Look up in Lockdown

I will pour out my Spirit (Joel 2:28) On the Day of Pentecost, today in the church's calendar, Peter stands up before the crowd and quotes Joel. God's promise, as spoken by Joel, is fulfilled in your hearing today. Today, God's Spirit is being poured out on all people. As I walk around the villages as vicar, the most common question is this: when are they going to reopen the churches? I have had a fairly standard answer that explains why they needed to be closed (can't have one rule for the town and another for the village), but recently this has developed into a kind of verbal shrug (July at the earliest and then with lots of limitations I expect). Often, though, I really want to ask a question in return. 'But...you never come...do you?' I don't, for fear of being rude, for it is not meant as a criticism. It's just I'm often not sure why this question is top of the agenda for this particular person when they won't be joining the return anyway. A...

The harvest is ripe (Joel 3:13)  Alison has done marvels with food the last few days. We've been a bit busy with Caleb's sponsored walk. It's been a lot of fun, taking in five local villages, and what feels like hundreds of hedge stiles and plank bridges, but, at an average pace of one mile an hour, time has been short for food preparation.  Yesterday in particular there seemed to be nothing in the cupboard and no time to prepare it so I rashly suggested I might have some potatoes ready in the vegetable patch. I can hear you groan from here. Of course they are not ready George, it's not even June. I think deep down I knew that but was desperate to pull my weight on planet family so I dug one rather large-leafed example with abandon. Sure enough a series of truly tiny tubers appeared above ground. The harvest was definitely not ripe. I wonder how often in life we pick things before they are ripe. Certainly the old line about being promoted to your level of incompetence s...

Let the weakling say, "I am strong!" (Joel 3:10)  In The Star Thrower  by Loren Eisley, he tells a story about a little boy. The boy wanders along a beach littered with tens of thousands of starfish, washed up by a recent storm, quietly throwing them back into the sea. When asked by an old man why he bothers, as his actions can make so little difference, he picks up a starfish, throws it back and says, 'It made a difference to that one'.  So much of modern life feels like that beach. Our attempts to save the planet by recycling plastic are dwarfed by the mountains of waste left on the docks or stuffed into landfill. Our gifts to homeless charities are woefully inadequate to help the large numbers sleeping rough on our city streets. Our low energy bulbs, our electric cars, our air-source heat pumps or our solar-powered phone chargers, are as nothing to the new power stations, busy airports or belching cows that seem to cover our planet.  And yet. In God's challenge...

The Lord has spoken (Joel 3:8)  The jury's out. The facts have spoken clearly. We went into lockdown too late. A simple comparison between Germany and the UK shows that, at the date of lockdown, we were a week later in the curve. Put simply, because the German authorities tested more and traced more successfully, at lockdown they had around 80 cases while we had over 360. So, though we locked down within a day of each other, Germany were effectively a week earlier, which saved up to 30,000 lives. Just read that again. Please. One week cost the lives of over 28,000 people. I'm still in shock over that figure. Instead of 37,460 deaths and counting, they have suffered only about 8,500. It seems that Boris Johnson and his advisors dithered about 'herd immunity' and public compliance while Angela Merkel ordered people to stay home. Without a record of every conversation and every email we'll never know exactly why our government acted differently but it is a question wor...

Beat your ploughshares into swords (Joel 3:9)  I have become intrigued by double standards. Yesterday I went on a bike ride. At a junction I swept confidently onto the main road, into a gap too small for a car but fine for a fast-moving bike. As the next car swept by me, leaving hardly enough room for a sneeze, his horn sounded loudly in my ear. It was a Give Way junction, I had checked he had room to pass, I was cycling on the verge and not in his pathway, but he felt aggrieved that I hadn't behaved like a car. He expected me to sit at the junction and wait for him. Double standards, do you see? He passed me like he would a bike, lethally close, but expected me to wait for him like a car. As I ponder further the Dominic Cummings' affair, I am intrigued by the double standards displayed by Boris. I think there is little doubt that someone less valuable to Boris would have been out on his ear. But for his co-conspirator, Boris is happy to brazen it out. When we start to look for...

