Christmas Cards - Dec 20

This is Banksy's Christmas card - it rather speaks for itself I reckon:

To you Ephraim will be born ...

NAH!

The Bethesda Boy

If you knew how many days, weeks, months and year;
How many people, with their friends, who made it into the pool.
How the bottom falls out of your guts,
every time you realise you've missed out again.

Bethesda, just up the road from the Sheep Gate,
the House of grace, pity, mercy -but only, it seems, if you've got friends.
All I needed was a friend - one would do.
Then up comes this bloke who asks, 'Do you want to be well?'
I ask you, is the Chief Priest a Jew?

'Sir,' says I, 'That's what I'm here for,
Been waiting thirty-eight years for
(used to call me the 'Bethesda Boy' when I started you know).
what do you reckon?'

'Best get up, roll up your mat and walk then,' he says.
And you know what? That's what I did - got up, rolled it up and went home,
Walking on my own two feet for the first time, ever.
And as I did, you wouldn't credit it, but I got stopped by the religious police!
It was the Sabbath you see - against the law to work - and that's what carrying your mat was.
I hadn't been cured for more than five minutes and I get done for 'working on the Sabbath!'

So I tells them me story, about how the bloke what healed me told me to do it.
'What man? Who is he, and where is he now?' they ask me.
But I didn't know who he was nor where he'd gone - he was just a bloke.
And they let me go with a warning as it was me first time;
Think they missed the point a bit myself.

But being the Sabbath, I take myself off to the temple and who do you think I bump into?
Yes, you're right - it's the bloke that healed me - Jesus, it's Jesus,
The rabbi people have been teaching about!
And he says to me, 'Now you're well stop sinning or next time . . . ,'
But there ain't going to be a next time - I'm gonna live right with God from now on.
And then I pop back to tell them I've found out who healed me,
Told them it was Jesus - and they didn't look too pleaded
So I chucked the mat and legged it - after all, I could, couldn't I?

John 5. 1 - 15

A church of two halves

The words of Ecclesiastes 1. 9, 'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun,' ring true today as we turn our attention to Peter's encounter with a bunch of circumcised believers in Jerusalem.

Here we have a church of two halves: the circumcised (Jewish) believers and the uncircumcised (Gentile) believers.

We also have a great deal of righteous anger and loads of passion (funny how prejudice does that isn't it?) along with it.

Now considering that working back from the current Pope the line (albeit just a little fuzzy in places) tracks back to the man himself: Peter! So what we have here is 'the man' being taken on by the Jewish believers ( of course this won't be the last time the 'Judaizers' find themselves in the spotlight - Paul encounters them in Galatians); not the leaders but the influential, Jewish, believers are taking him to town. What is interesting it that it must have worked for, despite his own words in the Acts 11 account, we later find Paul giving him some real stick over his 'encouraging Gentile believers to not only follow Christ but adopt Jewish practices).

What today's readings teach us is that we have a new commandment to live up to - we make love our priority and our rule of life; we don't put stumbling blocks in the way of new believers, neither do we impose ritual or worship style, liturgical tastes or our own personal fads, habits and desires. What we do is bless that what God is already blessing and help those outside the kingdom to recognise the voice and hand of God in their lives.

What we must do is to seek to recognise the image of the invisible God made visible by the presence of the person before us and celebrate the fact that nothing (and no one?) God has made 'clean' is unclean. Regardless of where we have been, what we have seen or done - there are no definitive sins (outside that one 'unforgivable' sin against the Holy Spirit in Matt 12//mark 3) - all are equal and carry the same weight whether there's one or dozens of them.

High, low, charismatic, traditional - fundamental, liberal or confused: We need to celebrate the fact that people come to God through Christ and refrain from putting our yokes on them.

He whom the Son sets free is free indeed - so let's not put our burdens on they and break their backs with our personal likes, dislikes and arrogance, eh?