Disempowered Friday

Today I've had a fresh reflection on Good Friday. For disabled people, one of the most painful experiences is that of being disempowered. No one can really understand the acute frustration of sudden or gradually increasing powerlessness, unless they've experienced it themselves. All at once or bit by bit your ability to do the simplest tasks is stripped away. You can't dress yourself. You can't turn on the light. You can't cook what you want. You can't get out of the house. The "can'ts" proliferate endlessly.

from "The Passion of the Christ"

I'm fortunate in that I have a wife and family - and friends - who enable me to do what I wish or have what I need. But not everyone is so blessed. In a strange way, having disability forced upon you, mitigates the pain, because you just have to lump it and make the most of it. You have no other option - except to wallow in the quicksands of self-pity. That way, as I've said before, lies madness.

Yet it struck me, as I was coming down in the lift this morning (it takes longer when it's this cold), that on that Passover preparation day, which we now call Good Friday, Jesus experienced the nadir of powerlessness. Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ showed in stark and shocking focus the extent of his powerlessness in the face the able-bodied empowered representatives of political, religious, philosophical and popular forces. Not only are his clothes stripped off, but also his skin is flayed off him.

And the crucial difference, of course, is that at every point he does have an option. He could at any point have said, "Not yours, but my will be done." He could have asserted his power. However his was an entirely voluntary powerlessness in order that death and evil should be allowed to do their worst with God. What they did was as bad as it can get, worse that the greatest film-maker or artist could ever depict.

And yet, as we know, today is not the end of the story. But it already holds a crumb of encouragement for the powerless. He has been there - and beyond. As the Bible puts it, "We don't have a High Priest who's unable to sympathise with our weakness but one who's been tested in every way like us except without failing." There's a modern song which has the line, "It was my sins which held him there / until it was accomplished". In fact, I think a stronger power than "my sins" held him to the cross that day, and that was His love.

Walking in Holy Week

Well, it's been quite a week. I've been really impressed by Pope Francis and by Justin Welby, who seem to me to share a humility and a simplicity which are refreshing. It was a shame about all the establishment paraphernalia of the Inauguration of the Archbishop's Ministry (as he chose to call it rather than "enthronement" - as the media still insist on saying), but at the heart of it was a straightforward man, aware of his own limitations, talking straightforward language. The text of his sermon is not easy to track down, but it is here. His sermon touched on many things, but was based around the account of Peter getting out of the boat on the Sea of Galilee. He said, "The fear of the disciples was reasonable. People do not walk on water, but this person did. For us to trust and follow Christ is reasonable if He is what the disciples end up saying He is; 'truly you are the Son of God'. Each of us now needs to heed His voice calling to us, and to get out of the boat and go to Him. Because even when we fail, we find peace and hope and become more fully human than we can imagine: failure forgiven, courage liberated, hope persevering, love abounding."

Coincidentally on Friday night when Pete and Jane were round for a FOF (Fellowship of Failure - see this blog FOFOF a fortnight ago), Jane (not mine) brought something to encourage us, while Jane (mine) produced an amazing chicken and mushroom vol-au-vent. I say coincidentally because Jane hadn't heard the new Archbishop, but has been reading John Ortberg's book, If you want to walk on water, you've got to get out of the boat - not the most encouraging of titles for us mere mortals! However Jane read to us from the chapter called "Learning to wait", which talks about the often quoted verses from Isaiah 40:
Why do you say, O Jacob,
    and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the Lord,
    and my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
    the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
    his understanding is unsearchable.
He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might he increases strength.
Even youths shall faint and be weary,
    and young men shall fall exhausted;
but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall soar with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.

He wrote that "we must learn to live (the last three lines) - soaring, running, walking - one line at a time.

