December 20th 2009

Fr. Tim Jones

Text as published in the York Press newspaper:

Luke 1 v 39-51

People enjoy watching musicals. Sound of Music, South Pacific, Oliver, Guys and Dolls, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Oklahoma – all of them tell a story of people struggling to get something about the world the way it should be. One of the funny things about watching the musicals is the improbability of people – sometimes large groups of people: soldiers, chimney sweeps, lumberjacks – suddenly bursting into song and dance, as a constant reaction to a new circumstance or twist in the plot!

Lest anyone sneer too much at the genre of the musical, one can't help but notice that Luke’s gospel account of the birth of Jesus Christ seems uncomfortably like the script for a musical. People – or heavenly hosts – keep bursting into song at the mention of Jesus!

These Biblical songs have become an integral part of Christian worship: the Gloria, the Nunc Dimittis, the Benedictus, and, from today's gospel, the Magnificat - “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.”

This last Sunday of Advent, the last Sunday preparing for the coming of the Christ child, sees our focus shifting to Mary, the mother of Christ. In our reading today from Luke’s gospel, Mary, carrying the Christ child, travels for a week to visit her elderly relative Elizabeth, who, to her husband Zechariah's amazement, is pregnant. Elizabeth recognizes Mary’s baby as the Lord, and Elizabeth's unborn baby starts dancing inside her! The baby’s dance is almost like the introduction to Mary’s song.

The Magnificat is a remarkable song. It expresses not just her own sentiment of submission to God, but the aspiration of all Israel. It is at the heart of Christian worship and praise to this very day, because it captures the excitement and the joy that in Christ, the expectations and values of this unjust world are turned on their heads.

The recurrent theme of Mary's song is the faithful love of God towards his children, no matter how lowly, despised or lacking they may be. The phrases of her song are drawn almost entirely from the grateful pleading of the forlorn in Old Testament prophetic literature. It is a song which has done a huge amount to reinforce the Christian commitment to the poor and needy of society in every age. Advent is the time of preparing for the birth of Christ, and in Mary's song we are reminded every year and every evening to keep the needs of the poor as close to our hearts as can be, because the poor and forlorn are as close as can be to the heart of God.

All of that is a nice enough sentiment. But keeping the poor ‘close to our hearts’ can be a costly business. Many of us, for much of the time, shrink from this Christian calling, because to accept Mary's call is leave our comfort zone way behind. The life of the poor is not an idyllic life of simplicity in modern Britain. It is a constant struggle, a constant battle, a constant minefield of competing opportunities, competing responsibilities, obligations and requirements, a constant effort to achieve the impossible. For many at the bottom of our social ladder, lawful, honest life can sometimes seem to be an apparent impossibility.

What advice should one give, for example, to an ex prisoner who was released in mid-November with a release grant of less than £50 and a crisis loan, also of less than £50, who applies immediately for benefits but is, with less than a week to go before Christmas, still to receive any financial support? This is just the situation that presents itself at the vicarage door. What would you advise? One might tell them to see their social worker, but they are on a waiting list for a social worker. Tell them to see their probation officer, perhaps, but the probation officer can only enquire of the benefits agency, and be told that benefits will eventually be forthcoming. One might tell them to get a job, but it is at the very best of times extremely difficult for an ex prisoner to find work, and these are not the best of times for anyone trying to find a job.

One might wish that they could be supported and cared for by their family, but many people's family life is altogether dysfunctional, and may be part of the story of how they came to be in prison in the first place. One might give them some money oneself, but when week after week after week goes by, and benefits still do not arrive, the hard reality is that a vicar's salary is not designed to meet the needs of everyone – or indeed anyone – whom the benefits agency has failed. What else might one advise? They cannot take out a loan, except from the kind of loan shark – and there are enough of them around – whose repayment schedule is so harsh that it constitutes indentured slavery to the criminal underworld. They could beg. But how many of us, good Christian people that we are, give constantly and generously to ex prisoners waiting for benefits? And the likelihood is that, found begging, they will quickly be in trouble with the police, and therefore in breach of their parole.

They could perhaps get cereal and toast every morning from a local charity. Then could perhaps apply, and see if they are eligible for some limited help from the Salvation Army or other such body. But in the meantime, having had only £100 in six weeks, what would you do, every legal avenue having been exhausted?

