side can see the value of the other side. Neither side sees truth in the same way. They do not just disagree over things; they live with different world views. American is split down the middle in this way, with only a small proportion of people who are open minded and prepared to come to a view, only after weighing up the facts of any issue. Our lecturer said that it is this small group who are the key to election success. Persuade them of the truth of your cause and the election will swing your way. It is this group who determines the result of the election, for the majority of the population, divided into two camps, are unlikely ever to see the truth in the opposite point of view. Their positions are fixed. Our lecturer continued by saying that the way to win over this group is by emotional argument, not by cold facts. Political decisions, he said, are primarily a matter of emotional response.

All this made a lot of sense. It reminded me of the TV film, The Uncivil War, in which Benedict Cumberbatch plays the part of Dominic Cummings, the mastermind behind the Brexit Leave Campaign. Cummings tells his group to forget about winning a majority. All that is needed is to win over the small, centre group and the vote will be theirs. They set about winning this group, not by telling the truth, but by appealing to the emotions. An example of this is the bus with a slogan about diverting £350m a week from the EU into the NHS, as well as ridiculing the opposition by calling it ‘Project Fear’. The truth of the matter is that this is how elections are won in these times. The use of modern social media not only provides the means of discerning what emotional slogan with touch the heart of the target group, but also the means of delivering the message to that group in a way that will win them over.

I could not help also reflecting that such a deep divide over truth is what faces the Church at this moment in time. It is said that the argument about same-sex relationships is about more than what the Church’s stance should be on this issue. Looked at from the point of view of the political analysis that we have just considered, that must be right. Two sides of an argument about sexuality come from two different world views. It is not just a matter about how you interpret scripture, it is about what is fundamental to what forms and sustains my view of who I am and how truth is perceived, interpreted and expressed in my world. If that is a fair assessment of the situation, then it means that this issue will never be resolved by rational engagement of the issues or an emerging consensus on the matter. Yet I think there is a huge difference between the current dispute within the Church and the reality of politics in the USA or the UK. The difference lies in the fact that the middle ground has grown very large and is populated by people who, on emotional grounds, have moved on. Having gay children, or gay friends of your children, or gay children of friends, and so on, has led to the emotional response that all this is just the way the world is. If two people are happy together, then what is the problem? It is no longer an issue. The world has moved on. All of which leaves the two different world views in the Church at odds with each other, without any prospect of finding a resolution. And for what is probably a majority in the middle ground, the constant arguing over these matters simply serves to make the Church look both irrelevant and out of touch with the reality of people’s lives. As each side protects its own truth, the power of the gospel message sputters and fades. We end up making gods out of what defines our different world views, rather than allowing the Spirit of the risen Christ flood through us as a community that finds its unity, not in agreement over what divides, but in the shared joy of transformation and renewal. 

Last Statue Standing

For twenty years I was Rector of the Parish in Poole where Robert Baden-Powell was married. Scouts and Guides from all over the world would come and want to see the register entry of that event. My parish also included Brownsea Island where the very first Scout camp was held in 1907. During my time in the parish we held a memorial service on the island for the last members of that first camp, who had just died. To celebrate the centenary of the Scout movement, a life size statue of Baden-Powell was placed on Poole Quay, the seated figure, in scout uniform, looking out across the water towards Brownsea Island. At the time, it seemed to me to be an excellent memorial to a man, whose greatest achievement began a hundred years before, here in Poole.

It came as a bit of a shock to find that the Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch Council had plans to remove the statue to a safe place, before it could be unceremoniously pushed into the sea. Apparently, Baden-Powell was a homophobic racist, who enthusiastically supported Adolf Hitler. This threat to the statue came in the wake of a wave of statues being toppled, following the horrendous killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25^th May 2020. If the legacy of that killing is that we all look afresh at our racist bias, then something positive might yet come out of that sad event. I have little doubt that the Church of England is institutionally both homophobic and racist. We not only need to examine our own, often unconscious, bias, but also ask questions about some of the statues and memorials that were once erected to honour great men (it was usually men), but whose lives are now seen in a much more negative way, when held up in the light of modern perceptions and values.

Questions should be asked as whose images adorn our public spaces. Yet it is possible to agree with the criticism of past opinion, whilst having a certain degree of ill-ease about drumming people out of history. In saying this, I strongly believe that we must listen to the cry of those who have been, or are being, abused, dehumanized or marginalized. I simply have a question as to where the current inquisition will end.

I had a dream. One by one, every statue was being taken down and destroyed. Nelson was toppled from his column. Churchill disappeared from Parliament Square. In our churches, at the command of the Archbishop of Canterbury, each and every memorial was taken away and pulverized. Soon there was none held up for us to look at, for no one had passed scrutiny. Each hero from the past had feet of clay and no one could pass the test of perfection. Then I saw one last figure, still lifted high and looking down on a world gone mad. It was the figure of the Christ, hanging on a cross and still speaking the words of forgiveness. He was already condemned, for we, the human race, had put him there. As he looks down on our world, he does not condemn. Yet we condemn ourselves as we consider the brokenness of our actions in crying out for this killing. Now, transformation and restoration flow from that cross. None of us is perfect. Each of us has feet of clay. Yet each of us is so precious to God that we are worth dying for. To understand that is to look into the very heart of God. It is to see a love which is coloured by a deep compassion for our broken condition and, despite our sinfulness, stoops to lift us up to an honoured place in the Kingdom of Heaven.

It is right that we challenge the assumptions of the past. Hopefully it might also help us to face up to the bias and prejudice of our own lives in this present age and to ask what it is about our lives that might set the crowds on smashing our own memorials, in years to come. Yet the idea that saints don’t have clay feet seems unchristian to me. The strident demand that our heroes are icons of perfection does not sit well with the Christian idea of what it means to be a saint. I well remember the reply David Hope gave when, as Bishop of London, he was asked how he would epitomize the clergy of his diocese. He said, “they are all broken people, exercising heroic ministries.” I thought that was a realistic and indeed compassionate point of view. We are the earthly saints of our time, broken people with feet of clay, who know our need of forgiveness and have found grace and mercy, in the person of Christ, that brings us new life and hope for the future. Far from being models of perfection, we are people who seek to be faithful to the one who gave his life for us and, sometimes in the smallest of ways, something of the face of Christ can be seen in our lives. Despite our failings, something of the transforming love of God radiates from our lives to touch and heal the lives of those around us.

Back to Normal?

