Leaving the Ninety-Nine

The Road to Emmaus – Luke 24.

It takes about 3 hours to walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus. If Cleopas and his friend, the two disciples, took an occasional break, maybe 4 hours might be nearer, but not much more than that.

If the day was ‘far spent’ by the time they and Jesus, who had appeared to them in some form of resurrection disguise it was about 7pm when they arrived in Emmaus.

After a short while at the table sharing food with Jesus, who promptly disappeared as they broke bread, they made their way back to Jerusalem, ‘they rose up that very hour’, arriving at the earliest by 9pm.

The precise location of Emmaus is unknown. Recent excavations at and near Abu-Gosh lend support for this site but there is also a Roman Catholic Franciscan church in Al-Qubeiba that celebrates Luke 24 each year. Evidence for this site is restricted to the remnants of Roman paving slabs.

The point of writing about Emmaus is that these two sites are located on the West Bank in what we often refer to as the Palestinian territories as distinct from Israel.

Gaza and the West Bank are where a diminishing number of Palestinian Christians live, their hope almost broken and shattered by a combination of poor economic conditions and persecution by hard-line fundamentalist Muslims, conditions which have forced many to emigrate.

The Palestinian Christian diaspora is part of the tragedy of the Middle East but…

…just as Jesus left the 120 in Jerusalem in search of the 2 on the road, thus literally acting out the ‘leaving the 99’ parable, neither can we, who have Christ dwelling in us, not be impelled to leave the relative comforts of where we are to search for those whose hopes, built up in Jesus maybe from childhood, have been torn to shreds by life’s events or the prevailing pressure of society.

We will find ourselves, just like Jesus, in some unlikely places, breaking bread with those whose faith and hope in Jesus has been all but broken, and yet leaving them with ‘hearts burning’ as we speak about Jesus the Messiah so that they too ‘rise up that very hour’, faith restored, hope restored and make their way, like Cleopas, to meet the resurrected Jesus.

Not a typical Friday

An alarm set for 6…ignored
Late now, stumbling, unshaven
Quick scrape with blade
Hot water on the face
Heart rate up, face the day

Walk through woods
Holding trousers up
Away from the mud
Bit sweaty reaching W-o-T
Early now, waiting for lift

Knocking mud from boots
Saying my prayers
Lift late, lift arrives
We speak, she with peppermint tea
I fumbling with mobile and rucksack

I’m unloaded
And find a Costa
Sup a flat white
Try not to get sticky fingers
Breakfast is a blueberry muffin

Was late, then early
Now waiting
Strange how unaccustomed to time
We clock people are
Perhaps more suited to eternity?

Have an hour to kill
Not listening to others’ talk
A man says have a nice day
Maybe too often and to strangers
Maybe waiting a lifetime for a nice day

We all shed clues
Our inner man
Incapable of hiding
A slight frown, or
Eyes full of music

That’s it…
I contend we are all
Musical instruments
Being played by a
Divine hand, different moods

Not a typical Friday
My time register and
Soul duly tuned, will it be
An atonal Shostakovich day
Discordant or…

An exultant symphony
Lifting us up, opening the heart
Believing one can…
At last…
Love one’s neighbour as oneself?

Extra

My friend Jon used to pass me
John, his torn open
Tube of extra strong mints
And I, worrying about halitosis
Would smile meekly
And prise from the flayed opening
The white disc of crumbling
Sinus-clearing mint

Unlike Polos
That can be sucked to
A nanometer before
Cracking on a warm tongue
Extrastrongs seem to demand
Less suck and more bite
It’s funny isn’t it
That everything is…itself?

