The poison of arrogance

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment… Romans 12:3 

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign  - and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign, so that we also might reign with you! 1 Corinthians 4:8-9

To the angel of the church in Laodicea write… You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.  Revelation 3:14,17

Do you know anyone who is arrogant? The very word is ugly, and there are plenty of alternatives: self-righteous, proud, vain, too big for their boots, complacent, a bit fond of themselves, over-confident… We might apply it to a neighbour, to someone at work or some organisation we belong to. However we describe it, the plain fact is that we just don’t like it: “Who do they think they are…?” we mutter.

But we need to be careful – the three quotes above make it clear that arrogance can rear its ugly head among God’s people. In Romans 12:3 Paul addresses individual church members; in 1 Corinthians 4:8-9 he addresses (not without a heavy dose of sarcasm!) a whole church; and in Revelation 3:14,17 Jesus addresses the church of Laodicea as a whole.

Could it just possibly be that you, or I, are guilty of arrogance? Could it just possibly be that the church we belong to is guilty of arrogance?

If we read the whole of the letter of Jesus to the church in Laodicea – that’s all of Revelation 3:14-22 – we find that the essence of their problem is that they are self-deluded; they’re so smug that they just can’t see what is obvious to everybody else.

They are “luke-warm”, when no doubt they think they are red-hot Christians. They think thy are “rich”, no doubt meaning in spiritual terms, when in fact they are “wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked” (that’s not a pretty list, is it!). They think they are specially precious to Jesus, but they are blissfully unaware that he is (verse 16) “about to spit them out of his mouth” (just try picturing that!).

Churches that come across as arrogant probably fall into one of two traps.

First, they may have grown impressively and therefore have all the trappings of what the world calls “success”: fine buildings, bulging congregations, plenty of money, a wide range of activities, and gifted people to run them.

And what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all, of course. Would that more churches answered to that kind of description!

But the question may arise: what of the spirit of such churches? Is there a subconscious “We’ve made it!” mentality: or, as the Laodiceans thought, “I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing”? Could it be that what started as a humble gathering of ordinary Christians, Christians who knew very well their total dependence on the Holy Spirit, has curdled into something that Jesus’ tongue finds distasteful – indeed, something spittable, if I may invent a word.

In America some years ago I made a point of visiting two quite famous “mega-churches” in a big city. Certainly, all those “trappings of success” were there, but I found it hard not to feel that the atmosphere of one was humble, edifying and Spirit-led, while the other – well, this could of course just be me, but let’s say that I was glad to get away at the end.

I was reminded of a basic Bible principle: Only God’s opinion ultimately matters. Obvious, when you stop to think about it.

Second, churches that come across as arrogant may be those which pride themselves primarily on their doctrinal accuracy; perhaps they have fallen into the trap of seeing themselves not so much as communities of brothers and sisters in Christ, but as teaching centres where all that seems to matter is an accurate understanding of scripture.

In my student years, many years ago now, I used to attend such a church, and I still think with gratitude of all I learned as a young Christian. But in the years since, I have discovered that – how shall I put this? – there was a lot I needed to unlearn. Such churches can easily breed a mentality of “We’re the only real Christians around here”, and decline to recognise as truly Christian other churches which may interpret scripture differently, and refuse to co-operate with them.

To be fair to them, they are determined to open up God’s word with strict accuracy, which of course is vitally important. But can it also result in a mentality of fear, a nervousness of displeasing God by getting some minor aspect of teaching wrong? And may it thus come across as dry and intellectual, creating a community that has unwittingly “quenched the Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19)?

There’s a balance we need to strike here. On the one hand we should be people of strong, bold convictions, refusing to water down timeless biblical truths; on the other hand we should be humble and teachable enough to say, “Of course, I could be wrong”, even willing to change. After all, Jesus said of prophets – people who professed to teach the truth - “By their fruit you shall know them”, not by their doctrinal correctness (Matthew 7:15-23).

We might say of an arrogant person, “He really makes something of himself!” But let’s not forget that it was said of Jesus, the perfect living Word of God, “he made nothing of himself …he humbled himself” (Philippians 2:7-8). Isn’t that our calling too?

Father, forgive me if there are times when I love Jesus too little and myself too much. Teach me the humility of him who “made himself nothing” even to the extent of dying on the cross. Amen.