It must be the case that my father’s preaching had a lasting and formative influence on my life. Wherever we moved, it turned out that he was always the vicar. I don’t really recall much of his preaching, but it was part of the environment in which I grew up. Two things are etched on my mind. One is his annual attempt to explain the Trinity. The other is his Remembrance Day sermon in which he was fond of saying that my generation was the first in modern times in which we had not been obliged to take up arms and fight. Certainly, my father was in the army in the Second World War. He never spoke about it. Yet, at the end of his life, when he was in his 90s, a package of letters was returned to him. These he had written to a friend, during that war, and on the friend’s death they had been returned to him. Why would that friend have kept these letters for so long? We were allowed to read them. They not only describe some of the horrors my father experienced, but also reveal the deep sensitivity and thoughtfulness of my father, as a young man, as he pondered on why we did not pray more for our enemies.

His father never spoke about his experience in the First World War and it was an unsolved mystery to us as to how and why he had won a Military Cross in 1914. Only recently I solved that puzzle. Working through a chest of papers that I had inherited from his sister, I discovered an account of his act of heroism. He took a shot to the chest, which bounced off his identity tag and passed through his elbow. Yet he, as a young lieutenant, together with his captain and sergeant, held together their troop of men and fought on. Such was the experience of so many of that generation, many of whom never came home.

His father fought in the Zulu wars, not at Rorke’s Drift (the subject of the film Zulu) but in other actions in that area. His father also saw action as an army officer. For generations young men have gone to war (it was usually the men who fought, although in the C20th women were very much drawn into the war effort). My father’s point, in his preaching, was that the present era, in which the young have not had to be called up, is not what has been normal life, historically speaking. He would go on to say that we can so easily take peace and prosperity for granted, forgetting the sacrifice of previous generations.

It seems to me that the current pandemic, that we are struggling to cope with, is also not a divergence from normal life, but part of what was accepted as normal in previous generations. My paternal grandmother died of appendicitis, between the two World Wars. Penicillin had been discovered, but was not yet generally available. To die of her infection was not unexpected in those days. Reading the book Wolf Hall, the ‘sweating sickness’ is presented as an expected part of life and something the rich and privileged would seek to avoid by moving out into the countryside. My point is that we have grown to assume that living peaceful, infection free lives is part of our expectation in life, whereas (historically speaking) such sickness free living has never been people’s normal experience of life. Two things have been obvious for quite some time. Firstly, that a pandemic was coming (not if? but when?) and, secondly, that the age of antibiotics (as we know it) is moving towards its end. Yes, Covid-19 is untreatable by antibiotics (it is a virus), but we live in constant conflict with viruses and bacteria and we cannot assume that somehow we are entitled to a germ free existence.

So we return to normal. We need to treasure life, rather than assume we can put off death until the end of old age. We need to value and engage in the web of our relationships with one another (and our environment) in the present moment. We need to see those relationships as the real treasure and wealth of our lives, rather than storing up material wealth for a future that may never some. Perhaps, above all, we need to embrace the reality of death and discover afresh the Transcendent in life and live for that Eternity, which can be grasped in the here-and-now of daily living, yet will find its fulfilment beyond the grave.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Read : John 13:1-17 & 31b-35

Towards the end of the film, Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, the spy-catcher, George Smiley, speaks with the captured traitor, a very senior MI6 officer, who has been under the control of Karla, the head of the Russian secret service. “Did Karla want you to become head of MI6?”, Smiley asks. “I am not his office boy”, the traitor shouts back. “What are you then?” Smiley shouts in reply. “I am somebody who made a difference” the traitor replies.

There is something very human about wanting to be somebody. What are you? Or, Who are you? You might be a son or a daughter, a husband, or a wife, or a lover or a friend. You might be a parent or a grandparent; or a teacher, a nurse, a poet or a painter. The network of relationships, which make up our lives and the way we live out our lives define us as people. A few times, in my ministry, I have had to conduct the funeral of someone who has left no family and has outlived all their friends. There is no one at the funeral except me and a solicitor. This must have been somebody, somebody about whom there was a story to tell. But there is no one left to tell that story. So, with gentleness, we pray the words of a simple funeral service, for this was somebody and they are still a person beloved by God, a person for whom Christ died.

In the Second World War concentration camp, Auschwitz, you can see room after room of abandoned suitcases, discarded spectacles and false limbs. Those who entered this place of hell were stripped of everything that made them someone, even their teeth and their hair. Their very names were replaced with a tattooed number. They were totally dehumanised and then disposed of. This holocaust is remembered as one of the greatest evils of the 20^th Century, but such ethnic cleansing, in one form or another, has continued to be seen in our world, in one form or another, to this present day.

And what of us? Surely we are horrified by such things, yet we are human and we are always (perhaps in small ways) ready to marginalise and therefore dehumanise those who are different from us in some way. Over the centuries, the Church has had a dreadful track record of excluding others. “You are not somebody to us!” we have said so many times – to black people, Jewish people, female people, gay people, or indeed anyone who is in any way different.

Tonight we focus on Jesus – Jesus sharing a last supper with his friends. It was one of many such suppers, yet this one was different. Jesus had entered Jerusalem and, despite the welcome cheers of the crowd, they met under the threat of arrest, or even worse. Jesus breaks bread and shares it. He shares the cup of wine. As he does so, he tells them that this represents his body and his blood, a body that is to be given for them, blood that is to be shed for them. He was surrounded by his chosen twelve, not to mention any women who might have been there. Here we find James and John, who had so misrepresented the core of Jesus’ message as to ask for the prime seats in heaven. Here is Peter, the rock, whom, Jesus knew, would soon be denying him. And Thomas, who would doubt the truth of the resurrection, despite having sat at Jesus’ feet and heard all his teaching. And Judas, who would betray him. Yet he holds them in one fellowship and he bestows on them, in a simple meal, a depth of meaning that points to his own impending death.

Do this in remembrance of me, he tells them. And he stoops and washes their feet in an action of service to them, which at first they find quite unsettling. Surely this is inappropriate for someone who is their master, their leader, their Lord? Yet Jesus insists. It is a servant that he is called to be. And we are called to be servants too.

So we meet to break bread together, to share bread and wine, to do this in remembrance of Jesus, who (the very next day) would give his very body to death on a cross, for us and for all humankind.

