Wednesday, April 04, 2007


THIS IS
MAYBE
THE BEST BLOG
I HAVE

EVER
DONE::

.... and it is not
Pearls of Wilson

It is by my friend Martin who sometimes stands up and speaks ...... as well as write ......

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I’m not a big fan of things that begin with the word ‘holy’.
Calling a Bible ‘holy’ for example, I find makes it more suitable to a museum than a bedside.
To serve as priest, deacon or Bishop may be what God is asking of you, but to do this you have to enter something called ‘Holy Orders’ which might put you right off – ‘holiness’ is a brand with the faintest hint of self-righteousness, even pomposity.

Preface something with the word ‘holy’ and it brings me out in a rash. And I needed my tablets on Friday when a French nun told a news conference that eighteen months ago, while living with an illness with no known cure, she had prayed to the late Pope John Paul II and been miraculously cured overnight.
‘I was ill and now I'm healed," she said. "Now the church will decide if it's a miracle."
I’m in favour of miracles, but I’m suspicious of the nun’s supporters – they want to prove that John Paul II was not just the holy father but a holy saint. The press conference is part of a campaign to achieve fast-track beatification.
Don’t they realize that when Jesus healed someone, he often told people to keep quiet about it ? So whether or not John Paul II had a hand in this nun’s healing, he would probably be denying all knowledge anyway.
When holiness gets industrialized, it becomes distinctly unholy.
But that’s the risk the Church takes in naming an entire week as ‘holy’ – the risk that it won’t be able to live up to its own billing.

So, obviously as a priest I have a small problem on Palm Sunday - the day which announces an entire week of holiness - Holy Week – a narrative arc which begins in triumph, descends into torture and death, and finally surprises us with the twist of resurrection in its tale.
Palm Sunday – the celebrity entrance, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord;
Maundy Thursday - the Last Supper, leaving us the mysterious meal of bread and wine even if – especially if - we betray him;
Good Friday – rough justice, public humiliation, torture, abandonment, death;
Holy Saturday - the altar stripped bare and God gone to hell;
Easter Sunday a day to change all days, when death itself finally begins to die, when everything which has ever lived, receives the kiss of eternal life.

The Church, inevitably, marks Holy Week with a surfeit of services and it is tempting to allow religion to walk us blindfold through the real narrative of confusion and conflict, through the nights of betrayal and torture - ‘Do not pass ‘Go’, go directly to Glorious Resurrection’.
But it is a mistake to think of a holy week as a religious week – a period when we go to church more and try to be especially religious.
Maybe you noticed that the sequence of Holy Week jumps from Palm Sunday to Maundy Thursday ?
This leaves us with the first half of holy week still looking for an idea, so maybe there is scope for some new holy days for this week.

First up,
Subversive Monday
This is a day to celebrate that the procession Jesus embarks on at the start of holy week is the most subversive journey any of us can make.
The One the crowds hail as their king will not be king in the way they want – he does not do violence, he is not taken in by the illusion of earthly power.
He is the King who sees his calling as a servant, he is the controlling force in history who gives away control – he is the one who knows that you find your life only when you give it away.
‘Being in very nature God,’ as St Paul puts it. ‘He made himself nothing… humbled himself… even to death.’

We celebrate Jesus the trickster and subversive on Subversive Monday, the founder of the upside down kingdom where the first will be last and last first.

And he is also the God of surprises, the trickster who confounds our expectations and can inspire us on


Surprise Me Tuesday
‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ the crowds shout at the peacemaker on the donkey, at the storyteller and miracle maker.
But the one who comes in the name of the Lord may surprise us, may surprise themselves.
The one who comes in the name of the Lord may be part of something bigger than their own brief moment in the spotlight.
They may be a donkey, unknowingly, quietly, delivering salvation to the world.
Surprise Me Tuesday is a day to wonder who God is using to surprise us – who has thrown their palms towards Jesus, thrown down their coat for Jesus to pass by on - maybe in politics, or in culture, maybe among those we meet on our street or at work.
Blessed is the Tory politician William Wilberforce and the freed slave Olaudah Equiano, the ones who come 200 years ago in the name of the Lord – the ones who cry freedom to the captives.
Blessed is Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, the ones who come this week, after all this time to the same table, the ones who come in the name of the Lord, laying down hostilities, the ones who promise peace even though they cannot shake hands.
Blessed is Bhupendra, my local shopkeeper for his serenity and dignity, for his generosity and his companionship to such a diverse community of customers.
Holiness is always a surprise, it may be someone or something you don’t expect to be holy at all.
Even those we think are less than holy can be caught up in the holiness of history.
Which brings us to Numinous Wednesday where we recognise that while they may not have known it, everyone who looked at Jesus on the donkey riding into Jerusalem, was looking into the eyes of God – and that when Jesus looked at them, he knew he was looking into the eyes of God too.
Numinous describes the presence of divinity in all things and blessed is each of us – whatever our age our wealth our colour our circumstances – because Jesus is looking at us and respects us. Jesus honours us because we are made in the image of God.
I sometimes travel in the East and love the way that in some countries you are greeted with a bow, a sign of respect, in place of the western mantra, ‘Hi, how are you?’
There are many meanings to the bow, but for the Hindu one meaning is a recognition that each person we greet is divine… ancient recognition of the divine in me being respected by the divine in you.
In eastern traditions too, it is common to take off your shoes as you enter the holy building– a symbol that this ground is sacred.
But the symbol is only a reminder that all ground, all people, are sacred.
So on Numinous Wednesday take off your shoes in the presence of friend and stranger – not literally but poetically,
by listening instead of talking,
by making way instead of pushing through,
by praying for them instead of wondering how much they earn or what they are like in bed.
Blessed is every person we meet on Numinous Wednesday – Jesus rides into Jerusalem for them, speaks for them, heals them, promises they will be free and dies for them.



And when we arrive at Maundy Thursday don’t let religion get in the way of the holy story, don’t let it obscure how Jesus has already been forgotten as Palm Sunday hero .. how he is now arrested like a Moslem in Leeds, tried like a prisononer in Guantanamo Bay and brutally killed like Saddam Hussein, hanging in the air to die.
The One who made everything allows himself to be unmade.
When you make your worship this week, meditating on the gift of salvation that is Jesus Christ, don’t let your meditation become naval-gazing – ask yourself how God might be calling you to take up the work of Jesus.
Find the holy in the mundane, the sacred in the ordinary.

On Subversive Monday, Surprise Me Tuesday and Numinous Wednesday – just as much as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.
Don’t wait for a holy week to change you.
Go looking for the holy in every week.
It is waiting to be found.


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