Stoke Holy Cross

As I write, I’m looking ahead to this weekend, and like every year, remembering back to September 1999. It was the first time I went and visited Christoph and his parents in Germany, after I got to know him when he spent some time at our school in England. At that point my German was particularly bad, so I didn’t really understand what his Mum was saying to me that first evening, but I was fairly sure she was talking about watching something on the television. “Lassneit!” she kept saying, with increasing exasperation. “Lassneit! Lassneit! Lassneit of the Proms!”

Suddenly we were both speaking the same language again, and we settled down for the usual combination of old favourites, strange modern classical music, and all those famous songs that everyone really looks forward to.

The Bible is full of famous songs, in books like the Psalms, but some of the most amazing singing comes towards the end, in Revelation. While sometimes reading it can seem like engaging with a foreign language, or listening to some very strange and unfamiliar themes, in the end the bits of the book we remember are those famous words about what we have to look forward to.

It's not really surprising that in the Messiah, surely one of the best pieces of classical music ever written, the climax comes with one of Revelation’s amazing songs: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain.” I’m just putting it on again to listen as I type this bit. As they sing over and over “forever and ever”, the music going higher and higher, it’s as if my eyes and my heart lift with them, to look at Jesus, seated on the throne in heaven. And as I do, I agree with the choir that he is worthy of all power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.

What is so very striking of course, is why – why is Jesus worthy? – and there again, the song, and the Scriptures, are clear. It is because he is the Lamb who was slain, giving himself up for all of us. And this is for everyone: it’s not a choir just of Norfolk villagers, but a great multitude of tribes and tongues and peoples and nations.

That evening I spent in Germany all those years ago, finding something we had in common in spite of our differences, has stayed with me ever since. But you and I can look forward to something that is not just for an evening, or for once a year, but forever. One day we will be with Jesus, who is seated on the throne, forever. And ever. And ever. Amen…

Hello everyone

The summer months often feel very different, with people away on holiday, children off school, and lots of other things which can either keep us from home, or feel that there aren’t so many people around when we are here.

Feeling someone’s absence can be a powerful and difficult thing, as all those of you who have been bereaved will know only too well. Earlier this summer I was thinking again about the time Jesus himself went to the funeral of his friend Lazarus. Now there is a lot about this story which is remarkable including, of course, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, but one of the things that struck me was the sense of how much difference the absence of Jesus made. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

For Jesus’s friends during his earthly ministry, it is easy to understand them thinking this way. A lot of what Jesus does happens when he is visibly present. He wasn’t with Martha, and Lazarus, and their sister Mary, when they really needed him. It would have made all the difference in the world.

As I reflected on this story for the second time this summer, Martha’s words were playing over in my head again, and I realised something in a way I never had before: they’re not ones that we can say any more. Jesus promises that if we believe in him, we will never be on our own. It might raise a lot of questions for us that Jesus was there when difficult things happened, but what we can’t say is “If you had been there.”

Something you might like to do, which helps me sometimes, is to think through difficult times and situations, and see if we can picture Jesus in them. How did he look? What was he doing? What did he say? It helps remind me that the fact that Jesus wasn’t physically present doesn’t me that he wasn’t absolutely there with me, by his Spirit, then and always.

It is sad when someone is absent, and a shame (sometimes!) when we can’t be in lots of different places at once, but perhaps it’s a helpful reminder that Jesus is the one person of whom we can never say “If you had been here…”

Aaarrrrrrrr!

As I write, final preparations for Treasure Seekers Holiday Club are underway, hence the pirate greeting, and the somewhat unusual photo above. (I hate to disappoint, but this is for one month only – as much as I am enjoying the prospect of having hair for 3 days!)

As the name suggests, there is treasure to be found. I was very grateful to the person who first explained to me that that was what the cross on a treasure map meant, because I had always assumed that sign meant the treasure definitely wasn’t there, but apparently it is the opposite.

It is a confusing symbol isn’t it, the X? At the bottom of a card or note from a friend or family member, it’s like a kiss - it means that they are sending us their love as they think of us, wish us a happy birthday, or whatever it might be.