Proclaim this among the Gentiles (Joel 3:9)  In our home group we are reading Galatians, so the phrase 'proclaim this among the Gentiles' has a significance of which the author is not aware. We now know that God does want his message proclaimed outside the people of Israel, but it is a message of peace not war. Paul is called to proclaim God's offer of reconciliation through his Son, Jesus: peace with God and peace with all people. Where Joel saw division, we see unity. As I read today's news about Dominic Cummings, I am reminded of this human instinct to divide. The division that Mr Cummings is accused of is a moral one. It seems he fell to the common human failing of making an exception of himself. I recognise the desire to see him removed from office. In my mind he has done nothing but harm since Boris Johnson started working with him. But I am loathe to join the call for him to go. No, not because he doesn't deserve to go. He clearly does. He broke his own rules...

They will sell them to the Sabeans, a nation far away (Joel 3:8)  I want to tell you about Dick and Rick Hoyt or Team Hoyt as they are better known. Rick has cerebral palsy. When he was a baby, his parents were advised to put him away in a home, to a 'land far away' as he would never do anything. His parents refused this advice and brought him up surrounded by love, in the family home. It was not easy but Rick was greatly helped when he received a computer that could generate speech. This made it very apparent that he was really rather sharp. As in many small towns around the world, the Hoyts had a locally organised 5 mile charity run. Rick thought it would be fun to enter and persuaded his Dad, Dick, to push him around in his wheelchair. This was a monstrously heavy device and Dick, in spite of his years as a marine, struggled somewhat. Nevertheless, they made it to the end, 'not last' as Dick recalls. Then Rick said something that change everything. 'When I'm ...

I am going to rouse them (Joel 3:7)  What a lovely image. God is like a mother rousing her children to get them ready to go to school. She wakes them from a deep slumber, encourages them out of bed and gets them up and going. In Joel it has that extra sense of rescue. God is rousing them for a journey. And not any journey. They have been sold into slavery and he has bought them back. Now it is not the slave driver with his whip who barks them out of bed but their loving father gently interrupting their dreams and calling them home. In about a week, many of our youngest children will be roused from their beds to get ready to go back to school. The government have become convinced that the time has come to call the children back to the classroom. The evidence is on their side. Where it has been tried, infection rates have not risen significantly. The limited data we have on child infection suggests that the youngest of our population do not just shrug the virus off easily, but genera...

You took my silver and my gold (Joel 2:5)  I am going to ruin a film for you by telling you the ending. The film goes by the strange title of 47 Ronin. Strange to you and me, that is, but if you were Japanese it would be like calling a film Robin Hood . Everyone in Japan knows the story of the 47 Ronin. It is, for the most part, a slightly zany example of a classic Hollywood action movie. Hero underdog seeks revenge on evil villain getting beautiful girl along the way. Except for one oddity. In the end the hero gets the honour of killing himself.  Now I am a sucker for a happy ending. Even with a film like Minority Report where the villain's come uppance requires a complete volte-face in the plot line, I prefer it that way. But that wasn't the problem. I found myself disturbed at a much deeper level. It revealed in stark terms a gulf between cultural values. In one culture, people's hope is for a good death, in another they hope for a good life. I found my skin crawled at t...

They traded boys...they sold girls (Joel 3:3)  Today I am asking you to come with me on an imaginary journey. So, if you are willing, open the door and get in. First we travel back in time. In your personal clock it's back to teenage years. Sorry. I don't know what they were like for you but post 16 I quite enjoyed. The worst of puberty was done with, friends and peer groups were established and exams seemed a blessed way off. However, the date clock is not running to the same timetable. It is not 1960 but 2016. External exams happen every year and every exam matters. Drop a grade and your university choice may be beyond reach. Not only that but the pressure to 'know what you want to do' is immense. In 1960 if you went to university you got a job and no one much worried about it. In 2016 all that has changed. Getting a 1st class degree doesn't guarantee a job. It may even make you unemployable. Nearly 50% of students are graduates and the currency has devalued beyon...

