- Steve Richards
- Jun 5, 2020
While scientists seek to understand the COVID-19 virus; how to contain its spread; how it can be weakened through vaccination and ultimately eradicated, the government is having to recognise the unenviable responsibility that policy decisions belong to it alone. It seems that the mantra, ‘We will be guided by the science’, will not permit the politicians to pass the buck.
Recent revelations that both medical and political advisers have, in effect, breached the guidelines of lockdown, will diminish confidence in the leadership of our nation. Not surprisingly then, many people are looking for a higher authority.
Online church services and other virtual faith-based events are reporting high attendance. I wonder how many people, who are now looking into matters of faith, already have formed some view of God in the past but now are dipping their toe in the water once again.
The message, which the Christian Church (be it online or otherwise) has the privilege and responsibility to share, is focused on the person of Jesus. To speak simply of ‘God’ is too ambiguous and can mean many things to many people. Jesus calls us to himself so that we may know the true God – the Father.
Early on in his gospel account, John makes a profound statement, which in simple terms says that no one has ever seen God; but Jesus, being in a unique relationship with him, has made God known. Elsewhere, the same Bible writer tells us, ‘No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also’.
These are uncompromising statements which have no shades of grey. If we can accept them we will also want to hear these words from the mouth of Jesus; they are both a gracious invitation and a command at one and the same time. ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.’ Perhaps, like many others, you have a vague hope in God. Jesus is concerned; he doesn’t want us to be tossed around and bruised, like a leaf on the waves of religiosity. Instead, he wants to bring us to a more definite, more firm place. ‘Trust also in me’ he says. It’s almost as if he were saying, ‘Let go of your lightweight notions of God and take me as your soul’s anchor. It is I who bring you to God.’
When we trust in Jesus, we can discover for ourselves that, unlike our national leaders, Jesus’ authority is never deficient. This being so, nothing can stop him bringing us to God and to the blessings outlined in the penultimate chapter of the Bible where it says: ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’
- Steve Richards
- May 1, 2020
There have been a series of impressive light projections onto the exterior of Lichfield Cathedral. One of these featured the word HOPE with the giant letters being rainbow coloured. More modest versions have been displayed in front windows of homes around the country where children have produced rainbow pictures; some have included the word HOPE.
I can’t help wondering what is meant by hope in this context. Is it simply another way of saying ‘stay positive’? Perhaps for some it is the earnest desire (hope) that governments will find a way to get things back to ‘normal’, or that scientists will speedily provide us with a safe vaccine with sufficient availability.
For Christians, ‘hope’ is more than staying positive. Following the resurrection of Jesus Christ, ‘hope’ is a constant theme in New Testament teaching and is frequently linked with faith and love. Christianity’s use of the word ‘hope’ means waiting for a substantive and assured outcome. It has little to do with the less than definite way we might say something like, ‘I hope I haven’t missed the bus.’ Or ‘I hope it will be sunny next Saturday for our Jill’s wedding!’ No, Christian hope may be compared with a mighty anchor that a ship lowers overboard so that the vessel may hold firm even in a storm.
So, what is this anchor of hope that the early followers of Jesus were keen for each of us to grasp, even us in our COVID-19 world? Just this: that our biggest enemy, death, no longer has the last word; a resurrection from the dead has occurred. This is what Christians celebrated on Easter Day, with many of them attending online services.
Jesus gives his followers the hope that holds both assurance and confidence that they, like himself, will rise from the dead to join him as his brothers and sisters in his Father’s family estate. This ‘estate’ is described in the New Testament as the ‘new heavens and new earth’.’
In these days, when the structures of life are shown to be fragile and our own mortality brought into sharper focus, I am emboldened to respectfully ask this question. Where are you casting your anchor of hope? To quote an old hymn, ‘Will your anchor hold in the…’ storm of COVID-19?
In the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus say these loving and compassionate words, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.’ Perhaps, like many others, you have a vague hope in God. Jesus is concerned; he wants to make that more definite, more certain. ‘Trust also in me’ he says. It’s almost as if he were saying, ‘Let go of your lightweight and rusting anchor and take me as your soul’s anchor; I’m a more sure hope.’
The light projections at Lichfield Cathedral have come to a close. Hope itself, by its very nature, is a transitional experience, no longer needed once it has been realised. The fulfilment of Christian hope is described in the penultimate chapter of the Bible where we are told, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’
- Steve Richards
- Apr 5, 2020
I would have been about 9 or 10 years old at the time. We were on a visit to the Clent Hills. My parents were there, my best mate Paul and his mom Peggy. Stretched out before us was a steepish grass slope heading down to a few buildings, amongst which was a shack selling cups of tea.
We boys decided to have a gambolling race down the hill. A few tumbles into the race and my head squelched into something soft and warm. Dog mess! I stood up confused by all of the flies buzzing around my head and face, being conscious of the awful smell. Peggy gave in to laughter – she waved a handkerchief around my head to discourage the flies, but Paul dissolved into tears. We went down to the tea shack where my mother persuaded the owner to sell us a bar of her own Knights Castile soap and, with my head under a nearby, freestanding water tap, Mum proceeded with her bare hands to wash my hair, and a thorough job she did too. I don’t recall ever thanking her for getting her hands filthy for me.
We are hearing a lot about having clean hands in the light of the Coronavirus. In the Bible, God uses the idea of a person having clean hands, or not, as a picture of their inner, moral state before him. An Old Testament verse reads, ‘who may ascend the mountain of the Lord...?’, i.e. who may safely come into the presence of God? The answer given is, ‘He who has clean hands...’, meaning a person who has a clean heart, having had it purified or cleansed.
We are of course familiar with this sort of language. Someone who gets another to do his dirty work is said to want to keep his hands clean. Someone else, wanting to justify themselves, will say that, ‘My hands are clean in this matter.’ Another may say, ‘I wash my hands of it’, meaning I now choose to disassociate and distance myself from this or that.
When Jesus was condemned to death on that first Good Friday, Pontius Pilate was the Roman governor who might have stopped the execution. He took water and washed his hands in front of the crowd. ‘I am innocent of this man's blood,’ he said. ‘It is your responsibility!’
As Jesus went to the cross of crucifixion to be killed, he did have clean hands. Unlike all other people, he could have ‘ascended to the mountain of the Lord’ but instead he elected to ascend a hill outside Jerusalem, called Calvary, and be killed. What was going on?
When Jesus submitted himself to the nails which pinned him to the cross, it was as if he was plunging his clean hands into the mess and filth which is really ours, and which was keeping us at arms length from God.
The New Testament describes how the death of Jesus, in effect, took the mess from the hands of people like you and me, so soiling his own hands to make others clean. An unfamiliar concept maybe but many people have experienced for themselves the reality of the new, clean life that springs from it.
As far as I can recall, when I approached that cold water tap at Clent, I was submissive to my mother’s instructions, believing that she would sort things out and get me clean. The Christian gospel delights to tell that when we submit the part of us, which we call the ‘real me’, to Jesus, and are willing to follow his lead, we will be cleansed; no longer messy but a people ready to experience a father-child relationship with the one true God.
The term ‘Good Friday’ is indeed appropriate.