My advice in these circumstances, when people have been let down so very badly by the rest of society, is that they should not hurt anybody, and cope as best they can. The strong temptation is to burgle or rob people – family, friends, neighbours, strangers. Others are tempted towards prostitution, a nightmare world of degradation and abuse for all concerned. Others are tempted towards suicide.

Instead, I would rather that they shoplift. My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.

I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither. I would ask that they do not steal from small family businesses, but from large national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices. I would ask them not to take any more than they need, for any longer than they need. And I would offer this advice with a heavy heart, wishing that our society recognized that bureaucratic ineptitude and systemic delay constitutes a dreadful invitation and incentive to crime for people struggling to cope at the very bottom of our social order.

What then, of the eighth commandment? “Thou shalt not steal.” Is this advice to usurp the authority of Almighty God?

No. Not the God who is born of Mary, Mary whose soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. For in Mary's song of praise is the explicit recognition that the poor are extremely close to the heart of God. The church, the community of faith, the community of people who keep the song of Mary alive, have long recognized that it is permissible for those who are in desperate situations to take food that they might not starve. For ours is a God, Mary tells us, who has “lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” [Luke chapter 1 verses 52&53]. The mother of Christ reminds us what Jesus shows us: that God's love for the poor and despised – and who in our society is despised more than a newly released prisoner? - outweighs the property rights of the rich.

Let my words not be misrepresented as a simplistic call for people to shoplift. The observation that shoplifting is the best option that some people are left with is a grim indictment of who we are. Rather, this is a call for our society no longer to treat its most vulnerable people with indifference and contempt. When people are released from prison, or find themselves suddenly without work or family support, then to leave them for weeks and weeks with inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly. We create a situation which leaves some people little option but crime.

People of God at St. Lawrence’s, Advent is at its height. Prepare for the coming of Christ, for Christmas is almost upon us. But don't let your preparations be limited to tinsel and turkey, crackers, fairy lights and chocolates. Prepare for Christ by singing his mother's song, and taking her words to heart. Don't just sing about lifting up the lowly: help with the lifting!

And when we, as a society, are found time and time again to fail lift those at the very bottom, then for the love of God, a God born in a stable of all places, let us not punish them for trying to survive as best they can.

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January 24th 2010

Fr. Tim Jones

Nehemiah 8 v 1-10

Our Old Testament lesson today from the Book of Nehemiah tells of a pivotal event in the history of our faith. It is an event which almost never features in children’s Bible story books, and so we Christians hardly even know of it. The event, some four hundred years before the birth of Christ, was the presentation of the Law of Moses to the people of Israel by Ezra the scribe. He assembles them together, all who can understand, and reads to them the Law, lost for generations, and the Levites explain the law, helping the people to understand. The people begin to weep, as they realize how far short they have fallen from the standards laid down by Moses. But Ezra tells the people not to weep but to rejoice, because in God they have all that need.

Law is a good thing. We often forget that, as Christians. We forget because we emphasize the truth that the Law, on its own, cannot effect our salvation. What the Law does most effectively is to clarify our need of salvation, which comes by means of God’s grace. Salvation is not earned by obedience, but is given freely in love.

But Law has another important function. It allows us to live together, holding each other accountable, not simply according to the whims of whoever holds the most power, but, ideally, according to principles. In the provision of the ancient Law for the people of Israel, we see an early exploration of the principles of our shared endeavour: life, together. There may be many differences in the power, wealth or station of any human society, but under the Law we are all, simply, children of God. Ezra’s proclamation was a fresh start to that process, a process which we still struggle to bring to completion. Our rule of Law remains imperfect, but it is, in principle, a deeply good thing.

In the late 1970s I met Rudolf Hess. Rudolf Hess had been Adolf Hitler's deputy, but in 1946 he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Actually, I exaggerate: our eyes met, but he was in a hurry, having just tried to end his life (by eating cigarettes I later heard). I was in the entrance lobby of the British Military Hospital, West Berlin, a child buying a jammy doughnut, when suddenly the lobby was filled with uniforms of all kinds. An elderly man with a skim of white hair was ushered in, and saw me for a moment before being hastened away.

Poor Rudolf Hess. He remained Prisoner Seven at Spandau prison until his death aged 93 in 1987.

