fidzbit

On the 12th April the Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced that the UK coronavirus death toll has reached 10,000, calling it a ‘somber day’.  The great biblical leader and prophet Moses had his own ‘somber day’. Nearing the end of Israel’s 40 year journey he learned  that he would die out in the wilderness and not enter God’s Promised Land. By that point Israel’s death toll was nearly 2.5 million - most of the people who left Egypt were dead and buried. That is a large number of funerals! It was probably around that time when Moses wrote Psalm 90. This ancient song expresses the confusion and disappointment God’s people experience in the face of death, when we are confronted with the brevity of life, and our failure to realise God’s promises in the way that we had hoped - things many of us may be feeling now . Lord, you have been our dwelling place  in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth,      or ever you had formed th...

Two or three weeks into our ‘lockdown’ we are still adapting to the new restrictions. With many more weeks to go, it is beyond most of us to try and imagine what life will look like when we regain our liberty.   Just before dawn on the first Easter Sunday, Jesus’ disciples could not imagine anything changing. His body was still in lockdown: bound in grave clothes, sealed in a tomb, and guarded by Roman soldiers.  Some of the women who followed Him were on their way to the grave with the fragrant spices needed to finish the embalming process. Then something astounding happened. There was an earthquake and the Angel of the Lord descended from heaven to roll the stone away and open the tomb. The soldiers were terrified and collapsed as though they were dead. But this was not the most remarkable occurrence. Jesus was raised back to life. He was not just freed from the tomb and the soldiers. He was also freed from death. As the women arrived they were met by angels who...

There was a tragically sad photograph on a news report yesterday. It showed forty or more simple wooden coffins being buried in a mass grave, somewhere in New York State, which currently has an extremely high number of coronavirus cases. They contained the remains of people who were either too poor to afford a funeral or who had dropped out of regular society, losing their formal identities somewhere along the way. By the end of the first ‘Good Friday’, Jesus too was dead and buried. The soldiers made certain by piercing his side with a spear, rupturing His heart, though it had already stopped beating. Jesus was too poor to afford a grave. He had died alongside two men whose crimes were so socially and politically unacceptable, that their ‘identities’ were being permanently wiped out. His body was eventually taken and laid in a tomb owned by a generous donor. The tomb was sealed with a large stone and a team of Roman soldiers put in place to guard the body. His burial was an impriso...

We are familiar with the idea of a hero giving their life to win freedom for other people. Giving up your freedom to save lives - as we are being asked to do as we voluntarily stay inside during this coronavirus lockdown - is a much more counter-intuitive idea. One dimension of the Christian message which we reflect on at Easter is the way in which Jesus voluntarily gave up His freedoms in order to save lives. If there had been any other way, He would have chosen to avoid the pain and suffering of that first ‘Good Friday’. But there was no other way and He had wrestled the issue through before God in agonising prayer the night before: “ Not My will but Yours be done !” He was committed to being “ obedient unto death - even death on a cross”. Jesus was, if you like, voluntarily ‘imprisoned’ by the will of God. Within the restraints and constraints of the divine purpose Jesus found Himself literally imprisoned. He was betrayed by His disciple Judas, arrested by a team of soldiers,...

The bruised body of an Australian actor pretending to be a Scotsman is stretched out and tortured in front of a blood thirsty crowd. Rather than recanting his opposition to the English king in order to hasten the inevitable end, he resists and then, with all his remaining energy lets out a, by then anatomically impossible, scream: “Freeee-doooom!” We are familiar with the image of someone giving up their life in order to win freedom for other people. “Freedom” is the pet ideal of Western culture. Our heroes fight to win their freedom or they die trying. What we are being asked to do now is the exact opposite of that. Perhaps this is why so many people are ignoring Government advice and social distancing laws. We are now being asked to give up our freedom because it is believed that this will save other people’s lives. It goes completely against the grain of what we are used to. Giving up freedom seems completely mundane, especially when we compare ourselves to the real heroes, t...

Natural disasters, pandemics, and wars raise some big questions. Why does God allow suffering? Why do innocent people suffer? Are we, in some way, facing God’s judgment? If you take the Bible seriously, you cannot ignore this last question. To avoid talking about sin, hell, and judgment would be a serious misrepresentation of Jesus Christ. He had a lot to say on these issues. Christians talk about these things too but I fear that sometimes we do so in a different tone to that of Jesus. Yesterday’s post was about ‘Jesus the Weeping Prophet of Doom’ ( https://fidzbit.blogspot.com/2020/04/jesus-weeping-prophet-of-doom.html ).  This post is about ‘Jesus the Gentle Prophet of Doom’. But first we do have to go through a bit of fire and brimstone! In Matthew’s gospel most of chapter 11 is given over to one of Jesus’ ‘prophecies of doom’. The story goes something like this: Jesus’ colleague and cousin, John the Baptist, is in prison and going through a hard time. He turns ...

There is nothing quite like a global pandemic to bring out the conspiracy theorists and ‘prophets of doom’! I’m sure you have seen them too. No internet discussion forum is complete without the guy who is wearing a virtual ‘end is nigh’ sandwich board. They are not all promoting religious beliefs. Some people wear ‘climate-change’ sandwich boards. Then there are the 'police-are-communist-power-grabbers’ sandwich boards. But there are a fair few Christian ‘end-of-the-world’ voices out there too. Whilst I do not agree with the apocalyptic vision that many of these voices are proclaiming I recognize that the views are held sincerely. Maybe they are right, maybe not. Who knows? It is not my intention to argue with them but on this Tuesday of ‘Holy Week’ I do want to ask them a simple question: Are you weeping? Let me explain why I am asking this. If you follow the Bible narrative closely you will see that it was either the Monday or Tuesday after Palm...