If we call this a commemorative meal, we don’t to do justice to what we will share in tonight. We don’t just commemorate Jesus’ death on the cross. By taking broken bread, we are brought face to face with the reality of a real body, broken on a cross by our human hatred, yet given that we might find life. By drinking wine, we are brought face to face with the reality that this blood, that we (humanity) will shed, has been shed for us, that we might know the truth of God’s love for us. The power of what happened for us at Calvary is brought into the present instant of our lives, as broken bread is placed in our hands and a cup of wine is shared.

We do this, not only to remember Jesus, but to engage ourselves in God’s saving action of the cross. This is what Christ has done for you – for me. As the sharing of this Eucharist brings that reality into the present moment of our lives, it does so in a way that engages our hearts and then evokes the response of the giving of our own lives in return.

Perhaps it is a pity that the washing of feet, so integral to the account of the last supper in John’s Gospel, is only remembered as an add-on.

Do this in remembrance of me is not just a command to keep on receiving the bread and wine of communion, but (much more) is it the invitation to follow Christ in self-giving service to everyone given to us as a neighbour. The action of sharing in bread and wine together, gathers us together to discover the reality of the risen Christ in our midst, but more than simply receive the Eucharistic bread, we are ourselves to be the body of Christ – to be as bread, broken in our loving service to others; to be as people , who (as it were) stoop to wash the feet of every neighbour in need.

Be broken, in remembrance of me. Serve others, in remembrance of me. Wash their feet – or whatever might be the most appropriate way of serving others in our lives today. Treat every person you meet as somebody so precious that Christ was prepared to die for them, for every person you meet is somebody called to be a child of God. The fellowship of the Kingdom is such that, rather than building walls for our own protection, we ourselves are compelled to go out into the world, charged with the command that we must invite everyone to come in.

Give of yourselves to others. Treat every encounter with others as a meeting with somebody, in whom the face of Christ can be found. Give of your life in the service of others, for in this way you will be serving Christ and you will have stepped onto the road of eternity. Let the joy of thanksgiving, which should be so central to this Eucharist, be something that wells up, overflows and spills out into the world.

For, as we do this in remembrance of Christ, we will find that we have become heralds of his Kingdom and others will find here, in this community, bread that will satisfy the deepest longings of their hearts and a place where they are cherished as somebody – somebody of infinite beauty and potential – somebody beloved by God – somebody whose destiny is to be drawn, with us, into the fellowship of God’s heavenly banquet.

Good Friday Reflection 1 of 4

Crucifixion

Read Mark 15:16-32

You sit, waiting to hear the words of the speaker. And here I stand, about to deliver four reflections, as we watch with the dying Jesus. But I am not here to perform, as if this pulpit were some sort of stage. Neither are you the audience.  The world is the stage and it is you who are the performers. The play of life you act and live out has but one audience and that audience is God.  And me? I am but the person in the prompting box who whispers words of encouragement that might assist you as you act out the story of your lives.

That is an important perspective to take. What matters here is not so much as what I say, but your own conversations with God. Silence will be the key part of this hour we share together. As we stand together at the foot of the cross on which Jesus hangs, dying, what is it that he says to you? And what do you say to him? And in this encounter, can you find a sense of communion with the living God?

For four years I lived in Lincoln, based at the theological college there. Near the college could be found the Castle, part of which is still a working Law Court. Here, in days gone by, many would have heard the dreaded words of their death sentence. Near the castle is a pub, called ‘The Strugglers’ with a rather fine sign, showing two men struggling to move a large cask of ale. But actually the word ‘struggle’ originally meant something rather different.

It is a long-established pub and it got its name, because it was were people bought their ale as they watched those struggling for their life on the gallows, in what were very much public executions. To die in this way was a protracted and very painful process.

In time, of course, such executions became very much sanitized, being carried out away from the public eye. The 20^th Century hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, so perfected his technique that his record, from entering the cell of the condemned to their death was less than 8 seconds.

In Jesus’ day, executions were public, outside the city wall and crucifixion was designed to be as slow, as painful and as degrading as possible. The victim was hung up by rope (or to make the pain worse, nails were also used).

Each breath, over many hours (or even days) meant pulling against the nails to lift the body enough to take another breath. You would suffocate without that next breath, so the fight for life demanded that you pull against the nails, despite the agonising pain. And that explains why, after Jesus was dead, the other victims had their legs broken. Death, for them, would be almost instant, if they could no longer lift their bodies. But Jesus was already dead, his dying was relatively quick, yet it was still three hours of drawn out agony.

Perhaps for us, as we make the sign of the cross, as we mark baptismal candidates with the cross, as we hang crosses around our necks, and as we decorate our churches with crosses, it is sometimes possible to forget the grim and gory cruelty of this obscene form of killing.  For Jesus, as a Jew, an added horror lay in the belief that anyone who died in this way was forever cursed by God (Deut Ch 21). This death was the ultimate humiliation and horror.

Jesus had known that being true to his destiny would end up here, yet still he had travelled to Jerusalem and unstintingly had preached the Good News of the Kingdom and lived out the values of that Kingdom, even though it challenged the vested interests of the religious leaders of his time. He walked this way for you. At the Last Supper, he already knew that it would be his chosen friends who would let him down and betray him.

In the Garden of Gethsemane he wrestled in prayer over what being true to his message would mean. Should he go on? Could he go on? He knew just what the appalling consequences would be. So he surrenders himself to his destiny. He must be faithful to the ministry laid on him by his heavenly Father.

And now he hangs there, dying, for you – dying for me.

I wonder if you have ever sat at the bedside of someone who is dying. Perhaps you have been able to say things to each other that needed to be said. Perhaps what needed to be said was left unsaid and perhaps you are left with regrets – I wish I had had the chance to say what I wanted to say. Sudden death, or being away from someone who dies, can take away the chance for that final conversation. I wish I had had the chance to say I love you. A death which allows time for conversations can be the opportunity to say things to each other which are important and even healing.

So here we are. We stand at the foot of a gallows on which Jesus is dying. He chose this path because he wants you to discover and live the life of the Kingdom of Heaven. What conversation do you and he need to have?  What might you want to say to him, as you reflect on what he has given himself up to, for you? And if you can keep silent for a while, what might he be saying to you as you travel along the journey of this earthly life to what will one day be your own earthly ending? Imagine yourself into the scene. What are your thoughts? What are your emotions – and is God saying something to you through what you feel?