Hess was convicted and sentenced in the first trial for alleged major war criminals in 1946. There were four indictments for those accused: conspiring to accomplish a crime against peace; planning and waging a war of aggression; war crimes; and crimes against humanity.

More than 50 million people had just lost their lives, and the victors had seriously considered simply executing all those thousands of Germans who had been responsible for planning or waging the war and its attendant atrocities. But, as the war began to draw to a close, there dawned the recognition that ‘victors' justice’ was not true justice.

The Second World War was neither just a huge failure of diplomacy nor the inevitable consequence of modern warfare. It was a crime, comprised of a multitude of crimes, actual criminal acts committed by actual people. The good and honourable method of addressing crimes is by means of a criminal trial.

The Nuremberg Trials were a triumph of the Second World War, for two reasons at least. First, they began to establish the principles by which the nations of the world might, with honesty and justice, deal with the crimes which leaders of nations are alleged to commit. The principles of Law were now starting, effectively, to be shared among the nations of the world. Second, they were real trials, not just show trials. Evidence and arguments were presented and weighed. Of the twenty two original defendants, the most significant figures of Nazi Germany and its war machine, three were acquitted of all charges against them!

Hess was indicted on all four counts, but was found guilty only on two counts. He was acquitted of war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Having flown to Scotland in 1941 prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, in a bizarre unofficial effort to broker peace, he was felt not to have been party to many of the crimes for which the Nazi regime is most notorious.

But Hess went to prison for life because he had helped to conceive, plan and organize for the invasion of Poland. Poland had posed no real threat to Germany in 1939. The invasion was a war of aggression, the cause of appalling suffering, resulting in the death of a vast number of people. It was a crime: the planning of a crime against peace and the waging of a war for which there was no just cause.

Hess was still serving his sentence for that crime when we glimpsed each other some four decades later. Many of his victims were still suffering too.

It is a horrible thing that sometimes war is necessary, with all the suffering and temptations to evil it brings. Warriors, and their families, are with very few exceptions glad when it is all over and they can come home.

No nation should go to war without just cause. It is not enough for a war simply to be perceived to be in the national interest; those who initiate war always believe it to be in their interest at the time. Christian theology concerning war developed as a means to help leaders make good moral choices, and continues to prove extraordinarily helpful today, irrespective of religious belief. A nation may wage war in defence against an aggressor, if the aggression is certain to have serious and lasting effects, and if resort to arms will not cause suffering greater than the original aggression. All other appropriate means to resolve the potential conflict must be exhausted first.

Today, international legitimacy for war still turns to these central principles. So much of the justification for the recent Iraq War centred on the horrific danger presented by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and the utter necessity of striking against that danger. Allegations have been made that Tony Blair, then Prime Minister, was either well aware that there was little evidence for any such danger, or was recklessly blind to the lack of evidence.

Those allegations are so grave, so terrible, that I hope and pray that they have not been made lightly or for cheap political purposes. We can argue about how many thousands died, but we know that at least a hundred thousand have died, perhaps even half a million.

The International Criminal Court, seated in the Hague, is today the direct descendant of those Nuremberg trials. For whatever reason, it currently has no jurisdiction concerning the crime of aggression, of starting a war without a just, proper cause. That is a shame, because, as demonstrated in 1946, the proper place to consider whether a war was started without just cause or legitimacy is in a court. The Chilcot Inquiry into Britain's role in the decision to invade Iraq is emphatically not a trial. It may do much to help us understand, but on its own it does little to effect justice.

Evidence and argument should be presented and weighed - objectively, irrespective of the wealth or political stature of the accused, and not by the mob rule of media and public opinion, to whom the findings of any public inquiry are principally offered. The innocent should be acquitted, and the guilty treated fairly and without vindictiveness or malice, and that can only be done by process of Law. Such is the mark of a good society.

There is so much discussion about the legality or otherwise of the Iraq war. If the Iraq War was not legal, then it was a crime, crying out to heaven for justice. The children of God need to be able to rejoice, not grieve, in the principle of law given shape in the proclamation of Ezra in Jerusalem and brought towards international fruition in 1946.

The presentation of the Law to the people of Israel by Nehemiah and Ezra, and the subsequent celebration of the Law as sacred and good, is one of the first major steps towards our own theoretical delight in our mutual ordered life together. The Nuremberg trials are another such major step. It would be a shame to retreat from that achievement.

