Remembering the fig tree

One of the interesting bits about remembering the Passion Octave this year with many different groups has been the role of the fig tree. I wonder if you remember it?

During his comings and going around Jerusalem in Holy Week, Jesus is remembered for cursing the fig tree. In the first place he sees a fig tree that has no figs on it. He's a bit cross and curses it. Sure enough when they pass it the next day the disicples notice the fig tree has died.

Various people who write about written down Bibles comment on this small but perverse incident as the only ocassion Jesus is recorded as cursing nature. So what do you make of it?

In the various rememberings of the Passion Octave I've done this year a number of different patterns emerged. In the first example there was a group who remembered curing of the fig tree three times in Holy Week, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. This proved to be a real laugh: Oh no, not the fig tree again! Another group didn't have the fig tree in at all - the memorable fig tree had become the forgotten fig tree.

This week Jane drew my attention on her blog of Laughter and Liturgy (that's listed on the side of my blog page) to a parable of trees in recorded in Judges chapter 9 in the written down bible. This parables features a number of trees the second of which is the fig tree.

It reads: 'Then the trees said to the fig-tree 'You come and be our king'. But the fig-tree answered 'In order to govern you, I would have to stop producing my good sweet fruit'.' [Judges 9:10-11].

So I wonder if the link is kingship. Holy Week is a different kind of king week. From Palms to Cross and early morning Garden, Jesus is demonstrating ways of contradicting the kingship ideas of his day, and ours. In cursing the fig tree is he saying something about his own refusal to be co-opted into the schemes and plans of human beings. There's no fruit on the fig tree and there's no chance Jesus is going to agree to be king either. Yet at the same time, he goes beyond the kingship ideas of those around him and produces fruit for those willing to to see beyond the bare branches of the fig tree. It is the kind of image that contains the sort of paradox Jesus seems to have been good at: not what we are expecting, challenging our expectations and interpretations.

As we approach the Feast of Christ the King again this year (this Sunday) may be a bit of remembering of Christ the King and Fig-Tree Curser would be in order.

Psalm language

Although I have used the psalms for a great part of my life they are not the first thing I usually turn to in worship. Mostly because I often struggle to connect with the language. Images of God are limited in most translations: it's all Lord, Lord, and other images seem ancient and far away.

Psalm 127 is part of the lectionary today. It's short and whilst the translation I'm readying has Lord, Lord it's also about building and protecting cities. The second part has the image of children being like 'the arrows in a soldier's hand'. In Helmand today arrows are not much prized I suspect. How to pray with women and men serving out there when we all yearn for peace and wonder at the right action to take to get there? So my rewrite of Pslam 127 in a week that saw deaths of British service personnel pass that of any year since the Falklands. Maybe these words will not sit comfortably with us and maybe that's the thing about Pslams. Too much emphasis on the comfy ones and not enough attention to the uncomfy ones.

Revised Psalm 127

If God does not build the peace
the work of the peacemakers in useless;
if the Holy One does not protect the city
then what hope for those who stand guard.
Your work is useless;
the early mornings and late nights wasted.
Whilst your are sleeping
God nourishes you with love.

We consider children to be God’s gift:
a real blessing.
The offspring a young parent has
are like ammunition to a soldier.
A soldier feels satisfied with a full clip;
such a one feels ready
when face to face with the enemy
or surveying the ground for an IED.

copyright Janet Lees: 08.11.2009

Holy Haddock

Scientific name: Melanogrammus aeglefinus
Market name: Haddock
Common names: Haddock, Finnan Haddie

I wonder if anyone has a spare Haddock about their person they would lend me for a while? These excellent looking Haddock are just the kind of thing I'm looking for. And I know you'll wonder why.

In our house the phrase 'slap me round the face with a wet haddock' is one of those things we say when we want someone to wake us up or surprise us in some small way. It maybe due to my fish selling ancestors that this phrase has entered our reperoire - then again perhaps not.

I need a wet Haddock to wake up a group of people who have written a very irritating book. The book 'Evangelism in a Spiritual Age: communicating faith in a changing culture' is by Stephen Croft and friends and published by Church House Publishing for the Anglican Church (2005). And why do I want to slap Stephen and his mates round the face with a wet Haddock. 'Cos they need to wake up -that's why.