They have cast lots for my people (Joel 3:3)  I listened with growing horror last night to File on 4: The care home catastrophe . Any single moment could have shocked to the core on its own. The nurse who died when she contracted the virus from a patient while PPE sat in a nearby cupboard unused because no one told her the patient was infected. The  care home forced to take an infected patient just sent home from hospital in an ambulance that appeared unannounced at the door, patient in the back and relatives in tow. The pandemic simulation that showed the care sector was extremely vulnerable and yet which remained gathering dust for nearly 4 years. All of these could be the most shocking. But not for me. For me it was the failure to report or even record deaths from COVID-19. Let me put this simply. One third of all reported deaths due to COVID-19 have been in care homes. These numbers were kept out of the figures for weeks and are only recently included. Much worse than that...

You are paying me back (Joel 3:4)  From the beginning of this crisis, one question has been gnawing away at me. When will Trump sue China? I've been looking at his pronouncements and wondering if any are the early stages of a legal process against the PRC. When he called it the 'Chinese virus', I waited eagerly for the next stage but it never came. But legal action is the American way. Just look at the damages made against BP after the Deepwater Horizon disaster. I'm not belittling the destruction or loss of life but 18.7 billion dollars? That is definitely paying the nation back. So even without knowing it will happen, I think it is reasonable to ask if there could be any grounds for suing China over the outbreak. To my aid came a wonderful programme on BBC World Service called The Food Chain: Should China ban wet markets? It seems the term 'wet market' is not one used in China and for the most part they are very much like our farmers' markets, with one ver...

I will swiftly and speedily return on their own heads what they have done (Joel 3:4)  We are suddenly sucked into a world of retaliation. Tyre, Sidon and Philistia are asked if they have acted out of revenge and then 're-revenge' is promised in return. God will pay back his people's tormentors. This sounds very odd to the modern ear. God in Christ loved the world. Vengeance has no place in love. So how can we make sense of this? Well, let's start with Joel.  Joel lived in a time when justice was revenge. This idea is sometimes known as a blood feud and still happens in gangs today. If one of your own is hurt, you do not rely on a disinterested law enforcement to enact judgement, you go out and hurt back. Without a police force, or international law, or any of the constructions of modern justice, the only reparation you get is if you paid someone back. In this context, God's actions are appropriate justice. Indeed, his promise to pay back the evildoer, releases his p...

They scattered...divided...cast lots...traded...sold (Joel 3:2-3)  In our garden is a trampoline. All families have one. It starts out as a wonder of modern life, bringing fun to all ages, and ends up as a rusty pile of disintegrating net and steel. As readers of this blog will know, ours lay untouched until lockdown, when it replaced swimming as Caleb's Thursday afternoon activity. Now it has a new role. Alison invented a game which she called Trampoline Volleyball. Caleb sits in regal splendour in the middle of the trampoline while his poor parents are run ragged chasing a beach volleyball being bashed from inside to outside and back again. The more we struggle, the more he laughs. I've even counted. One game can mean a thousand steps for us and none for him. Something wrong there. It struck me as an interesting metaphor for the state of our world. Some sit in the middle in comfort and plenty, while others rush around fulfilling their needs. The rich work easy for much, while...

My inheritance, my people (Joel 3:2)  I stayed up to watch Darkest Hour  last night, in which Gary Oldman won his Oscar for portraying Winston Churchill. Like now, it is a warm day in May when Churchill is invited to be Prime Minister just as Europe is falling to the Nazi menace. As Winston and Clemmie discuss his invitation to go to the palace, she says, 'You've wanted this your entire adult life', to which he responds, 'No, since the nursery'.  Then it struck me that the idea of a Churchill factor, the idea that without this particular man everything would have been different, could be turned around. Without Hitler, without the terrible war, Churchill's legacy would be minimal. The astonishing influence of one man on history relies as much on the fickle fortunes of events as it does on the one man. Churchill is promoted to Prime Minister in spite of the contempt of his own party because he was right about Hitler. If he had been wrong he would now be a footnote...