Jon had no idea
But his simple act
Was duplicated in me
I, too, offer mints
To others, halitosis or not.
It’s really not much to do with mints
I can take them or leave themIt’s masculine and unspoken

Like grooming primates
It’s that fleeting eye contact
The physical extension of an arm
The lack of words
That communicates all that is needed
So…Jon and I would sit there
In church often, quietly crunching
Our bad-breath stoppers

Love one another
As I have loved you
Makes me wonder if Jesus
Had he been alive now
Would have bought Extrastrongs?
I think he did
I think he was disguised
As a Jon

The last teabag

All these reminders of the
Ends of things…
The last tea bag lying flat
On the bottom of its glass jar
Lonely and waiting
Finally chosen
Evoking more than a brew
A meditation no less:

Seized with enough grip
Not to tear, transferred
From one world to another,
And deluged with scalding water
Suffering it seems
Before the glory,
That inner golden glow,
Infuses, floods, and fills

Polyphenol pleasure…
Liberated molecules diffusing,
Their leaf-bound cages breached,
Swimming free with a purpose?
Maybe not understood,
But, flexing with the passions
Of sudden heat and colour

Find their way to rest
On a human tongue or,
Ascending an olfactory maze,
Millions of years in the making,
For a few minutes
Bearing their unique calling
Their mission fruit:
Stillness, sighing, smiling

Like the final teabag
Unchosen, unknowing of
Any purpose; this life
Boiling us one moment
Neglecting us another
Not here to be ghettoed
But as a diaspora, to be tasted,
To still the One who made us

Allotment Wisdom - February

It was John, two plots down,
I first saw unfurling great sheets
Of black roll
Breathable black plastic
Pinned down to the ground
With bricks and old lead pipes

Late October one year
November the next, after which
John, like the ground beneath,
Hibernating only to emerge
In February to inspect the bricks
Lift the roll, and sniff the soil

It was a binary life
Covers on, winter withdrawal
Covers off, sow in Spring
But there was an unease
Suppression is not deliverance
Like fire beneath the foam

The weed-seed encased in
Overwintered soil
Undisturbed lies ready
To thrust - at night it seems -
To spoil the perfection of
What looked barren

Bert, one plot removed,
Leaning on his hoe
Smiling at John, that’s all,
Left his earth to breathe
The winter air and
The foxes to run

Visited once a week
After harvest, and
Fork in hand,
Upended any weeds
Roots and all
Left them to rot

Not here

Words folded inside
The grieving
It’s a form of muteness
Where anything said
Is said through blank eyes
Devoid of the person not here

The one whose absence
Is fuller, more immediate
Than before, woven tightly
Into the fabric of
An interior world, the
Location of one not here

Externals continue
Of shirts buttoned,
Laces tied, and shaving,
Kettle-steam, and duvets
But there is no memory
Only of the one not here

Silences punctured
Only by convulsions
Then exhausted sleep
On the floor, maybe
Waking only to comfort
Those comforting you

And then, only then
Does it lift, quietly…
You touch the dust on a mirror
See teabags left to mould
The neglect of days
Unnoticed

Letters, cards on the mat
Beyond the front door
Now opened…
An inrush of cool air
The sound of the city
Life invading

You tell the one not here
‘Stay or leave as you wish
And make me weep or smile
Or rant and blow like a bull’
Our communion is safe now,
Forever secure

The Watering Can

It’s January-blue-sky-cold,
There’s no equal
The high clouds, still,
The air, like the frozen water
Unmoving

A week ago it was different
A vicious storm downed
Dried out branches
Did its work, shaking
The loose things of this world

Oddly, though, it uprighted
A watering can, can in name only
Green plastic, heavy now
With the storm rains, standing
As if deliberately placed

On an aging pink, moss-encrusted
Paving slab, perfectly central,
Open to the sky
Unable to fill or empty itself
Subject to storms

Like us, storm-tossed
And yet only to set us
Open to the deluges
Pouring down from heaven
And the gardener

Deep calls unto deep

Occasionally rules are
Exposed as faulty vessels
To carry such living words
Whose light, incapable
Of conforming, created
To do the conforming:
Words unfolding life to us