The book pretends to be a new way of thinking about evangelism. Oh who will deliver us from this dratted 'e' word? A bunch of well meaning 'e' folk have got together and written a well meaning book about 'e' (not the controlled substance that concerned Professor Nutt this week) in a spiritual age - that's now they reckon.

It begins with Yvonne Richmond (first Haddock for her) telling us how she gave up her more agressive form of 'e' for a gentler listening sort of 'e' and whoa how surprised was she to find that she developed relationships with people. If that was not enough we then get a long commentary on a research project (good research project, maybe a nice plate of Haddock and chips for the researcher) in which we find out that ordinary people want to ask six big questions (more haddock please). I'll leave you to guess which ones.

Then Mark Ireland (two Haddock for him, one on each cheek - he'd doubtless turn the other one anyway) tells us how to do this sort of gentle 'e' in ordinary churches at funerals and at Christmas and such like. What the Haddock does he think we've been doing all this time (I do not believe it)? 'Perhaps we need to stop assuming that those who don't go to church have no faith' is smuggly says on page 77. For goodness sake, you do not even deserve all this Haddock I'm throwing at you. What sort of ministry have you people been practising all this time. And published by the Anglican Church. Well quite frankly you deserve everyone to leave (my ancestors left in 1662 by the way).

So why read the book at all. All I can say in my defense is I was asked to for a CWM conference I am preparing to take part in during January 2010. The book seems to think there is some sort of fringe or edge to the church that people inhabit vaguely or fall off. I can't say I see it that way. During a CWM event in 1994 I had the vision of a church with no inside or outside. I refered to it at my ordination, when I got a roll of toilet paper and threw it down the aisle in a long stream and then ripped it up (I think that was after I held up my bra). Mr Ireland says the new Anglican liturgies 'intentionally allow latitude' (page 83). Unfortunately not quite as much latitude as that.

So for now I'm staying out - where ever that is. If the book did anything positive for me it reminded me to keep moving. Once the well meaning 'e' folk start to catch up with you and begin to espouse something that sounds warm and 'bunny cuddly' as a friend of mine put it, it's time to be on your way, looking for the cutting edge of the gospel out there, everywhere, anywhere. Haddock anyone?

The dream comes alive

Last week Delory Brown, better known to Vision4life contacts as Gaius from Welcome to Corinth, starred as Martin Luther King Jnr at the Lawrence Bately Theatre in Huddersfield. As part of Black History Month, this was also a local celebration of talent. The programme began with a young rap poet, Samuel Wyatt, who has won prizes for his poems. He was followed by a local choir, the True Colours Gospel Choir who sang some of the songs from the civil rights era.

The Dream Comes Alive was a fictional interview between MLK and Moira Stewart, played by Huddersfield actress Lindsay Pascall, and accompanied by archive footage of King.

Brown had obviously done a lot of work to prepare for this role, which he did superbly. The cellar theatre is a small space and this was really the only drawback of the whole evening. Brown could easily have filled a bigger space and indeed it was a shame that he did not have the opportunity to do so. Speaking for alomost the entire time, with only questions interpolated by Pascall in her role as the well known newsreader, King/Brown began be recalling his early life and inspiration. There were many young people in the audience and everyone was hooked by his portrayal of the man who for some many epitomises the Black struggle. He then reviewed the main tennents of non violent resistance and ended with a glimpse into the future: what would MLK have made of the war in Afganistan?

Brown himself has an imposing physical presence and when he stood to give the final 'I have a dream' speech it was clear that he could have benefited from a bigger space in which to perform. The speech itself is well know and it was wonderful to hear the sentences rolling across the audience, including as it does so much 'Remembered Bible'. All together this was an excellent evening and if your local community decides to remember Black history month this way then look no further than Delroy Brown to fill the role. Failing that opporunity you can still catch his portrayal of Gaius on the Vision4life website: http://www.vision4life.org.uk/ (and go to the download DVD section).