When heaven and earth meet

When Jacob woke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord was in this place, and I didn’t know it… How awesome is this place! This is nothing other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven”. Genesis 28:16-17

Jesus said, “Very truly I tell you, you will see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man”. John 1:51

Jacob is in trouble. More than once he has shown himself to be a nasty, lying individual. He has taken advantage of his perhaps rather gullible twin brother Esau. Most recently he has schemed with their mother Rebekah to deceive their father Isaac, who is old and blind, and so robbed Esau of Isaac’s fatherly blessing. Putting it crudely, he is what might be called “a nasty piece of work”.

And now he is on the run. Esau, understandably, has a grudge against him and declares his intention to kill him (Genesis 27:41), so Rebekah packs him off to find refuge with her brother Laban in the distant town of Harran. So far, so not very good.

But on his lonely journey something happens that transforms his life (Genesis 28:10-22)…

He reaches “a certain place”. This could be anywhere – only later do we learn its name. He’s ready for sleep. So, taking a convenient stone to use as a pillow, he lies down. And… he dreams.

“He saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending on it. There above it stood the Lord, who said ‘I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac…’”

In the following verses God renews for Jacob the covenant he had made earlier with Abraham and Isaac, the promise of great prosperity – and of great, historic usefulness: “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you…” That’s some promise!

There are many truths we can draw from this dramatic event. At the heart of it is the sheer grace of God: how he treats so well somebody who has behaved so badly. If that’s not grace, I don’t know what is!

If, by the way, you find yourself almost wanting to tell God off for acting unjustly, well, you won’t be the first person down through history to feel that way. But the answer to that is to remind ourselves that, in principle if not in detail, not a single one of us is any different from Jacob. After all, “we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God”, as Paul explains (Romans 3:23). Without God’s grace, where would any of us be?

Another lesson can be drawn by comparing this event linking heaven and earth with that massive building project described in Genesis 11: the tower of Babel, a “tower that reaches to the heavens”. Proud and stupid humankind embark on this to “make a name for ourselves” – and of course it all comes to nothing: “they stopped building the city… and the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth”.

And likewise we, if we try to build anything – including our very lives – apart from God, we are doomed to failure. We are simply incapable of climbing up to God; but the good news of the gospel is that we don’t need to, for he has come down to us, as Jacob learned that night, and as Jesus was, rather mysteriously, to promise later to Nathanael (John 1:51).

Deep and precious things. But what struck me most forcibly, re-reading the story, were Jacob’s words as he absorbed what had happened: “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I didn’t know it”. The point being: “this place” was a bit of a nothing location, with no name that Jacob was aware of, the sort of place you pass through purely in order to get somewhere else, what we might call “the middle of nowhere” or “the back of beyond”.

A dry, scrubby bit of semi-desert, yet… God was there, and chose to reveal himself. A nothing place, maybe - yet Jacob was moved to call it “Bethel” (“the house of God”!) and “the gate of heaven”.

Buildings and “sacred spaces” in which to meet and worship God are often significant, and should not be undervalued. But they are not essential, for God can be met and enjoyed in any place where he sees fit to make himself known. This can happen even for somebody like Jacob who may very well have been totally neglectful of him. How much more, then, can it happen for the person whose heart is open to know his presence and experience his love?

Certainly, it’s not likely to happen in the dramatic kind of way it happened for Jacob! But who knows what God might see fit to do? We hear wonderful stories of people who meet with God in circumstances of war, tragedy, sickness, imprisonment or disaster. And even in the routine business of dull, ordinary, everyday life – even in that grey, dismal period after the excitement of Christmas and new year – let’s never doubt that God is there, even though we didn’t know it, and that we can have our own little “Bethel”.

Christian, expect an encounter with God today, however unpromising the prospect may seem!

Father, whatever this day may bring, however drab and ordinary it seems, may I, when I come to its end, be able to say with Jacob, “Yes, surely the Lord is in this place!” Amen.

Jesus' tears

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.  Matthew 9:36

There are few portrayals of Jesus in the Gospels that appeal to me more than this: I see him shaking his head in sorrow, the tears standing in his eyes.

The key word is “compassion”. The verse could be translated literally, “When Jesus saw the crowds his stomach churned with pity…”. This is a level of emotion that we, perhaps, rarely know – though seeing a little child dragged out of the ruins of Gaza must surely come close.