Good Friday Reflection 2 of 4

Father forgive them

Read Luke 23:32-34

There is, in Auschwitz, a large wooden cross, planted in the ground. I only saw it towards the end of my visit and it took my breath away. Why is it there? The ground it is planted in is saturated with the ashes of Jews, but also disabled people, gay men & women, travellers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roman Catholics, political prisoners – and so on. Although the regime that perpetrated this crime is seen by all civilized society as evil, the nation it represented was part of Christian Europe and this slaughter was the culmination of centuries of the persecution of Jewish people within Western society. The dichotomy of that cross immediately struck me. Planted in this soil, might it represent the triumph of Christian oppression over the marginalised of our world? No, surely not! It must represent the suffering Christ standing alongside the victims of the holocaust. But for a moment, in my mind, it could have meant either.

The cross stands as a challenge to us, who seek to follow our Crucified Lord, for it judges our actions, our motives and our assumptions. We stand judged by our actions, when those actions are set alongside the one who, throughout his life, lived focussed so intently on God. So we hit out. We cry “Crucify!”. We, ourselves, bang in the nails of torture and death.

If we think of places like Auschwitz, and the holocaust, there is a right moral judgement to be made against the regime that perpetrated such a heinous crime. Yet in all of us there is the potential to marginalise others, to dehumanise them, to choose ethnic cleansing, even if we do it by excluding others, rather than killing them.

My point is this. There are many evil people in our world, and we ourselves must stand against such evil and work for what is good and right and just. But we also need to acknowledge that we are part of fallen humanity. It was we whose response to the Word made flesh was to crucify him.

And as we bang in the nails, Jesus prays for us – “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”. As we crucify this planet, destroying ecosystems, polluting the atmosphere and raping the land, he prays, “Father forgive them”; as we allow injustice for others become the price for our own self comfort, he prays, “Father, forgive them”; as the number of billionaires expands, whist 900million in our world go to bed hungry each night, he prays, “Father, forgive them”; as we kill and maim in religious acts of war, supposedly in the name of the Lord of Life, he prays “Father forgive them”; as we marginalise others, devalue others, dehumanise others, so that in places like Auschwitz the crematoria become just places of waste disposal, he prays, “Father, forgive them”.

Perhaps we live simple lives, that can seem far removed from the worst atrocities of our broken world, yet we all live fallen lives – that is, we fall far short of the fullness of life, lived in relationship with God, that is his intention for each and every one of us.

And as we waste precious moments of our lives, as we fail to see the face of Christ in every encounter of our lives and every neighbour in need, so Jesus prays for us – “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing”.

Here, on the cross, we see the catastrophic result of a world that is so broken that we will even crucify God himself. And he forgives us. He forgives the broken inadequacies of those who nail him to this wood. He reaches out for all time for the generations who will come after, even we ourselves. And, in the broken failures of our own lives, he already speaks out to forgive what will be the inevitable consequences of our actions. “Father, forgive them”.

We come to this cross, not because we hope for forgiveness, but because we are drawn to the one who, despite our failings, is already forgiving us. Here we find one, who does not reject us for the people we are, but forgives us for being the people we are. And in that forgiveness we are drawn to the one who can bring us healing, new life and new hope. 

It was you who put Christ on the cross – it was me. Despite what we do, he forgives us. What does that mean for you? How does that touch your heart? What does it mean to be forgiven? How will that transform your life?

These questions lead on to another one. If it is our own sinfulness that nails Christ to this cross, and yet Christ forgives what we are doing, then how can we live a Christian life without forgiving others? At 10.43am on 8^th November 1987, a bomb exploded during Enniskillen's Remembrance Day parade in Northern Ireland.

Gordon Wilson, and his daughter Marie were buried in the rubble. Gordon was injured, but Marie’s injuries were fatal. Later, Gordon described his final conversation with Marie, as she died under the rubble. Gordon’s response to the bombing was "I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge" and, although many found it hard to understand his response, he forgave those who had planted the bomb. He went on to be a great peacemaker in Northern Ireland.

It is a challenging story, but it is one what flows from what it means to stand at the foot of Christ’s cross. Father, forgiven them, for they do not know what they are doing. If it is our sin that nails Christ to the cross, yet we are forgiven for what we are doing, then that must lead us to be people who, knowing what it is to be forgiven, bring forgiveness and reconciliation to others. I put the question, What does it mean to be forgiven? But this leads to another question, Who is it that I need to forgive?

Good Friday Reflection 3 of 4

Woman behold your son

Read John 19:25-27

I wonder what the relationship between John and Mary would have been. Jesus must have exasperated Mary and Joseph at times. Can we imagine the worry of going up to the big city with a 12-year-old, and then losing him? Mary & Joseph eventually find Jesus, debating with the leaders in the temple, but Jesus seems totally dismissive of his parents worry. Where else would I be, except here “in my Father’s house”? Mary must have wondered what the future held in store for her son, when he became an itinerant teacher, who apparently had more time for his motley crew of disciples than he did for his earthly family.

Indeed on one occasion, when Mary came to the house where Jesus was and sent in a message to say that his family were outside and waiting for him, he sent back the message that those gathered around him were his family now.

Jesus once said that no one could be a disciple of his unless they hated their mother and father. Not, I think, a command to hate, but to put our discipleship before all else. And John, ‘The disciple Jesus loved’ must have been Jesus’ closest friend.

I cannot see any evidence that the relationship between Mary and John can have been easy. Yet here they find themselves, standing side by side at the foot of the cross, drawn together by the dying Jesus.

Jesus, even in the agony of this torturous dying, has time to be concerned for his mother and his best friend. He gives them to each other in a new and intimately close relationship. He says to Mary, “Woman, here is your son”, and he says to John “Here is your mother”.

There can be several answers to the question as to when the Church began. It could be in the shout of joy of Mary Magdalene, when she recognised her risen Lord. It could be in the pouring out of the Spirit, who came as a mighty rushing wind and as fire, at Pentecost. But I think that, like a newly fertilized egg that divides for the first time into two cells (the beginnings of life, yet so much more will be needed for that new life to take on structure and form), so these words of Jesus begin what will become the church. Two people, Mary and John, not necessarily the best of friends, find themselves united at the foot of the cross, because of Jesus. And Jesus gives them to one another in a new family.

As we stand at the foot of the cross, our eyes on Jesus, he challenges us to look around us and discover who else is there with us.

It is a great sadness to me when churches fall out with one another. Fellow Christians declare themselves to be no longer in communion with other Christians, no longer able to meet together or worship together.  Whatever the divisive issue is, it begins to dominate and even to define what it means to be a Christian. So ‘The Issue’ (whatever it is) becomes a symptom of our human frailty, our falleness, in that we place the defence of our own opinions and ideas as the defining factor in our lives, rather than Christ.