It is relatively easy to feel sorry for Rudolf Hess. He spent a long time in prison, alone, probably unwell in mind and spirit. I don't suppose he got to see many children, even for a moment, in the second half of his life, and that is sad. Nonetheless, starting a war without just cause is an extremely bad thing to do.

 

 

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February 2nd 2010

 Mr. Clive Jackson

I spent the early years of my life living in the East Riding of Yorkshire at the village of Patrington. A place with arguably the finest parish church in England. It is where that part of Yorkshire narrows down to form Spurn Point. A thin spit of sand with a lighthouse at the point. During the Second World War the point was heavily defended and the light was only used on specific orders from the War Office.

Later I attended secondary school at Withernsea a little further up the coast it too had a lighthouse quite close to school, and the school magazine was called “The Pharos” the name given to the ancient one at Alexandria on the Nile delta.

Later

I taught at Bridlington and could see the Flambrough light flashing across the bay from my bedroom window.

Now,

I understand that these lights are superseded by the seafarers equivalent of SATNAV.

In their day lighthouses were very important to mariners, helping them to follow a safe course often through dangerous waters. Lights which showed the way on the journey.

You and I are on a journey – the journey of life – and today we celebrate and remember how two young people from Nazareth, Mary and Joseph together with their baby, made the journey up to Jerusalem for her purification.

It must have been awe inspiring for those two with their precious bundle –the baby Jesus, to go into the huge Temple constructed by that great builder Herod on the site of Solomon’s Temple.

But that was not all. To their surprise two aged people Simeon and Anna came up to them. Simeon was excited, showing his joy at seeing the baby Jesus and expressed this joy in the words we know as The Nunc dimittis because these are the opening words of the latin form of this canticle. Simeon is satisfied that he has seen the saviour of the word, the baby Jesus. He saw in him, and the man who he would become, a light, a guide, an example for every member of the human race. Like those lighthouses at Spurn Point, Withernsea, Flamborough and other places on our coast. What is the light which Jesus gives to help us steer a safe course through the journey of life?

In his life, spent mostly in northern Galilee Our Lord was able to show by example and teaching the way forward that God would have us follow. Namely to love God and lead lives of dedicated self sacrifice and love for our fellow humans. This is that light of which Simeon spoke.

All this took place forty days after Jesus was born in Bethlehem. They were required by the (Levitical) Law to go up to the Temple for her Purification taking with them a pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons as Luke tells in the gospel for today.

The words of Simeon were prophetic looking forward to the life and ministry of Jesus and to the sorrow and anxiety Mary herself wound suffer. May be looking to the time when she would be close to her son as he hung on the cross.

So Candlemas is a sort of turning point for the Holy Family. Having experienced these things, Mary the Theotokos, the God bearer as the Orthodox call her, together with Joseph and Jesus go back down to Nazareth and a life of cooking, cleaning, woodwork. All the things which make up ordinary life.

Meanwhile we of the church – Christ’s body on earth – move our gaze away from the distant birthplace in Bethlehem to his ministry in Galilee and to the events of Holy Week and the triumph of Easter. Taking with us the message of Candlemas that He is the light of the world What a task to try and spread that Kingdom of Goodness and love in our world of 2010. But spread it we must in every aspect of life in our church, in our realations with other Christian bodies and our relations with each other.

In short to behave like those lighthouses, and by word and example, show that way of self giving love which Jesus brought.

In the words of Alcuin of York.

Eternal light shine in our hearts

Eternal goodness deliver us from evil

Eternal power be our support

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February 7th 2010

 

The Rev'd Maggy Ellison

Three images of God

2nd Sunday before Lent

Genesis 2:4b-9, 15-25, Revelation 4, Luke 8:22-25

No sooner is Christmas and New Year over, that advertisements for exotic holidays appear in the papers and on TV – pictures of remote islands with white sand beaches, clear blue waters, blue skies, palm trees - often with a hammock strung between them awaiting your arrival.

Well – wouldn’t it be nice to go there…especially when it’s cold and miserable here - but I shall have to dream on.

The pictures are often of the Maldives or the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.

In the Maldives there a small island like I’ve just described called Paradise Island.