Here is the full humanity of Jesus: he wasn’t God pretending to be a man, simply playing a part; no, he was fully divine but fully human as well. This is what God is really like.

Matthew uses some graphic words to describe the crowds in Galilee: “harassed” could equally be vexed, or distressed; “helpless” could be laid low, or unable to cope; “like sheep without a shepherd” – well, that speaks for itself: lost, wandering, aimless, hopeless.

These aren’t people caught up in the horrors of war, which of course is even worse; they are people – just “ordinary” people - struggling to cope with the everyday pressures of life. I can’t help thinking of the people milling around our local city centre in the build-up to Christmas: struggling to make ends meet, determined to have “a good time”, whatever that may mean, but looking anything but happy. In a word, just ordinary human beings like untold millions on the face of the earth from the beginning of time. Whoever it was who called this sad and sinful world “a vale of tears” wasn’t far wrong.

As I imagine Jesus, full of tenderness, surveying this scene, I find myself challenged by the question: How might I react in the same situation? Indeed, how do I react?

Do I react with indifference? “Well, that’s the way life is. There’s nothing much I can do about it, so I’ll just look after myself as best I can, and leave others to look after themselves.”

No Christian, reading about the compassion of Jesus, can possibly be content with that. Famous as the shortest verse in the Bible, John 11:35 tells us that “Jesus wept” at the tomb of Lazarus. (And that was by no means the only time.) God help us all to pray, in the words of the beautiful little Graham Kendrick song, “Soften my heart, Lord, soften my heart… from all indifference, set me apart…”

Hopefully, I don’t react with callousness. “It’s none of my business, so why should I bother with the sufferings of other people? I’m all right, so as far as I’m concerned that’s that”. That, in fact, is just one step away from indifference, our first category; it’s indifference that has hardened into heartlessness, and we need to be very watchful, for it isn’t only our bodies that change, it’s also our inner selves. Let’s examine ourselves, in case we wake up one day and find ourselves asking, “How – oh how! – did I come to be this way?”

I might just shrug my shoulders and react with despair. “The pains of this life have no end; they are questions without answers, wounds without medicines”.

Even a Christian may sometimes feel this way, and that’s understandable. The list of problems seems infinite: wars and rumours of wars (as Jesus foretold); economic crises wherever you look; climate change threatening the future of our planet; poverty, homelessness and hardship; gender confusion; political instability and tension…

When tempted to despair we need to come back to base, so to speak, and to remind ourselves that it was ever thus. The pains of our world may take different forms from centuries ago, but in principle they are very much the same – and that was a world to which Jesus came proclaiming good news!

Only faith can enable us to hold fast to the promises of Jesus in, for example, Matthew 24, so our business is to be totally honest with God, and with one another, and to cling on if necessary by our very finger-nails. As Christians we are essentially deeply serious people, as well as full of joy.

There is also a fourth possible response to the suffering of our world: I might choose to condemn: “These people who are so lost and helpless – well, they have brought it on themselves. Unlike me, they have failed to get to grips with the forces of life, and that is why we see them dependent on food-banks, or lying in shop doorways in the city centre, or unable to hold down a reasonable job. They’re just life’s losers”.

There may be some truth in our criticisms, for we know that all of us need to be held to account for our sins and follies. But judging, ultimately, is God’s business, not ours. Our business is to foster the compassion of Christ within ourselves and within others. Lord, preserve me from arrogance and self-righteousness!

A key thing to finish with: Jesus didn’t just feel compassion; he went on to act compassionately, to do something. He preached the good news; he taught the truth of God; and he healed the sick and fed the hungry.

“But I’m not equipped to do that!” we say. To which Jesus relies: Oh yes, you are! You have the equipping of my Spirit. No, you can’t feed the world’s hungry or stop the world’s wars. But you can take a look at your own tiny bit of the world, and work out how to make a tiny bit of a difference right there.

Can’t you?

Father, thank you that Jesus knew the meaning of tears. Please increase daily the level of my tenderness, until I truly can feel his compassion and weep with his tears. Amen.

From terror to joy

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. ⁹ An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰ But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. ¹¹ Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹² This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” Luke 2:8-12

My mother was a farmer’s daughter. I remember visiting the farm on childhood holidays, in what seemed to me, born and brought up in London, the backwoods of southern Ireland. A city boy through and through, I’m afraid that nothing of that rural way of life has left its mark on me. So the story of the shepherds and the angels doesn’t strike any particular chords with me.