Naturally I also assumed that was what it meant when I was at school, and my work would come back to me from my teacher often covered with these kisses, normally lots of big red ones all down one side. I was a little disappointed to learn that when you are at school, it means you have got something wrong, rather than that your teacher loves you. The fact that for a couple of years my Dad was my maths teacher didn’t make this any easier for me.

Now that I knew this of course, I only got more confused with the treasure map. I had to learn that the cross is the place where the treasure is to be found. It’s not the last place to look, but the first.

It was the same with going to vote the first time. I was at risk of doing the same thing as Baldrick in Blackadder, and putting a great big X next to my least favourite candidate, until somebody explained that the cross was a sign that that person was the one I was choosing to trust with my vote. The cross also marked the place on a contract where I could sign to say that I agreed to what was proposed.

I think by this point it is fairly obvious what I am getting at. The cross of Christ is God’s amazing declaration of love for all of us; God says to each of us, “I love you.” At the same time, like a good teacher, the cross is honest about our mistakes and our mess, and does something about them. The cross points towards the great treasures of love, forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus, and shows us where they are to be found. And the cross also challenges us – it asks us to choose Jesus, and commit to following him.

Next month my pirate photo will be gone, and my middle-aged hair will have returned, but the invitation will still be there, for the children we have welcomed at holiday club, and for all of you. The treasure will still be waiting to be found.

Until next month, me hearties

Rob

If you haven’t given up watching the news yet, you might well have the feeling that things continue to get worse, rather than better. In June, as I write this, Iran has been attacked by Israel, and retaliated with numerous missile attacks, and any sign of the hostilities easing seems far away. The terrible situation in Gaza is ongoing, and where once America’s influence would have been a calming one, the White House has become… a bit unpredictable.

When I was the same age my teenagers are now, there seemed to be a bit more optimism. Maybe it was just the song, but somehow we were convinced that “things can only get better.” For my parents’ or grandparents’ generations, brought up with the experience of World War II, and the threat of the Cold War, I am sure things really were better for a long time.

Now, we’re not so sure, are we? Since Covid, then the cost of living crisis, the war in Ukraine and now the Middle East, with the fear about how far it might spread, things have combined to make it feel like the opposite. It raises lots of questions for me, not least as a parent, as Cathryn and I wonder what we would like our children to be reading on the internet, or how much we should talk about what is going on.

All of this can leave us feeling entirely despondent, and wondering whether there is any hope at all. But the good news of Jesus is that there is always hope, because Christian hope is rooted in something bigger than even the most significant global events of our lifetimes: it is rooted in God, and in eternity.

Christian hope gives us something to look forward to. It doesn’t necessarily mean that some of the immediate things tomorrow will be better than today, but it does mean, looking further forward, that in the end, everything really will be well. Jesus really will return for his people, and make everything new, and “there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

At the time our oldest son was born, the beginnings of what would become the global financial crisis meant that it already seemed like things might have stopped getting better. Any hope at all would have been quite surprising. But at exactly that time, as we prepared to welcome him into the world, I was reading a book called Surprised by Hope. It explained again how, for all of us who follow Jesus, hope may be surprising, but it is eternal, and it is true.

In the midst of such uncertainty in the world around us, may all of you be surprised again by God’s eternal hope.

I was recently reading about the last in the Mission Impossible film series, which has just been released in the various different ways these things happen now. It reminds me for the first time in ages of queuing for a film at the cinema in Felixstowe one school holiday, only to hear that they had run out of tickets and we had to come back tomorrow. That problem doesn’t really occur in the age of multiplexes and streaming services, but I did get a café trip as compensation from my very apologetic dad.

Amongst the various things impossible things connected to the films are the following:

1. It is impossible that Tom Cruise still looks like that, when he was already an actual adult when I was born, and I am told I already look quite a bit older than the picture above.
2. The internet tells me that the first film came out in 1996, when I was still at school, nearly 30 years ago, which seems an impossibly long time ago.
3. My children are all apparently old enough to watch most of them now, because the youngest is nearly 12, which is impossible because of course they are all so tiny.