"Sometimes you will mount up and soar on wings of eagles. This is a beautiful picture. Ornithologists say birds have three methods of flight. The first is flapping - keeping their wings in constant motion to counteract gravity. Hummingbirds can flap up to seventy times per second. Flapping keeps you up in the air, but it is a lot of work...
"A second flight method is gliding. Here the bird builds up enough speed, then coasts downward a while. It is much more graceful than flapping, but unfortunately it does not get the bird very far. Reality in the form of gravity sets in quickly. Gliding is nice, but it does not last.
"Then there is the third way - soaring. Only a few birds, like eagles, are capable of this. Eagles' wings are so strong that they are capable of catching rising currents of warm air... and without moving a feather can soar up to great heights. eagles have been clocked up to 80 m.p.h. without flapping at all. They just soar on invisible columns of air.
"Isaiah says that for those who wait on the Lord, times will come when they soar. You catch a gust of the spirit - Jesus said, 'The wind blows wherever it pleases.... So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.'
"Sometimes in your life you will be in an era of spiritual soaring.... Be very grateful. Do all you can to stay in the Spirit's power....
"But there is another line in Isaiah's description. Sometimes we are not soaring, but we are able to run and not grow weary. If this is where you are, your life isn't feeling effortless. You do not see a lot of miracles. You have to do some flapping. But with persistence and determination you know you are running the race.... Do not try to manufacture spiritual ecstasy. Do not compare yourself with someone who is soaring right now. Your time will come. Just keep running.
"Then there is a third condition that Isaiah describes. Sometimes we will not be soaring, and we cannot run - because of doubt or pain or fatigue or failure. In those times all we can do is walk and not faint. This is not water-walking. It is just plain walking. All we can do is say, 'God, I'll hang on. I don't seem too fruitful or productive, and I don't feel very triumphant. But I won't let go. I will obey you. I'll just keep walking.'"

And as we noticed, according to Isaiah, the strength to soar, and to run, and to walk, all has the same source: God himself. As Justin Welby put it, "failure forgiven, courage liberated, hope persevering, love abounding." Holy Week is not about soaring or even running. It's about faithfully trudging the dusty road to the Cross with Jesus. It seems to me that we have to walk that way to get to the other end. 

The miracle of life

I have a great friend, Peter, who has the same slow form of ALS/MND as me. In fact we met again last week at the hospice. He wrote to me yesterday about someone who'd died recently after the quick form of the disease. He said, "We are so lucky. I saw something in the paper last week by a teenager who died of cancer. He said, 'Life is suffering but every second is a miracle'. So true." 

Difficult to believe

A week ago today, it was warm and sunny. We went to an MNDA meeting at Katharine House Hospice, in Adderbury, north of Oxford. It's a peaceful place, set on the edge of the town. While there, we wandered down to the simple chapel. Jane showed me a card there. It read:
"I believe in the sun even when it is not shining.
I believe in love even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God even when he's silent.

Written on a wall in Cologne, by a Jewish prisoner of war". Somewhere I read it was found scrawled on a cellar wall where Jews had hidden in World War 2. Anyway, I liked it. Today it's overcast and freezing, difficult to believe the crocuses were fully open in the sun a week ago! But they were!

A new website was launched on Sunday, by an American hospice chaplain named Alice Tremaine. It's called "Prayers for Health, Spiritual resources for health and wellness". It's both beautiful, and positive, and helpful - and somewhere there's a link to this blog. I would recommend it anyway!

FOFOF

FOFOF - not a misprint for BOGOF. It's an innovation we started on Friday with our friends, Pete and Jane. It stands for... No, first let me explain. We were having a meal together in the evening, and relaxing with Jane's (not my Jane) rather excellent cake and coffee. I'd said a bit about my sermon of the week before - they don't attend the same church as us. I'd been preaching about God the restorer and used the illustration of kintsukuroi. As someone said to me today, a picture speaks a thousand words. And this one did.

The point was fairly straightforward. It's like what God can do with the broken bits of our lives - if we'll let him. I found this rather apt quote from the website of the Japanese kintsukuroi artist, Hirasawa Hakusui, "Please feel richness and the tender-heartedness of the mind that oneself has in repairing the container by all means." I had pointed out that it wasn't talking about instant miracle cures but about painstaking bit-by-bit life-long restoration. The sad thing is that often we don't recognise the beauty in the finished product.

Anyway, going back to Friday (and kintsukuroi is sort of connected), a few weeks back we had determined to pray more regularly for other people. And so we compared notes - the conclusion of which, in brief, was that we all totally failed. Hence the start of FOFOF - the Fellowship of Failure (on Fridays): FOF for short. We reckoned it might not be hopeless, remembering that Jesus said something like, "I've not come for the successes, but for the failures in life. I've not come to mend the undamaged but the shattered, " and he seemed to be more at home with the drop-outs than with the people who'd made it. 

So, if you're down this way on a Friday, and feel you might fit might the description (and hungry), you're welcome to come to FOF - just give us a call (01235 760094)! And if you're not down this way, it's still true: Jesus loves the failures.