The farm had dairy cattle anyway – big lumpy, floppy, smelly cows, I remember - rather than sheep. So, probably like most of us, I have to work hard with my imagination to picture these unnamed men Luke tells us about, “living out in the fields” as they guarded their flocks by night.

The experts tell us that probably they were looked down on by their more prosperous neighbours because their work routine prevented them from fulfilling their religious duties – just as in our world there are those for whom standard Sunday service times are simply not possible. (I began my ministry twenty years later in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire, a “steel town” which functioned according to a shift system that imposed a sleep pattern quite alien to anything I had known.)

I wonder what that night-shift was like for the shepherds of Luke 2? I picture them huddled up against the cold, struggling to stay awake and longing for morning to come. Then something odd happens: a stranger appears as if out of nowhere. Who can he be? Why has he come? How has he come? A sense of something uncanny creeps over them, but it doesn’t last long, for it becomes apparent that the visitor is a messenger of God himself (that’s really what an “angel” was), and “the glory of the Lord shone around them”. Puzzlement turned to sheer terror.

The angel’s first words are simple: “Do not be afraid…” Then he goes on to tell them about the birth of “a Saviour”, the “Messiah”, in Bethlehem; and just to ensure there’s no risk of mistaken identity, that they will find the child “lying in a manger” (there can’t be too many new-born babies in Bethlehem answering to that description!). Whereupon a heavenly choir appears, filling the night sky with awesome light and the sound of glorious singing. It doesn’t take the shepherds long to agree to visit Bethlehem “to see this thing that has happened” (verse 15). So off they hurry (I wonder what happened to the sheep?). And sure enough…

There’s much to encourage us in these few verses.

First: the first people to receive the message of Jesus’ birth were low on the social scale, on the margins of society. He wasn’t made known to the religious leaders in the temple at Jerusalem, or to the political leaders like King Herod in his palace. His parents were nobodies - and the news of his birth came first to nobodies.

What does this have to say to us in the church today? I speak as a pretty “middle-class” Christian belonging to a pretty middle-class church. Well, to be middle-class is no sin! But there’s something to ponder here. We only have to read through the New Testament to realise that the early Christians were, many of them, slaves – lower in status even than those shepherds.

So thanks be to God for Christians who have heard his call to make his love known to those at the bottom of the pile, and have rolled up their sleeves for serious action! – whether we look back to people such as William Booth and his Salvation Army, or in our own time to those who serve as Street Pastors, or who run food banks, or who sit with drug addicts and alcoholics in our city centres, or who establish little Christian communities (churches in embryo?) in run down parts of cities.

Lord, forgive us if we have come to value respectability, correctness, even doctrinal precision, rather than the practical outworking of love!

A second encouragement: the first word of the angel to the shepherds was “Do not be afraid”. Isn’t that precious! Certainly, a heavenly vision of angels is likely to result in a need for a bit of reassurance. But I fished out my heavy Bible concordance a little earlier to discover that this same exhortation, or something very like it, occurs more than 100 times throughout the Bible in all sorts of different situations.

“Religion” has often been used to instil fear in people – Am I good enough?... Am I doing enough?... Am I measuring up?... Might God be angry with me?...

There is, no doubt, a time and place for such questions - sin certainly needs to be “called out”, to use a current in-word. But let us never forget that the first word is one of love and reassurance: “I bring you good news that will cause great joy…”

Am I living a life of good news? Is my church a community of great joy? If not, are they worthy of the description “Christian”?

We never meet those shepherds again in the Bible, so we have no idea what became of them. But perhaps a day will come when we will meet them in heaven, and they will tell us their full, joyful story…

Father, thank you that your great desire is not to crush us but to lift us up, not to condemn us but to forgive us. May even my everyday life convey something of the good news and the great joy which can be ours in Christ. Amen.

All about bruised reeds and smouldering wicks

A bruised reed he will not break,

    and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out. Matthew 12:20

My, we Christians can be a pretty quarrelsome lot, can’t we?