Take a word out of context
To make a pretext
Can hold the laws of children
A highway code, as daily bread,
Poor bread though,
A railway-track-wisdom
But deep calls unto deep

Words from the underneath
Interior bass notes
That reverberate beyond
And meet the unvoiced
Calling of another
Distant in miles, or persuasion,
But closer than a brother
Yes, deep calls to deep

Carrying far beyond
The need for words
Into the mine shaft
Reaching not for dark coals
But all that is contained
In multi-tonal hearts

Full of love colours,
Under strain maybe, yet love:
Of grief, of unlikely dreams
Of prayers, of waiting, longings
Of rhyming and discord
Weeping with those who weep
Over our Jerusalems

Deep calling unto deep
Not without purpose
But a joint pulling together
To gather in the ropes that bind
Any two, not made with twine
Or flax, or jute, but cordless
Ropes from the deep

After

Busy people chase the afternoon
The loquacious gabble, burdened
With afterthoughts
And jet designers place afterburners
Well…aft

But nothing much compares
With living for the after-life

Having a destination after ‘this’
In mind

Is it a world that’s been washed,
Tumbled dried, smelling fresh,
Ironed by a celestial being
All creases flattened,
All wrinkles stretched,
All tears wiped away?

Or is it like a snake shedding its skin
Or a metamorphosis
That longest of primary school words
The glistening caterpillar cocoon
Fastened on a stick in a jam jar
Is that what we are? Waiting?
A dim version of what is to come?

A primary school world
Waiting to be elevated
Away with shorts and on with trousers
No more chapped thighs
Lowered into hot baths
Red skin now replaced with the mud
Of rugby fields, of men and boys?

Let me tell you
It’s the fourth day
After Christmas
Since the angel on top of the tree
Winked
And reminded us of the
Heavenly hosts in good voice
Welsh maybe, or Italian?
Or from the four corners
Belting out

‘Glory to God in the Highest
And peace, goodwill towards men’

The afterglow of Christmas
When the afterlife
Discarded it’s afterness
And glory in the highest
Fastened itself
To the lowest,
The least,
The lost.

We Three Kings

Gold

Looking for a love
That’s looking solely for me
I am Melchior

Frankincense

Pursuing a star
Light, like scent, falling on me
Caspar is my name

Myrrh

Sorrow piercing me
Nails driven into place
Balthazar I am

The Other Story

Trailing behind the donkey
The ever-present
Memory of a botched divorce
Joseph’s fear and love
Dictating his untold strife

And Mary’s inability to hide
A young girl embarrassed by an angel
Nine months of overshadowing
Leaving no trace of bitterness
Peace dictating her every thought

Together now, they travel
Away from the knowing looks
Unaware of the star, or the
Angels from the realms of glory
Of heaven touching Earth

How unaware we are also
Carrying our own travails
As we must into the Messiah-feast
And yet this is why we put lights on the tree
Why we bust the budget

Why, broken like Joseph, perhaps
We gather. Like the angels
We cannot be contained
Love has broken out; a reminder
Of the other story:

Of myriads of tough angel warriors
On tiptoe, like children
Waiting, singing, singing, waiting for
The first cry of one baby the
Starting gun for a feast that will never end

Love Me Tender

The weather forecast a
Short sentence, a précis,
Summing up the struggles
Of the atmosphere as
‘Gentle rain will fall’
On the summer-baked soil
It will fall, until suppertime
Until the earth is softened
By the tender rain

At school, now
I am five, maybe six, and
On the art table lies a
Block of ice-cold plasticine,
A pleasant pink slab
Of resistance, looking at me
Too hard, so it thinks, but
Patience wins, fashioning
Long warm snakes

One day I may purchase
A kitchen tool,
With mountain range stipples
And bring my weighted swings
Down upon inert meat and
Those tight unyielding fibres…
What is this wooden mallet?
An enemy or a friend?
A tenderiser; that’s its name.