I will gather all the nations...to the valley of Jehoshaphat (Joel 3:2)  In my early days of Christian ministry I was given some sage advice. I was smarting under the yoke of unjust criticism and a friend pointed me to Dick Lucas' Three Es of Criticism: expect it, examine it, endure it. It's funny. I think I've got reasonably adept at examining even the most absurd attacks and finding useful sources for self-examination and inspiration. And I am always hurt by criticism, unfair or not, but have many resources for speeding its departure. No, the one that still catches me out is its unpredictable appearance. Just when you really think you're on top of things and making a decent job in a difficult situation, there it is. Lighting out of a clear sky. I suspect most people feel like this about the judgement of God. I've lived a decent life, been fair in my dealings, kind to my neighbours and a good husband and father, or wife and mother. And then I'm meant to believe...

I will gather all nations (Joel 3:2)  You may have missed the article in the New York Times entitled In a Crisis, True Leaders Stand Out but it is worth a read. In it the editorial board carefully suggest some keys to effective communication and compassionate leadership during this crisis. It is careful and clear and makes some good points. What the writers don't do is deal in any depth with any leaders from Asia, or the Middle East, or Africa. Pretty much everyone held up for praise is, well, white (and female but that's another story). This is odd as many or even most of the countries who have had significant success in dealing with the virus are from other parts of the world.  I suspect that this is more parochial than racist, but it does throw up an interesting question. What are the limits of our vision? With our worlds shrunk to the walls of our houses and apartments and the width of the streets or fields around us, it may be a good time to reflect on the narrowness of ...

I will gather (Joel 3:2)  Like all of you, I am poring over the details of government advice to try to make sense of what will happen next. The media are rightly doing the same and asking some difficult questions as a result. My personal favourite reply so far was Dominic Raab's suggestion that if you have to share a seat, sit alongside rather than opposite. It left me wondering if anyone had done the maths on it. Tell me if I'm wrong but sitting opposite on a bus, tube or train means you are about 4-6 feet away, whereas sitting alongside it's 1-2 feet. So is the virus better able to cross 6 feet directly or 2 feet at a ninety degree angle. I suspect enhanced waffle from Raab, but who knows, maybe he got advice. More interesting to me is the advice on gathering. I am allowed to meet up with one other person outside, provided we stay 6 feet apart, but not to visit my parents even if we meet outside and stay 10 feet apart. His logic was that contact with family is likely to b...

I will pour out my Spirit on all people (Joel 2:28) There has been a dramatic change in the pecking order in our back garden. The first hint of this came when I spotted that my brassicas had been shredded. The pride and joy of my vegetable patch were in tatters. I searched fruitlessly for slug trails, cleared around the plants for evidence of the depredating insects but to no avail. Of their attackers there was no sign. So I did the modern thing and looked it up on my phone. One word was offered: PIGEONS!!! (the exclamation marks were in the original). Sure enough as I looked out this morning, two fat pigeons were waddling through the lines of plants, quietly turning them into leafless stalks. It's odd really. These simple vegetables had been quietly growing for over a month, without any hint of the destruction to come. It seemed wholly arbitrary for the pigeons to suddenly find them attractive to their palates after all this time. And then it struck me. The neighbours had moved ou...

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved...for...there will be deliverance among the survivors whom the Lord calls (Joel 2:32)  I remember at university it was quite fashionable to snipe at Christians and their beliefs. There were certain arguments that were thought to be trump cards in the hand of the atheist. One was a rather childish version of the problem of evil along the lines of, 'if I were in charge I'd do a better job of organising the universe for good', usually from a slightly drunk and ethically dubious individual who clearly couldn't. Oddly the more common one today, i.e. 'science has disproved religion', was not so common then, probably because most of the scientists seemed to be Christians which undermined it rather. Another was even briefer, 'the Bible is full of contradictions'.  The way the question is set up is often the trick,  like Hume's rejection of miracles: because by  definition a miracle as something that ca...

Among the survivors (Joel 2:32)  There is a survival atmosphere where we are in rural Dorset. Like Banstead during the Blitz, it feels like the bombs have missed. Oh, there was one down on the High Street, someone might say, but we were lucky not to be hit worse being so near London. The hospitals have experienced no great influx of patients. Indeed without the routine operations and with very reduced Accident and Emergency (no pubs and clubs!) they are rather quiet. Even the undertakers tell me that business is pretty much normal.  In such an atmosphere you start to wonder what the legacy will be, what will be your most vivid memory. Will it be the crowds at Cheltenham Gold Cup or the talk of 'herd immunity' at Downing Street briefings? Will it be the images of Italian hospitals overrun with COVID-19 patients, or those serried ranks of Chinese medics marching through the barriers away from Wuhan province? For some it will be a last glimpse of a relative as they are ambulanced...

Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions (Joel 2:28) Why is it dreams for old men and visions for young, I wonder. Is it as simple as the direction we look? The young look ahead to a life of promise, while the old look back to a life of memories. Or maybe the oldies are falling quietly asleep in an armchair while the youth are out there getting things done? One of the troubles that has been forgotten before all this started was the age divide. In many developed countries, property wealth resides with the elderly and the young have few hopes of ever owning a home. The older generation have savings while the young have debts. The potterers have a garden to potter in, while the runners must share space in a local park with dog walkers. This virus that attacks those nearer the end of life has made us forget all that. We are all ready and willing to make huge sacrifices to our lives largely as a defence of our more senior citizens.  These are the same elderly ...

I will pour out my Spirit (Joel 2:28)  When searching for an explanation of what God had done at Pentecost, Peter turned to Joel and to these verses. There was no darkened sky, no blood and fire, no dreadful day of the Lord. The event which prompted Peter's confidence that Joel held the key was low key. The disciples of Jesus spoke in tongues that could be understood in the local language of everyone present. The sign of the outpouring of God's Spirit on his people was God speaking personally and directly through his people to the whole world. And the message was this: call on the name of the Lord and be saved. Last night we celebrated VE Day. In our street, we had a party. We kept our 6 feet gaps (though without anyone holding a measuring tape) but we were out together as friends and neighbours. Tea at 4 pm, BBQ at 6 pm, chat at every pm. It felt like we were part of a much bigger event, not just national but international. Then at 8 pm I had a family online get together to ce...

Then you will know (Joel 2:27)  In By Searching Isobel Kuhn recounts her move from borrowing the beliefs of her parents to knowing God for herself. It's a beautifully and simply told story of a young girl drifting away from God and then gently coming to a new and lively faith of her own. A single choice is at the centre of her start on a life fully committed to following Jesus. She is unhappy in her teaching job, to which she is not suited, and is scrabbling around for what to do. Her host gently explains that God has a plan for her life and they turn to the Bible for help. At this point, as the answer is made clear to her, she begins a new path that takes her much later to China as a missionary. The story focusses on the miraculous and unexpected work of God, but I suspect there is a deeper message. It's simply this. If we want the life Jesus promised, life in all its fullness, then we need to move from knowing about God to knowing God for ourselves, from second hand faith to ...

I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten (Joel 2:25) What a waste! Have you heard that? Or felt it? It comes as such a word of judgement to many of us. In so many years we have achieved so little. Much of what we sought to do has come to dust. An icy storm has left our lives withered and blackened. Maybe it is exam results that reflect nothing of our efforts, or a pet project gone to pot, or a life offered in service to others but without reward of any kind, even thankfulness. Maybe we have gifts that are left unnoticed and unused, hopes that have never come near to fulfilment, relationships that have left us hurt and lost. Percy Bysse Shelley effortlessly expresses this sense of dreams dashed in his poem Ozymandias. All that is left of a great king's boasted glory is bits of an old statue lost in the desert. 'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!' boasts the inscription, but the only despair comes from the ghost of ...

He sends you abundant showers (Joel 2:23) I vaguely feel that you cannot be English and not be interested in rain. I do not mean by this that you keep collections of different types of rainfall in a cupboard in your bathroom. I mean that you are routinely caught up in looking at the weather and making plans accordingly. In our house the washing, bike rides, trampoline volleyball, and the vegetable garden are all governed by rainfall. With my last teaching job I even checked the local climate before accepting the post (if you're interested Oxfordshire is pretty perfect for gardening as long as you don't mind the occasional hard frost). The people of Israel were (and are) similarly exercised but for slightly different reasons. They have two potential seasons for rain. From May to September it doesn't rain. Then come the former rains (yoreh). These are really winter rains and run predictably from October to March, peaking in January. While one might prefer that to be it for ...