Look back over two thousand years of church history and what do you find? Answer: splits and splinters, arguments and wars (sometimes literal, sometimes theological), massive fallings-out, hatreds, even killings. True, there’s been a lot of wonderful stuff as well – let’s not be ashamed to highlight that fact - but there’s no doubt that divisions, factions and enmities are often what catch the eye. Oh dear! How alien this is to the spirit of Jesus.

Matthew 12:20 gives us a strange but rather beautiful description of his personality, and the way he went about his ministry. Matthew tells us that he wasn’t interested in “breaking bruised reeds” or “snuffing out smouldering wicks”. That’s a striking turn of phrase! What does it mean?

Matthew is in fact borrowing words from Isaiah 42:1-4, where the prophet speaks about the mysterious figure called “the servant of the Lord”, a figure whom the early church couldn’t help but identify with Jesus of Nazareth - once his first followers had witnessed him proclaiming the kingdom of God, healing the sick and even raising the dead, it became apparent to them that this was indeed the fulfilment of Isaiah’s prophecy.

It’s worth quoting the Isaiah passage more fully, putting the part about reeds and wicks back where it belongs…

… Jesus withdrew from that place. A large crowd followed him, and he healed all who were ill. He warned them not to tell others about him. This was to fulfil what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah:

 

“Here is my servant whom I have chosen,
    the one I love, in whom I delight.
I will put my Spirit upon him,
    and he will proclaim justice to the nations.
He will not quarrel or cry out;
    no one will hear his voice in the streets.

A bruised reed he will not break,
    and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out,
till he has brought justice through to victory.

In his name the nations will put their hope.”

There’s a lot one could draw from that passage, but what strikes me is the way it spotlights Jesus’ quiet manner. He didn’t “quarrel” or “cry out” or “raise his voice in the streets”. He was no ranter or blusterer. In terms of our modern world, he wasn’t the kind of person to take to social media in order to fling out angry, ignorant or vicious opinions. (Might there be a word there for some of us?)

 

Certainly, there were times he could be quite ferociously outspoken; witness his disputes with the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:13-36). But that was a blast against hypocrisy, which he detested, and could find no excuse for (might that too be a word for some of us?). The words of the old children’s hymn, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild”, though perhaps rather sentimental, are still worth pondering.

 

Going back to the bruised reed and the smouldering wick, they are a clear reminder that not all Bible truth is literal truth. They are figures of speech, “metaphors”, like so much else in the Bible, and they serve to illustrate something far more important. After all, as I said earlier, Jesus had no particular interest in reeds, bruised or otherwise, or in wicks, smouldering or otherwise.

 

To me, the bruised reed is the broken person: the person who has suffered great pain or injustice, and who can’t imagine ever getting over it. Perhaps it’s because of marriage or other relationship hurts; perhaps injustice at work; perhaps a major disappointment; perhaps being let down by a once-friend; perhaps serious illness, whether physical or mental; perhaps some kind of addiction.

 

Whatever, you sometimes hear people say, “I felt as if I had been tossed on the scrap-heap”. In which case the message is good news: Whatever this big, brash, go-getting world may do to you, however much it may despise and dismiss you, Jesus never tosses anybody on the scrap-heap; he works to comfort, mend and heal. If I may put words into his mouth, he says, “I still value you; I still have a meaning and purpose for your life; I will never leave you or forsake you; I will never give up on you; trust in me”.

 

And the smouldering wick? I see this as the person who is, to use an in- phrase, “burnt out”. No energy, enthusiasm or motivation; just dragging him or herself from one wearisome duty to another: only half alive, if that.  A candle-flame guttering just before extinction is a perfect illustration of this kind of person. And to them is given the promise of Jesus: “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10). As if to say: I have come to patiently nurse that dying flame back to life.

 

If anyone reading this is in this kind of situation, all I can do is urge you: Remember the bruised reed… remember the smouldering wick… And turn your face to the gentle, quiet, loving face of Jesus!

 

Lord Jesus, thank you that you don’t cast us off when we are beaten by the pressures of life or even when we give way to sin. Thank you that you offer us forgiveness, new life, new hope, and never-failing love. Help me to live in the light of that love. Amen.

Two happy women

 At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, ⁴⁰ where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. ⁴² In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! ⁴³ But why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? ⁴⁴ As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵ Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfil his promises to her!” Luke 1:39-45

I find it hard to read this little passage without smiling. It’s just such a happy episode, and if sheer happiness doesn’t make us smile, well, something is wrong indeed.