In the dictionary the word Paradise refers to a place in which existence is positive, harmonious and timeless, where there is only peace, prosperity, and happiness.

In the book of Genesis there are two stories of creation. The first chapter recounts how God made humanity as the final act of his creation, but in the second chapter, which we’ve just heard, God made man first and then everything else to keep him company.

God made every living creature and asked Adam to name them. God provided all the lushness of the garden for Adam to enjoy. God even realised that Adam would be lonely so he created a companion for him, the woman Eve. This was indeed paradise - peace, harmony, happiness.

This image shows an unimaginable closeness between God and the man he created from nothing.

In the Garden of Eden there was the one tree which Adam was told not to eat from, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Of course we know what happened as a result of Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God’s command, and how the innate separation between God and his creation became a huge rift.

But, here, in this chapter of Genesis, we get a sense of the closeness between God and Adam and Eve, his creation, as they live together and enjoy each other’s company.

In our reading from Revelation we see a very different image of God. We have a vision of the splendour and glory of God with fantastic descriptions of the heavenly court. There are similarities to the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel and Daniel in the OT. The whole thing is beyond our imagination – something akin to a scene in Lord of The Rings, and it is hard for us to get any idea of this array of brightness and glorious light.

We are called to stand in awe and to join the living creatures worshipping God day and night singing “Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come”.

Gone is the familiarity and closeness of the relationship between God and Adam, but here, through worship, earth and heaven are united - the created with the creator.

Between these two images of God is the story of the Fall, when Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden resulting in humanity’s separation from God due to sin and disobedience. That close relationship was gone for generation upon generation, but ultimately it was restored through God’s amazing love for his creation in the life, death and resurrection of his son, Jesus.

Jesus is the bridge and the way for us to enter into a restored relationship with our creator. In him is our salvation.

 

 

 

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April 1st, 2010

Fr. Tim Jones 

Maundy Thursday

John 13.1-17, 31b-35

I remember the exact occasion when I first wondered what Jesus had been actually like, as a person.  My headmaster, Mr. Wilkinson, was remarking to the class that he disliked a line in the hymn "Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us."  Jesus is described as being "Lone and dreary, faint and weary."  Why, Mr. Wilkinson asked us, was Jesus described as "dreary?"  My mind raced through as many Bible stories as I could remember, searching for a moment that qualified as dreary, and drew a blank.  Mr. Wilkinson had to supply the answer: Jesus was described as dreary for no other reason than that "dreary" rhymes with "weary".  Whatever else you might legitimately describe Jesus as, you cannot describe him as "dreary".

What was Jesus really like?  We each have in our own minds our assumptions and mental images.  Is he, for you,  gentle, meek, and mild, perhaps?  Nowadays we generally like to describe Jesus as a servant: he is our "servant King".  At the Last Supper, in the upper room, he washed his disciples' feet.  Washing feet is not nice.  Very few people in any church I have ministered in have actively wanted to participate directly in the foot washing.  In Jesus' day, it was only slaves, servants, or women that washed feet. We conclude that Jesus must have been very servant like, if he washed his disciples' feet.

  But Jesus' disciples were utterly shocked when he washed their feet.  They had been
following him for some three years but nothing they had seen prepared them for Jesus
washing their feet.  It may not have been out of character, but it was utterly beyond
their experience of Jesus.  Our understanding of Jesus as a servant was not one that the disciples would, for the most part, have recognized or shared.  It was only on that last
night together that they started to understand, and that was because he made it so
glaringly unambiguous.

The Last Supper was, without doubt, the most influential meal in human history.  The
events of that evening became, for the disciples, definitive. Jesus instituted the
sacrament of holy communion.  And he gave those who would follow him two injunctions:
first, we are to be a community characterized by servanthood - we are here to serve;
second, we are to be a community characterized by love - we are here to love.

So how have we done?  How well has the Christian community, in the last couple of
thousand years, been obedient to Christ?  Have we been, first and foremost, servants?  Do people look at us and see a community of love?