Isn’t this a far cry from the prayer of Christ, that we might all be one, so that the world might believe? In other words, Jesus links church unity with effectiveness in mission. But it is not a unity that is the product of theological debate and finding a settled mind on contentious issues. It is a unity which comes by being ‘in Christ’. It begins, I suggest, as we discover that what defines us is simply that we are people who find ourselves in the company of others, who have been drawn together at the foot of the cross by the crucified, dying Christ.  

As we stand at the foot of the cross, we must surely put aside differences of opinion about sex, marriage, theories of atonement, the real presence of Christ in the Mass, and every other issue that can so easily divide Christians into us and them. What matters here is that we open our hearts to the experience of receiving the love of God, poured out for us in the self-giving dying of Christ on the cross. The shared experience of being enfolded in that love, finding healing, forgiveness and New Life, should be one that bonds us into a new family. This is the Church Christ dies to bring into being. This is where the shared life of the Kingdom begins to dawn in our lives. This is the fellowship that must define us. Nothing else!

So I ask you to consider the question: Who stands with you in this place? You don’t have to agree with them. You do not have to like them. You do not have to understand how they believe the daft things they say they believe.  All that matters is that we share in standing together in this place. The dying Christ draws us to himself and, as we stand there, we find also that he gives us to each other. And as Christ draws us into unity with himself, it must challenge us to be reconciled with one another. If we can find, within each other, the deep, shared joy of knowing what it means to receive the love that flows from this cross, then we will be one and, in this moment, the church is born afresh.

Good Friday Reflection 4 of 4

It is finished!

Read John 19:30

There is a note of triumph in Jesus’ cry – “IT IS FINISHED!”. This expression comes only in St. John’s Gospel. The Greek word for finished is tetelestai and it is not a resigned sigh that it is all over, but rather the cry that it is accomplished. The word comes only twice in the New Testament and both times are here in these verses. After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

In St.John’s Gospel, unlike the other Gospels, Ascension and Good Friday are combined into one. In St.John’s Gospel, Jesus (in his earthly ministry) spoke of what was ahead of him as a ‘lifting-up’. There is a double meaning here – to be lifted up -  both the obscenely gruesome lifting up of drawn-out dying that would be his fate on the cross, yet (at the same time) that lifting up of crucifixion would also be his lifting up in glory – His enthronement!

Also, St.John also puts the Last Supper the night before the Passover, so Good Friday is the Passover on which the Lamb of God is slain.

As we stand at the foot of the cross, I think it is helpful to take in the scene and ask, ‘what kind of King is this and what has been accomplished?’. What is revealed here on the cross? There are many, many images of God, spread across the different religions of the world and indeed many different images in the Hebrew Scriptures, which make up what we call the Old Testament. Yet the focal image for us as Christians is the figure of Christ on the cross. Is there power here? Does this image speak to us of Almighty God? Surely what is portrayed here is powerlessness and vulnerability. Is this really our image of the God we worship? Is this a king? Yet there is a power here that surpasses any image of glory or majesty that the human mind can imagine. It is a power of love that is unconditional, that will soak up any punishment, that will reach out its arms to us, even as we hammer the nails in. It is a love that will go on loving us, even after we have thrown our deepest angers and hurts at it. It is a love that will not be destroyed, even by the violence of our killing and the death that will follow. As we gaze at the cross, Jesus can say to us – “It is accomplished!” Wherever we are, whatever we do, that image is presented to us for all eternity. God has always been, and always will be, the one who is prepared to give all for us, whatever the cost – open – vulnerable – self-giving – unconditionally loving.

As we look at our world today, in all its brokeness, it is tempting to ask what has been accomplished. Where is the promised kingdom? Where is the reign of the king we proclaim as Lord?

Jesus’ answer would be that that kingdom is all around you, if only you had the eyes to see it. It is a kingdom that is born as the God of love soaks up the deepest depravity that we can muster, as we crucify him. What is accomplished is that nothing we can do will expel the God who reaches out to touch our lives. If Golgotha is the worst we can do, God remains there. His love is not defeated. And he can say, “It is finished”. “For this I came -  and now the power of my love is held out to you”. And although that does not negate the pitiful brokenness of our world, perhaps the Kingdom is born into every situation in which people like us gaze on that cross, until the penny drops, and we see it. This I have done for you – receive it – let it touch your heart – be changed by it – let your hearts be melted by it. And you will know that you are loved, forgiven, and set free.

As Christians we must believe that everything necessary for our salvation was accomplished on the cross. As we stand at the foot of the cross, we must know that perfect love is revealed to us here, a love that death cannot destroy, a love that seeks to overwhelm us and transform our lives. All is accomplished here at Golgotha. It is finished! It is done!

Yet the fulfilment of what has been accomplished takes fruit and is born into New Life as and when it touches our hearts and brings us life. It lifts us up from things of this fleeting earthly life into the eternity of God’s Kingdom and to a place where time and space no longer have meaning. This moment of crucifixion becomes the present moment of our lives, as we are caught up in the event of our salvation, and Jesus can say to us, as we stand with him in his dying, “IT IS FINISHED!”

Can we let Christ into our lives afresh? Can we dare to be vulnerable before him and stand, broken sinners though we are, before a love that seeks to overwhelm us, transfigure us and draw us into the new creation of God’s heaven? If we can, then we will know in our hearts that it is finished. What God seeks to achieve for us on this cross is accomplished in our lives.

Sermon for Easter Day

Read: John 20:1-18

Many of us will have graves that we visit. Perhaps grief is raw, or perhaps we have begun to move on. Perhaps we leave flowers on the grave. But suppose you visited the grave of someone who had been significantly close to you and found the stone cast to one side and a gaping hole in the ground, and the grave empty. It would be deeply shocking. Perhaps we are immune to these emotions, as we read the gospel story for today. Yes, of course Jesus’ grave is empty, for it is Easter and he is risen from the dead. But Mary would not have known that, as she comes to the grave in the early hours of the morning. I sometimes think that the literary style of the Gospels does not always do justice to what is going on. If we were writing today, we wouldn’t say that Mary was weeping. Surely she was bewildered, shocked and traumatised. Wouldn’t you be if you visited the grave of a loved one and found the body gone?