Mary, young and fit, and no doubt flushed from her walk, comes bustling into the home of Elizabeth and gives her a loud greeting. Elizabeth - not so young and not so fit! – perhaps hoists herself out of her chair to return the greeting, and as she does so she feels the child in her womb, John the Baptist-to-be, give a lively kick. She interprets this sudden movement as her baby greeting Mary’s, womb to womb.

John is to be the forerunner and herald of Jesus the Messiah in thirty years’ time, and here they are, depicted as starting to get to know one another, so to speak. Wonderful! Are you smiling too?

Various great truths emerge…

First, we never know when God is going to do something new.

The people of Israel had long been promised a Messiah, a King - indeed, the King of kings. But why precisely now? And why precisely here, in “the hill country of Judea” - as we might put it, “out in the sticks”? It’s been a long, hard wait, centuries long, in fact. But now it’s coming to an end.

From which the simple lesson is: never give up on God. We never know when he will spring a surprise; it may be in bleak and unpromising times. He is always there, even if sometimes he seems to be hiding behind the scenes.

Second, God has a wonderful habit of using very ordinary people.

The fact that Elizabeth was a priest’s wife didn’t make her particularly special – the priesthood was something a man was born into, not something he “qualified” for. And as for Mary herself, we know next to nothing about her except that she had “found favour with God” (Luke 1:30).

Yes, God can take the most ordinary human material and do the most extraordinary things with it: think David the shepherd boy (1 Samuel 16); or Hannah, the barren wife (1 Samuel 1-2); or Amos the shepherd and mere “tender of sycamore-fig trees” (Amos 7:14); or Simon Peter, whose only talent was for pulling fish out of the sea.

God loves to take and use the “humble and lowly”. So why not you, or me? Lord, help me to be of use to you this very day, even if it is cold and wet and grey!

Third, it’s a story about humility.

We don’t know how old Elizabeth was, or how exactly she was related to Mary, but Luke 1:36 describes her as “in her old age”, so she was certainly far senior to Mary. Yet instead of feeling in any way jealous or put out by what God was choosing to do through the younger woman, she delights to rejoice with her, and humbles herself with the question, “Why am I so favoured, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” As if to say, I don’t deserve this!

The fact that Mary is putting her in the shade – taking centre-stage in God’s great drama – is neither here nor there.

This poses a challenge: How good am I at delighting in the success or blessings of others? Somone outshines me, perhaps somebody far younger: do I feel stirrings of jealousy deep down inside? A well-known novelist once said, “Every time a friend succeeds, something in me dies”. Oh, you poor, cramped, bitter little man! (Or could that be me…?)

Fourth, the euphoria of that special day was not a permanent state.

As we read on in the Gospels we find that for both Elizabeth and Mary there would be tears aplenty ahead.

We aren’t told how long Elizabeth had to live; it seems unlikely that she would have survived long enough to see John launched on his strange career, with his camel-hair robe and weird diet and his habit of disappearing off into desert places (Matthew 3). But it seems unlikely that as he grew up he wouldn’t have exhibited signs of what may have seemed quite troubling eccentricity.

And as for Mary… What pain and frantic anxiety she must have felt that time when, as a 12-year-old boy, Jesus went missing in Jerusalem for three days (Luke 2:41-52). (One of our sons, when he was little, did a runner on us in a garden centre which may have lasted ten minutes, if that; it still brings me out in a sweat.)

Then that time when word was going round that Jesus had gone crazy, and Mary had to send other sons to fetch him home - only to hear him almost seem to disown them (Mark 4:20-34).

Not to mention the cross… “Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother…” (John 19:25). Just imagine that for a few seconds.

All a long, long way from that glorious encounter between Mary and Elizabeth that we started with.

Faith in Christ crucified and risen promises joys without limit and without end. But the experience of these two women makes very clear that there may be many tears along the way. May God help us to bear them with faith and glad endurance!

Dear Father in heaven, thank you for the beautiful encounter between Mary and Elizabeth on that memorable day. Thank you too for the times I have known highs in my spiritual life. Help me to remember them, to cherish them, and to build upon them – but also to know that, wonderful though they were, they are nothing compared with the eternal glories to come. Amen.

Thinking about dying?