Professor Peter Dans has recently published a study of how Christians have been portrayed in the movies.  He shows the way in which throughout the latter part of the 20th century there was an accelerating decline in the way in which Christians were portrayed.  Today, it is a rare surprise to see Christians portrayed in pop culture as anything other than "vicious predators or narrow minded, mean spirited Pharisees."  This Holy Week sees the launch of the new novel by bestselling author Philip Pullman, attacking the Bible, the Christian community, and the theological concept of Christ which underpins our veneration of Jesus.  The book is probably not the culmination of the process reflected in the cinema, but it does illustrate well the new territory we Christians find ourselves in.

 
People might warm to Jesus, but, in popular culture at least,  the community of his
followers are perceived to be deeply unattractive.

I have often wondered about the virulence of the contempt, dislike, even hatred, that
people like Phillip Pullman and Richard Dawkins, the so-called "new atheists", have for
Christianity.  What prompts it?  Anyone, of course, might disagree with the fundamentals of Christian belief: the existence of God, his incarnation as a human child some 2000 years ago, our salvation wrought by his death on the cross and his resurrection.  But why should they be outraged and angry?  The Christian community, through the ages, is surely motivated and in large part moulded by the events of that evening meal which we mark today.  At the Last Supper, Jesus stipulated what the characteristics of the Church should be: community, servanthood and love.  Those are not bad things.  So why the vitriol?

One reason might be their actual experience of Christians.  Last Christmas, I preached a sermon with which many people disagreed.  A very large number of people emailed or wrote to me, expressing their opinions one way or the other.  Many were civil, or thoughtful, or both.  But very many expressed their Christian opposition in ways that were unrestrained, savage and coercive.  Such Christians probably represent a small minority, but they punch above their weight.  I wouldn't be surprised if those (like Philip Pullman, or Richard Dawkins) who express well publicized disagreement with Christianity receive that kind of correspondence all the time.  I wonder if I had a glimpse into their perspective on Christianity.

Maybe their personal experience of the Christian community is not an experience of
servanthood and love, but is an experience of abusive bile?  If so, I would be surprised
if that kind of experience does not shape their attitude towards the Church, even towards God, to some degree.  I am fortunate - blessed - that my experience of Christian community has been in the context of several wonderful local churches over the course of my life so far. 

Others, though, have a very different experience.  They find that Christian love and
servanthood can have its limits, and that they are on the wrong side of those limits.

It is a sad truth that the history books are full of wars, persecutions and executions,
perpetrated by Christian nations, Christian leaders, and ordinary Christian believers. 
Our newspapers, for the last few years, have provided a constant stream of stories about the most terrible betrayals of trust by Christian individuals and institutions.  The
seriousness of all this cannot be brushed aside, or written off as somehow marginal. 
There are those who look to Christian history and see a catalogue of cruelty in pursuit
of power, greed and lust, from institutions and individuals alike.

But in the mix, somehow, must also surely be all those countless little acts, through the
centuries, of love and servanthood, inspired by the example of Christ and empowered by the presence of his Holy Spirit; all those times, beyond the common human desire to help or do good, when people have done the hard, frightening or exhausting thing, because, in Christ, they know it is the right thing to do.  In the mix must be reckoned those billions of decisions to love and to serve which entail the risk of some kind of
crucifixion.

This is not to suggest that we can somehow weigh up all the failings of Christianity
against all the successes, and see whether the net result is positive or negative.  The
truth of Christ is not determined or demonstrated by the success of his followers.  We
must simply note that Jesus Christ has been an inspiration, prompting so much that is
good and noble, and also acknowledge that Christians have been guilty of terrible sins,
which leave anger and disbelief in their wake.

When Jesus showed and told us about servanthood and love,  where did he draw the line?  What were his limits?  His love, and his servanthood, were demonstrated to be without limits.  He loved and served even when he knew it meant that he would be tortured to death.  For his disciples this was too much, and they ran away - we run away.  Love with limits is much safer, much more comfortable, much more tempting, and much less authentically Christian precisely because it is much less like Jesus' example.

So what was Jesus like?  Philip Pullman's writing is brilliant, but he doesn't begin to
show us Jesus.  He shows us only his anger at the Christian community, an anger which is all too often deserved.  Jesus Christ decided not to draw the line, not to set limits, on
the love and servanthood he commanded us to continue, knowing that it would cost him his life.  Those who sometimes fear that their Christian charity might be exploited, need to remember that to follow the example of Christ is to walk the way of the cross.  We should not fear exploitation.  We should expect crucifixion.

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