We know these things aren’t impossible. They are all only, in some way, resisting the passage of time. But there is a lot more than that which is not impossible. It turns out, you see, that the missions aren’t impossible either. Whether it is hanging from the ceiling of an impregnable CIA strongroom, or crawling along the top of a TGV in the Channel Tunnel, Tom finds a way to do it.

The story of Jesus (where we always end up) is different. It’s not a story of discovering that things weren’t as hard as they seem, but one where the truly impossible was made possible. It’s one where the most certain and final of things, death itself, was made no longer the end, but the beginning. If you happen to be reading this on Sunday 8^th June, the Day of Pentecost, that’s the day we remember, among other things, that Jesus’s friend Peter said that it was impossible for death to keep hold of Jesus: all of the old certainties had been turned upside-down. Paul, another famous follower of Jesus, often used the simple phrase “But now” to describe the way that the Resurrection of Jesus changes everything. We might have thought that death was the end, but now, through Jesus, eternal life is offered to us.

I might want to deny the reality of aging (I’ll let Tom Cruise speak for himself) but in truth it has been a long time since I stood in that first cinema queue. But I take huge comfort from the fact that even though life after death was impossible, Jesus has found a way.

How was your Easter? I’m writing only just after a lovely weekend in our churches, and having spent good time with family, and hope that you might have enjoyed some of the same. Maybe you had roast lamb; perhaps there were Easter eggs, or even the odd hot cross bun?

Speaking of odd hot cross buns, I noticed this year that Marks and Spencer have pushed even the chocolate flavour ones to a whole new level. This one contains a dippy egg filling (it is apparently sweet and gooey chocolate rather than the sugary stuff inside those more famous eggs, presumably for legal reasons). It has a very yellow cross on the top, which looks a bit like it is made of marzipan, but probably isn’t. The bun itself is “luxuriously soft and rich”, partly thanks to the cocoa in it. Being M&S, we are assured that it is “not just a hot cross bun”. I can’t confirm this myself, because when I went in the Norwich shop on Easter Saturday looking for them, purely for article research purposes, I couldn’t find any.

My attention was grabbed by a few different phrases in the advert. First, without denying anyone their right to a little treat at Easter, I got to wondering about how much you can associate the words luxurious, soft, rich, sweet or gooey with the cross. You don’t have to know much about the crucifixion story to recognise it is much more the opposite: suffering rather than luxury; endurance rather than softness; poverty rather than riches; bitterness rather than sweetness; gore rather than goo. Now I don’t pretend those would be easy buns to sell, but I think they are words worth you just pausing over for a moment, and reflecting again on what Jesus did for you.

Second, I noticed not just the famous “not just a hot cross bun” phrase in the text, but also in the big slogan at the bottom: “this is not just food.” Putting aside the fact that it is obviously just food, I did end up reflecting on Jesus’s words about himself, and especially that he was “the bread of life.” Jesus said this as he was speaking about the miracle of the 5000, where he had provided bread enough for 5000 people (and fish besides). This bread, of course, was daily bread, to meet human needs after a long day following Jesus, but Jesus is explaining that he is the bread of life – eternal bread. He is not just food the way we think about it, whether that is something simple to keep us going, or a special treat which will end up digested the same way as everything else!

And finally, perhaps in a bid to inspire controversy as there somehow always seems to be with hot cross buns, there is the slogan: “Cross on top, magic in the middle.” You’ll know where I’m going by now (and thanks very much for still being with me) when I point out that the extraordinary thing about the cross, is that it is a victory. Everyone intended it to be a defeat, but on the cross Jesus won. And at the heart of the Easter story isn’t magic, but a miracle, and the amazing truth that Jesus was raised from the dead because it was impossible for the grave to keep hold of him.

Please don’t mistake me. Please eat whatever hot cross buns you like whenever you’d like to, and I hope you really enjoy them. But perhaps as you do, you will stop to think about the cross, and all that it means, and stop to thank Jesus, who really is so much more than just food.