To me, to live is Christ, to die is gain. Philippians 1:21 (NIV)

Alive, I’m Christ’s messenger; dead, I’m his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can’t lose. Philippians 1:21 (The Message)

There was a report in the paper recently that funerals are going out of fashion in Britain. It seems that more than 50% of people are opting for “direct cremation” (whatever that may mean), rather than more traditional ceremonies.

Two main reasons for this trend are suggested. First, expense: full-blown funerals and cremations are not cheap. And second, a general decline both in religious faith and also, presumably, in any sense of a need for a formal farewell for the person who has died.

Fair enough. As a minister, I have always felt uncomfortable when asked to conduct a funeral by, or for, people I don’t know. It’s hard to do so with any great warmth and - putting it bluntly – it can easily trigger the rather nasty thought, “If you’ve been happy to live without God, then be prepared to die without him”. Putting that a little more kindly: have the courage of your own unconvictions!

There are two problems with that. For one thing, it seems harsh and judgmental; after all, I don’t know for sure about that person, and who am I to judge anyway? And second, the words of a Christian funeral, spoken clearly and with conviction, are extremely powerful: am I therefore spurning an opportunity to present the gospel of Christ crucified and risen?

Whatever, there’s no getting away from the fact that matters of life and death are real and meaningful to most people - and that those of us who profess faith in Christ do indeed have something positive, challenging and comforting to say.

I personally have been doing a bit of thinking about it all recently – partly, perhaps, because of the grimness of the covid crisis, but also, I’m sure, because I have become increasingly conscious myself of getting old. It’s a bit sobering when you realise that your last birthday took you nearer to 80 than 70!

My wife and I chat about it, not sombrely, indeed sometimes jokingly, and of course against the background of a faith built and nurtured over many years. The verse I have quoted at the top, Philippians 1:21, has become a favourite for us; the Message translation is quite free, but I think it well reflects Paul’s great confidence: “Alive, I’m Christ’s messenger; dead, I’m his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can’t lose”. That changes everything!

If we ask ourselves the question “Am I ready to go?”, the honest answer of the Christian is likely to be that old stand-by “Yes, and no”.

Yes, in that we are, by faith, “in Christ”, to use a favourite expression of the New Testament: our sins are forgiven and his resurrection life has been gifted to us. We have become part of him. All is well.

But no, in that we may feel we still have a lot of living to do! – people to go on loving, work to go on doing, things to go on enjoying and learning about. Life is good! – at least for those of us who are privileged to be relatively free of the poverty, war, pain, sickness and hardship that blight the lives of so many millions. Even we have to tell ourselves firmly that, however good life may be for us, what we are to inherit after death is indescribably better.

Does the Bible offer us any guidance regarding funeral customs?

Not really. God’s Old Testament people were certainly unafraid to give vent to their grief, but beyond that there is little to satisfy our curiosity. One example is the burial of Abner, killed by David’s right hand man Joab but very publicly mourned by David (2 Samuel 3): “King David himself walked behind the bier. They buried Abner in Hebron, and the king wept aloud at Abner’s tomb…” He even sang a “lament” for him (verses 33-34).

The New Testament offers us just one “funeral” (that of Jesus, of course, doesn’t count!). In Acts 6-8 we read about the witness and martyrdom of Stephen, stoned to death by an angry crowd. In 6:2 we read very simply: “Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him”. No details at all.

That little verse sums up perfectly the twofold nature of any kind of Christian funeral. First, a profound hope of eternal life – those early believers would have been in no doubt where Stephen had gone! But second, a frank recognition of the great sadness which inevitably accompanies death, especially a cruelly premature one. No stiff upper lips, please!

Those of us privileged to conduct such services should plan and pray that both those strands might be clearly reflected.

Of course, what really matters is not so much services and ceremonies once a death has taken place, but the nature of the life that has gone before. As Christians we seek, of course, to live well – but should we not also strive, as earlier generations of Christians did, to die well?

And what does dying well mean? What else but dying in childlike faith, in solid hope, in glad obedience, and in firm allegiance to Christ who lived, died, and rose again? Loving Father, grant me grace so to die!

Father, thank you that your Son lived a perfect life, died a perfect death, and rose victorious from the grave. Thank you that that changes everything. Help me to live day by day in the light of this greatest of all truths, to be a light to all who know me, and to come to that day when I shall see Jesus as he is in glory. Amen.