Stay Your hand, Lord
Stow Your word of
Hammering love divine
‘Case I end up pummelled,
Destined, like Your Son, to say
‘I have come to do Your will’
Oh God! Ignore my prayer
Listen not to my sunbaked
Ice-cold resistance

Here I am…
Raise your holy hand
Swing Your weight
Until I am fully done
Until I taste as I should
Until I take Your shape
Come like gentle rain
Defeat my sun-hardened
Soil. Love me tender.

Amen.

Midnight Train from Paris

Not used to trains leaving on time
And unfamiliar with the need for
Hurried steps in a station
We pelted along the Parisian platform
Launching ourselves through
Ominously closing doors

Our reserved carriage, full to the brim
With unbudging French skiers
Whose indifference and wry smiles
Ejected us Anglaise to a
Downgraded allotment:
A corridor floor crammed with skis

I remember nothing, nor does Neil.
We Brits, we band of two brothers
Making silver purses, perhaps, from pigs ears
Descended into the abyss
Of unsought and the unlikely
Torpor of deep sleep

Mercy arrived in the form of the ticket collector
Shouting ‘Billet, billet’ until we stirred
Then, ushering us off the train,
In a frenzy of ‘Vite, vites!’
Unceremoniously dumped at dawn
On an unknown platform

One stop from disaster
The Chamonix tunnel to Italy

In broken French and faith
Somehow, we wove our way
On buses and steep ravine-sided trains
To Chamonix, our destination
For a friend’s wedding
For a wedding

Idyllic in the snow
Idyllic in the horse-drawn sleigh
Whisking bride and groom at speed
From Church to reception
Idyllic in much wine, song
Food, and feasting

A taste of heaven.
Almost missed.

The Power of Words

Words paint pictures, and pictures have a habit of drawing us in, to find the story, the setting, and the physical space…we end up smelling the incense, feeling the fabric, tasting new wine, hearing voices, and imagining what it must have been like to be there.

Here are three short phrases that have leapt off the page and hauled me inside recently, like some Star Trek tractor beam:

‘Bless the Lord all you servants of the Lord who stand by night in the house of the Lord’ Ps 134 v 1

‘This man, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night’ John 3v2

‘And it was night’ John 13 v30

Whilst it’s tempting to unload what these passages have been up to moving around in my imagination, I’m really focussing on the authors: the unnamed author of Ps 134, and John, the apostle and close friend of Jesus.

I see them in the cool spot, in the evening. They’ve found a table, and a chair at the right height, some ink, a roll of parchment, and quills poised, they feel impelled to write, to describe a scene, not elaborately but with as few words as possible.

Maybe there are a few attempts before a sense of completion, having shown a few others. And there it is - ink-dried, a rolled-up scroll, submitted to the scribes to copy and distribute.

Maybe money had to change hands. But when all is done, candles are extinguished, and it is night.

And the world and countless lives have been illuminated by a few words.

In thinking about this blog, I have wondered if anyone is hesitating, pen-in-hand, wondering whether to include direct or indirect experiences of ‘standing by night’ in their latest writing. But also as a ‘note-to-self’ to use a minimal number of words to evoke a sensory link to whatever scene I’m attempting to convey.

https://morethanwriters.blogspot.com/2023/11/the-power-of-words.html

Deus ex Machina

Chris-ti-an-ity:
Christ pouring out His life-love
As us in His world

Mystery of Christ
In us, the hope of glory,
Saturating all

Bridges we become
For the Almighty lover
To bring the Shalom

Take the shot

Light glancing and flashing
From a needle held high
Piercing a delicate membrane,
Beneath which sits lurking,
A dose or two of an antidote
That rejoicing chemical

Atropine by name, whose

Alkaloid molecules lie in wait
Poised to dismantle and
Destroy unbidden invaders
The paralysing poisons
That shrivel and staunch
Bringing life to naught