Who is this Mary? She is not the fallen woman or prostitute she was once declared to be in Medieval times, when she was mistakenly identified with the sinful woman who washed Jesus’ feet. She is mentioned by name some twelve times in the Gospels, more often than most of Jesus’ inner circle of the twelve. She was someone who had been cured by Jesus of seven demons, probably a reference to mental illness, seven being the number of fullness – so a very sick woman. But Jesus cured her and she became one of his closest followers. When most of the men had fled, Mary Magdalen was there at the cross as Jesus died. 

Early in the morning, some 36 hours later, Mary comes to the tomb and finds it empty. She is distraught and she asks someone, she takes to be the gardener, what is going on. Jesus, for it is he, says her name – “Mary”. And she says “Raboni”, which means Teacher. Again the Gospel surely underplays the language. I imagine that she must have shrieked the word -  “Raboni!!” What a sense of utter joy must have flooded her heart. She tries to grab hold of Jesus, but he tells her not to cling to him. The past has gone, new life is beginning. She must let go of the earthly Jesus, yet (joy of joys) he is alive again.

I want to suggest to you that it is important not to read these verses simply in an historic way, by which I mean as if we were simply reading a verbatim account of a strange event, some 2000 years ago. Yes Jesus died on a cross. Yes, on the third day those disciples were convinced that their friend Jesus, so cruelly put to death, was now risen from the dead. But Easter needs to be a present reality for us, not just the commemoration of what once was. Don’t just read this text, but imagine yourself into it. Soak up what is going on here. Look at what it means.

For all of us there will be times of weeping. I sometimes think that the Christian faith must lead to deep weeping. We may have our own sorrows, for which we weep, but if we pray with sincerity and seek to see the world as though through God’s eyes, we cannot help but be caught up in the sorrow God must feel at the brokenness of our world. We are destroying our planet. Daily, humans are killing one another. Some possess obscene levels of wealth, whilst so many hundreds of millions are dying for lack of the basic necessities of life. Many are marginalised and oppressed. Slavery is rife. People yearn for a depth of meaning in life, but fail to find it in the cult of celebrity, wealth and fame. Many, in our own society, feel unwanted, abandoned and with little hope.

Good Friday represents God himself sharing in the worst excesses of human brutality – facing the deepest expression of human sinfulness, as humanity hammers in the nails of crucifixion. Where is God in all this? - we might be tempted to cry. He is here, standing alongside us. Whatever the situation, no matter where lies the blame, he is there. And in the mist of our weeping, he calls us by name. Where is my Lord? - we might ourselves ask. Or, if we do not use such theological language, we might ask – What is the point of it all? Where lies meaning and purpose in our living? And Jesus replies by calling us by name.

I said that we must beware of reading this Gospel narrative in a simply historical way, as if we were exploring the past. Easter needs to be a present reality in our lives. In the mist of the complex cacophony of issues, the web of relationships, the challenges of the moment, can we stop to discover the risen Lord Jesus, already there at the centre of everything we are – calling us by name? It is my experience that to discover the risen Jesus, here and now in my life, calling me by name, is to find that self-same joy that led Mary to let out here ear-splitting shriek of “Raboni!!” And Easter becomes, not a remembrance of the past, but the celebration of present reality. Christ is alive!

Nothing we can do, not even the fact that have crucified God on a cross, can defeat the life-changing, self-giving, transforming, creating & healing power of his love. Not even death can defeat him. And if we can see that – if it can touch our hearts – then we have found the joy of Easter, and despite our earthly sorrows, we are transported into a new world that is beginning, in which Jesus is our risen Lord and living King.

Mary was not seen as a prostitute or a fallen women until some 15 centuries later. In the early church she was venerated as one of the Apostles. She was given the title – The Apostle to the Apostles. “Do not cling to me”, Jesus says to her, but “go and tell the others what you have seen”. Her experience of the risen Jesus propels her to go out with the Good News of the resurrection.

We might believe (in our minds) that Jesus rose from the dead, but to discover (in our own lives) the reality that Jesus is risen, is to be transformed, healed, empowered and made new. Easter is not just about what once was, but what is. It is more than about what once happened to Jesus. It is about how a love, that could defeat even death, can envelop and change our own lives. It is an encounter that brings deep joy, but it is a joy that overflows, that is infectious that goes out and seeks to give itself to others. The mission of the Church, which is nothing less than the mission of Jesus himself – a mission to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the sick, to transform and make whole – is a mission which can only well up in our hearts, as and when we encounter the risen Christ in our lives. It is the core of the Easter message – Jesus is risen!. And so our weeping is transformed into dancing. And we shout with joy: Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Sermon for Palm Sunday

Read first: Matthew 21:1-11 and then Matthew 27:11-54

One of the wonders of nature is to see a murmuration of starlings. They can form clouds of many birds, the clouds constantly changing shape as the birds move this way and that. What makes them move in this way, massed together, rather than individual birds doing their own thing? Well that is part of the wonder of it all. It might well be something that evolved in order to give them greater safety from predators.

In these present troubled times, we have seen a similar human phenomenon, as we have flocked to the shops to buy toilet rolls. On the one hand it is understandable, if people are worried by a lock-in and the need to be well stocked for an uncertain future. Many of us have responsibilities as parents or carers. Yet there was a classic interview with a young man, clutching a large pack of toilet rolls. Why did you buy them? He replied that he did not really want them, but everyone else was buying them, so he felt he ought to too. There is a real human picture here of going with the flock. The downside of this, in recent days, has been the amount of rotting food that has had to be thrown away, as people have bought more than they can eat.

The almost irresistible draw of flock behaviour might well be what is at work in today’s Palm Sunday reading about Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem. Word gets out that Jesus is coming, and the crowds react in a sense of group excitement and joy. “Hosanna to the King!”  Perhaps in a world in which life could be hard, as it was lived out under the yolk of a foreign occupying power, the entry into Jerusalem of a man who had promised a new kingdom was a moment of unbridled hope and expectancy. Yet, liturgically speaking, there are two Gospels for Palm Sunday. The first is the account of the Triumphant Entry, the second is the account of the Passion and the death of Jesus on the cross. Whatever had drawn out the crowds, to shout “Hosanna”, their cries soon turned to “Crucify!” Perhaps their momentary hope of a new kingdom rapidly turned to dust, as Jesus was arrested, tried and executed. In the end, it seemed, he did not deliver what they had hoped for, or hardly had dared to expect.