The true purpose of anxiety

The all-pervasive nerve agent
The great distractor
The gnawing, low-level
Stomach-troubling life-friction
Slowing and braking,
Shuddering its victims to a halt

‘Til we cry out in our
Anger and our shame *

‘Til we submit our recipient flesh
To prayers sharpened and
Uttered like fork lightning
Piercing, tearing open
Liminal membranes into
The fiery love of God

Swords and shields yielded:
Our fruitless aggressions,
Our flimsy fig-leaf
Protection rackets that do not
And casting aside all masks
That fail us, we

Take the shot

Let the fiery love of God
Permeate, baptise us
Deep diving into our troubles
And turmoil, our churning seas
And paralysed wills until
We re-emerge into the light

Our dancing feet unglued

*Simon & Garfunkel – The Boxer

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐍𝐢𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐝: '...𝐨𝐧𝐞, 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐲, 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐜 𝐜𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐡....'

A comment on the word 'apostolic’.

Greek ‘apostolos’ - someone who is sent

Just as ‘catholic’ refocuses our modus operandi as church to be in the world, like yeast in and throughout the dough, so ‘apostolic’ turns us outward, to the world, rather than inward.

Jesus sent his disciples, later called to be apostles, ‘sent ones’, into the world, village by village to preach the gospel having watched him do the same. (See Luke 8, Luke 9, and Luke 10). Jesus was the prototype apostle, others followed on, first the 12, the 70, and so on.

True apostles do not install a church culture, a bureaucracy, an organisation, a denomination, or a stream, but Christ in individuals, some of whom become elders and oversee the church from that point on – not under the authority of an apostle, rather they are released by the apostle - who has moved on to do some more installing elsewhere, whilst retaining a fatherly relationship with the new church. They are fathers not CEOs.

Apostles instal Christ in individuals…not denominations

(Fathers are not paid by their children. If a church wishes to give money to an apostle or into their ministry, they are free to do so, like the many who gave money to Jesus and supported Him from their private means, but they did not give as a requirement; there was no coercion, it was given freely. Compulsory ‘tithing’, for example, is an indication that the relationship between an apostle and a church, or between elders and a congregation, has become unhealthy).

When the church in Galatia had turned away from Christ the apostle wrote to them: ‘My little children, for whom I labour in birth again until Christ is formed in you’ Gal 4v19

The work of an apostle is therefore more than the work of an evangelist. An evangelist preaches the ‘evangel’, the good news, the gospel, and issues the invitation to follow Christ. An apostle, through their teaching and example, installs Christ in the person and church who wishes to follow or put their faith in Jesus, so that their life is no longer lived by their own resources (as if that’s really possible, which it isn’t!) but by Christ’s spontaneous life lived from within the person.

To the extent that apostles plant or form churches, it is that new disciples are called to grow so that they collectively know that Christ has been formed in them as a church, and that they are operating from His life not their own abilities, philosophies, political convictions, or well-intentioned good ideas, or under the direction of an apostle, but His Spirit.

As Paul put it: ‘For as many are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God’.

‘children…young men…fathers…’ 1 John 1v12-14

There are many passages that deal with this expected spiritual growth towards maturity, for example: ‘I could not speak to you as spiritual but as fleshly, as babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not solid food…you are still fleshly’ 1 Cor 3v1-3 or ‘by this time you ought to be teachers…but…you need milk not solid food…babes…solid food belongs to those that are mature’ Heb 5v12-14 or ‘children…young men…fathers…’ 1 John 1v12-14

Once such a church has been formed it is true that it is ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church’

I suspect Paul would write to many groups that we call ‘churches’ today with the same concerns and conclude that he would have to ‘labour again until Christ is formed in you’.

If the church is a group of believers who are living out life from the spontaneous life of Christ within, then, by definition, the church is truly apostolic as it is loved, cared for, and led by the Apostle, Jesus Christ, into the world.