At a time when so much that we have taken for granted seems now to be questioned, and we wonder whether the world will ever be the same in the future, perhaps it is a time to weigh up our values and ask what is most important in our lives. What drives us? What fires our passions? What helps to make us the people we are? What is it that makes us most fully alive as human beings?

There may be many passions in our lives. One person’s passion may make them a leading expert in something, or someone who achieves great heights. We can be passionate about our family, or about some noble cause. Our passions shape us. The challenge of the Christian Gospel is to ask whether what drives us is simply of the present moment, or indeed something that time will eventually corrode and extinguish. Or can we dare to begin to see the things of the Kingdom that Jesus came to present to us, and for which he died? To enter that Kingdom we need to enthrone Jesus as King over our lives, for in doing so we surrender ourselves to the one who will shape us, mould us and lead us to find a renewed sense of identity as children of God.

We need to be among the crowd, who can hail Jesus and cry “Hosanna!” Yet if we believe that living for Christ makes all right with our lives, perhaps we have chosen the wrong kind of king. Jesus moved from a moment of glorification to the vulnerability of one, who would be cruelly put to death. And therein lies the uttermost core of the Gospel message. Our King is not one who rules over us as some kind of supreme protector, but the Servant King, who is prepared to give his life for us. The power of his kingship lies in his self-giving love. If we can see it, then our lives are transformed and we will have begun to live the life of the Kingdom. But such kingdom-living is not an endless round of palm-waving, as we greet Jesus as King. Rather, to be seduced, by the power of love that flows from the cross, is to be drawn into a way of living in which we too will find ourselves lost in self-giving for a broken world, and broken in standing alongside all who suffer.

Sermon for Lent 5

Reading: John 11:1-45

Today’s Gospel is yet another of the long passages from St.John’s Gospel that we are working our way through this Lent. With the arrival of Common Worship, and the adoption of a new lectionary, it was decided that stories that last for many verses would be kept intact, rather than being abridged, or split over several weeks. So here we have the story of the raising of Lazarus in its entirety.

I sometimes feel that there is an elephant in the room with this story. If Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, then why not extend this to everyone? Why should any of us die? This question becomes all the more pressing when we ourselves are faced with death. A significant person in our lives dies. Could not God have prevented this? No, life is not like that. We all have to face death. Except for the fact that here is a story of Jesus raising someone from death. It was Lazarus, and today’s Gospel tells the story of this.

Straight away we face a question of biblical interpretation. If we are presented with the story of an event, in the pages of the Gospels, are we to assume that what is presented is meant to be an objective and historically accurate account of what has happened, such as might be found in a scientific paper of today? The answer must be that the Gospels are not like that. I am convinced that stories like this do not appear out of nowhere. Something happens and it is remembered. The story is interpreted, put into a theological context and passed on. The point of retelling the story is not to keep alive the past, but to express an important truth for the present moment. So we need to approach this story with an open mind. What is God saying to us through these verses?

One thing to consider is what we mean by death? In our own time we have had to reopen this question. With the rise of organ transplantation, and the need for speed in transferring the organs, deciding when a person really is dead has needed to be defined with greater precision. There was far less precision in Jesus’ day. A lifeless body would have been counted as dead. This is a key feature in the parable of the Good Samaritan, in which it is the Samaritan who gathers up the beaten man lying on the road. The Priest and the Levite, both of whom passed by on the other side, were not without compassion. The probability that the man was dead meant that they could not have gone near him without making themselves ritually unclean. So was Lazarus really dead? We cannot inject such a scientific question into so ancient a text without doing violence to the text. The story describes the stench that comes out of the tomb, indicating the decomposition of the body, as if to make the point that yes, Lazarus really was dead. Whether this is a vivid memory of the original event, or an element of the retelling of the story, is a question we cannot answer.

What this Gospel passage proclaims to us is that here, in a dark situation of utter hopelessness, Jesus comes and transforms the situation. In the face of tragedy, he brings hope. Where there is despair, he offers the promise of new life. I think the context of this story is not questions about the deadness of Lazarus, but the situation of our own lives when we face trauma, despair, hopelessness and even death. The point of the Incarnation is that God himself takes on human flesh and comes to live in our midst. Whatever the darkness of this present moment, God is there alongside us. When the things of our earthly journey look to be without hope, Jesus raises our eyes to discover new hope and new life with the breaking in of his kingdom. There is no sense of turning back the clock here. The promise of Jesus is not to remove the challenge of the present hour, as if to return us to better times. Rather, at the heart of the Christian message is the challenge to let go of the things of this world and to surrender ourselves into the life of God’s kingdom. Ultimately, the Christians life is one that affirms death and dying, and faces up to our mortality with both acceptance and hope. We do this because, even in the present moment, we have already stepped into a different dimension in which ‘God is among us. He will dwell with us; we will be his peoples, and God himself will be with us; he will wipe every tear from our eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’ (Rev 21). 

This Gospel, including the story of Lazarus, was written in the light of the resurrection of Jesus and the explosion of New Life that poured out from the empty tomb and empowered people with the Holy Spirit. By the grace of God, we are drawn into the resurrection life, which is why Jesus transforms our crying into dancing and our sadness into joy. As we travel though Lent towards Palm Sunday and Good Friday, we do so in the knowledge that Jesus gives his life for us and we, held in such transforming love, have been transported into a new world in which the life we live is eternal.

Sermon for Lent 4

Reading: John 9:1-41

I wonder what we make of the story of a blind man receiving his sight as Jesus heals him. As I was growing up, I found myself questioning such biblical accounts. I suppose I settled on the perspective that Jesus could heal people, because he was Jesus, but you don’t find things like that happening today. Or do you? I was at college with someone who was steadily losing her sight. On leaving college, she was ordained, but she had to have service books run off for her with increasingly large typeface. She was told that there was no hope of a cure. Her optic nerve was degenerating, and she would end up totally blind. Then, one day, she was waiting in the doctors’ surgery and her sight simply returned. They could find no trace of any problem with her optic nerve. Neither could they offer any explanation for what had happened and her miraculous cure.

This raises two questions for me. Firstly, the need to believe in and to hope for the miraculous. Our limited human minds can only perceive and understand so much. We might say that the miraculous is something that goes beyond our present understanding of what is possible. Secondly, if sometimes people receive what appears to be a miraculous cure, why does this not happen for everyone? One thing is certain. As we grow older, our list of ailments increases. My wife and I have been meeting regularly for meals with two other couples for almost 40 years. We remember the days when our conversations were about the challenges of being the parents of young children. Nowadays, sharing the state of our medical complaints usually finds some place in our conversations. To put it bluntly, as we grow older, we start to fall to bits. No amount of prayer can hold back the ravages of time. The hope of the life of the Kingdom of God is not about eternal youth, but a readiness to let go of the things of this world and to embrace the new world of the eternal.