Pain woke up one morning

Pain woke up and pulled on socks
The stout shoes of a marcher
Pain splashed cold water on an unshaven face
And drank a cup of tea
Without noticing

Pain met with the hurting
To flock like starlings
Unaware of the terrible beauty
Of their black murmurings
And flow like blood

From Portland Square to Westminster
Pain-painted placards held aloft
A river of anguish, chanting
Like bewildered children
‘Free Palestine
From the River to the Sea’

We humans,
We import and export traders,
Now in toxic waste, to and fro
Violent convulsions
Of sorrow-full souls
Invisible retchings of pain

Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah
A trinity less united
Except in receiving foreign funds
Billions of dollars, rials, and euros
Their investors’ blushing faces
Turning away too late

Disgusted by a Supernova massacre
By Kfar Azar’s defilement
But the blood sticks to your hands
Tehran, Brussels, Washington
No amount of cold water
Can remove the stain 

The Kfar Azar pain
The Supernova misery
That woke up that morning,
Discordant, a few miles
East of Gaza, in the Negev -
All of that pain

And the pain of the pogroms
And of Hitler’s henchmen
Has woken up this morning
And painted Stars of David
On F16 fuselages -
Sickened Israel vomiting

Her laser-guided agony
Of despair in bombs and missiles
Her promises to end Hamas
Unbearable, carrying her
Towards poor Gaza

Ruled not by peacemakers
But those fuelled and fed
Funded and fattened by whom?
Which fund paid for your banner?

Who set brother against brother?
Ishmael – which means God listens
Against Isaac – which means laughter

Let the Miserere be sung
Let the tears fall

Let hot tears sear and
Wash away the pain

And let the children sob
Themselves to exhausted peace 

Lord, have mercy, let
Isaac’s laughter be heard

Once again.

Bing Videos

Is there a purpose in forgetting?

12.55

My fork is raised, and
My eyes are feasting on a
Steaming chicken pie

The fork fails to touch
Even the exterior skin of
The golden pastry

A silent alarm
Sounds in my head, I see
Seventy pupils

Pushing and shoving
Peering through a window a
Hundred yards away

Waiting for me

Waiting for me to rattle some keys

A miracle. God,
Secular humanism
Notwithstanding, has

Fished out a large crowd
Away from football, ‘seconds’
Not enough girl chat

To the Thursday Club
A Christian Union
Stripped of tradition

12.56

Like the woman and
Her coins I tear around
Searching for the keys

12.59

The key turns the lock
And the door opens wide, no
One is the wiser

Privately I am
Beside myself with horror
And excessive joy

1.00

God did not forget -
His selectively robust
Memory, forgot

My frail frame and
Sluiced all my iniquities
Forever downstream

Our lapses - signs of
God maybe? Marinading
Us in the divine

Ain’t gonna to study war no more

‘…they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore’ Isaiah 2v4

Are you outside my city limits
Or corralled in my deepest parts?
Are you in heaven
Or walking down country lanes
To all our Bethlehems
Unseen?

Why do I find that
Other-worldly chuckle
A spring of water
Speaking to me:
It’s in the asking that
You stumble over the answers

You do some intriguing tricks
Unexpected engineering
Like workmen setting up
Orange fences before dawn
Cups of tea in hand
The steam appearing to
Work harder than they

Rising up but the work
Is out of sight, below,
Unseen

Your last incursion
Took me by surprise
Incoming wounding words;
Missiles lobbed and landing
Like sharp swords but changed,
Somehow, into ploughshares
And set to work

Plough me Lord
Plough my heart
I open the gate
Bring in your metal
And turn me over and over
Run your oxen over me
Turn my stones to soil

I ain’t gonna study war
No more
The fight’s gone in me
I have a new weapon
Durable and immovable
The peace of the Lord.
Ploughing may not be over

But I see seeds held
In your hand
I’m going to wear my
Long white robe
And not budge
From the riverside, I ain’t
Gonna study war no more