Should we pray for healing? The answer must be yes. Even if we face a terminal sickness, being supported, upheld and surrounded by prayer can make all the difference. And sometimes physical symptoms can be caused, or made worse, by inner unrest and dis-ease. Finding inner peace, through our own prayers and the prayers of others, can result in physical symptoms being cured. Prayer for healing must include the hope of new life and the expectation of the miraculous, which might include the person getting better, or finding strength to cope with what is uncurable, or even fining release and wholeness through the blessing of death.

The story of Jesus curing a blind man ought to lead us to expect new life and new hope in our own lives, yet not always the result we might expect. It points to the fact that the encounter with the risen Christ can and should be a transforming experience for us. Responding to God, who in Christ reaches out to touch our lives, brings new life and new hope, even in the face of suffering.

Why does John include this story in his Gospel? Well, we might think it was a remarkable event and that it ought to be reported. Yet this Gospel was not written like that. It is not a newspaper report. It is a story that is packed with meaning about the significance of Jesus and his message for the world. It is set in the context of the ongoing dispute between Jesus and the religious leaders of his day. Does God cause such suffering as this blindness? No – but Jesus is going to use this situation to give glory to God. Can Jesus be one sent from God? Apparently not, they decide, for he is breaking the Sabbath by healing on this day. So the point of the story become clear. Jesus is proclaiming himself to be the light of the world. He brings with him illumination and sight. And he sharply contrasts this with the blindness of the religious leaders. They have eyes, but they cannot see the truth. In their blindness, it is hidden from them.

Throughout this Lent there is a series of long passages from the John’s Gospel, which all revolve around sight. Jesus talks about being born of the Spirit. He converses with the Samaritan Woman at the well about the living water that only he can give. Now, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is contrasting darkness and light and saying that it is he who can lead us to seeing the truth. We live in a time when there is much discussion in the world-wide Church about matters of human sexuality. At the level of national churches, it has become so divisive that, at the Lambeth Conference this summer, a number of bishops will make a point of staying away. There is an issue here about how we interpret scripture and to what extent we are bound by this text or that. Surely, people argue, if a text says something, then we are bound to live by that. My problem is that Jesus often broke the letter of the law, when it came to scriptural texts. If he saw the need, he would heal on the sabbath, because PEOPLE were more important that slavishly keeping the letter of the law.

All this points to the core of Jesus’ message. He was a Jew by birth and he grew up steeped in the religious practice of his time. He knew the Hebrew Scriptures so well that, it is reported, even as a child he was able to debate with the scholars of his day. Yet living a life, which is constrained (and even stifled) by the ticking of an endless line of legal boxes and which seek to control every aspect of your life, is not the spirit-filled life of the Kingdom that Jesus came to give us.

Look! Jesus said. Open your eyes and see the life of the Kingdom all around you. Live in the expectation of the miraculous. Live with the hope that God can transform any situation and that he will lead us that are beyond our present imagination. He calls us to an attitude of life in which we open our eyes to discover God in everything around us and hear his voice speaking to us, even in situations of brokenness and suffering. Scripture points us to Jesus, and Jesus is the way into the Kingdom of Heaven. Scripture should not so much rule our lives as inspire us to open our eyes and discover the risen Christ, who walks beside us through the journey of this life. He does not make suffering go away, but he transforms human living as, continuing on the journey of life, we find ourselves already stepping into the Life of the Kingdom. "I am the light of the world", Jesus tells us. Our prayer must be that Jesus opens our eyes to see that light and, in doing so, draws us into a community that joyfully celebrates all that it means to live as Children of that light.

Coronavirus

I discovered a clip, from 2015, featuring a speech made by Bill Gates. He wheeled on an oil drum and said that, as a young man, they had always kept one of these in the house, filled with provisions for use in the event of nuclear war. He went on to point out that we still spend unbelievably massive amounts of money on nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence. However, he continued, it will not be nuclear bombs that wipe out tens of millions of people, but a virus. By contrast to what we spend on protecting ourselves from nuclear attack, he said, we spend nothing on creating a response to the viral attack that is coming. Indeed, just such an attack is now upon us.

We are surrounded by bugs. Indeed, our guts are home to a whole community of bacteria, which are an essential part of our digestive system. Some bugs, whether bacteria or viruses, are deeply harmful to us. Their life cycle and speed of duplication means that mutations will occur at a rate that seems very rapid to us. They evolve fast and, at times, even jump species. Outbreaks of virus infections in recent years, such as bird-flu or swine-fever, have led some to wonder what the fuss is about. Why the alarm? Today’s pandemic is why? It was never a question of IF the pandemic, but WHEN? In 2018 the UK National Security Strategy warned that a pandemic was inevitable. “We estimate that a pandemic could cause fatalities in the United Kingdom in the range 50,000 to 750,000, although both the timing and the impact are impossible to predict exactly.” In 2012 the Tory government’s Health and Social Care Act had further fragmented and privatised the NHS. The following year the British Medical Association had written: “The fragmented nature of the new health system will require that each organisation … [is] aware of the plans in place to deal with potential outbreaks of ill health, such as pandemic flu or legionnaires disease.” Since then there has been a steady move to reduce hospital beds and to restrict the budget of the NHS. In Germany there are 29.2 Critical Care Beds per 100,000 of the population. In the UK that figure is 6.6.

A key underlying problem is that we have over-populated this planet. Globalisation, together with both intense concentrations of people in cities and cheap and easy access to international transport, has created the perfect opportunity for a new virus to flourish and multiply. We have known this was coming, but we have done little in the way of preparation. Now, not only are many in danger of losing their lives, but our whole way of life and the very economic foundations of our society are under threat. In the short term, the question must be how our society can survive for the eighteen months or so before a vaccine is readily available. In the longer term, profound questions about how we order our lives must be answered. Money is simply the means by which we transact the deals that make a society possible. If large sections of society no longer have the work, the money or the means to make the necessary transactions to keep a roof over their head or feed their family, then the whole system collapses and lawlessness takes over. This virus will change life as we know it and challenge some of our deepest assumptions. Life will never be the same again.