So thank goodness that today’s story of him turning over the tables in the Temple disrupts that calm, passive image. Outraged by injustice and commercialisation masquerading as religion, he seems to have found that a peaceful demonstration didn’t meet the occasion – he just went and trashed the place. “Holy”, in this story, certainly doesn’t mean wet and wimpish.

There’s a great scene in Denys Arcand’s movie Jesus of Montreal where the leading character trashes a TV studio where actors are being exploited. The movie’s plot revolves around five actors who perform a Passion play, and over the course of the play’s run, their own lives become completely affected by the gospel stories they are playing out. The stark reality of what happens when these not-very-religious people engage with the gospel is contrasted by the way Arcand depicts the Church as insitution, which in every way has insulated itself against the radical effects of the gospel.

In this particular scene, two of the actors go to a TV studio where the female actor is auditioning from a part in an advert. There she finds herself on the receiving end of some of the common abuses that models are subjected to, and her friend (who plays Jesus in the Passion plays) becomes incensed and steps in to protect his friend, his reaction being a kind of calculated anger – calm on the surface, but fearless through a passionate reaction against the abuse. He trashes the studio, turning over the tables and tripods, smashing thousands of pounds worth of cameras and computers as he goes along.

The story of Jesus turning over the tables in the Temple can be way too sanitised. Have you ever been told that he was only acting out anger, not really angry? Or that he was angry but completely in control? Or acting to make a point but calm and kind really? A Jesus with no passion or anger is not a real person – and to train people to suppress their own anger is a recipe either for cdepression or dangerous outbursts somewhere down the line. I love the Jésus de Montréal adaptation of that story precisely because it delivers a Jesus who is a real human being, with the kind of passion and commitment to the cause of righteousness that makes him (and his followers) fearless even against the powers that be.

I can’t easily draw the conclusion that we should go out and commit acts of crminal violence in the name of Jesus. Recalling recent public protests, incidences of “kettling” and the death of Ian Tomlinson, the question as to what level of law-breaking is either advisable or acceptable, and the consequences to both protesters and bystanders are not inconsiderable. But I do think we should register the level of anger and social unacceptability that was going on in this story. There are moments when nothing less will do: as Edmund Burke once said, All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

The image of Jesus turning over the tables also colours how you read the events of the rest of Holy Week. Read the Temple story and it’s hard to see Jesus limply giving himself up as a victim; instead he is walking eyes wide open into the inevitable consequences of the radical protest he had embodied, and which the powers that be wanted to damp down at any cost. Earlier in his ministry he had “slipped through the crowd” once or twice to avoid coming to grief. I imagine he had weighed up the possible consequences of continuing to live out his radical message of justice, equality and freedom in a volatile environment. I imagine he had figured out that he had two choices: make less noise, or face the music.

It looks good enough on the surface. The shops are full of eggs and chickens and sunshine and cheer, and with the school term only ending yesterday, there’s a buzz of demob happiness in the air.

But Good Friday and Holy Saturday are the most sombre days in the whole Church calendar, recalling the death and disappearance of God.  Not much there to celebrate or feel happy about.

For those who enjoy a degree of certainty in their faith, maybe Good Friday and Holy Saturday don’t really “bite” – they are more about the anticipation of a certain resurrection than about entering into the devastation of grief.  But for  those of us who live with a fragemented faith, a faith that has had too many holes punctured in it, too much damage ever to recover a naive certainty, there is something reassuring about the rise and fall of the Church seasons. It’s a relief to be honest, to acknowledge the disappearance of God and the uncertainty of the outcome.

That’s not to say that there is no hope of the resurrection. But that hope doesn’t forestall the depth of blackness that can descend even upon people of faith. And the recollection that the Easter faith was born in the darkness is, perhaps, a reason to hold on and not to give up.

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’    John 12: 1-8

Arriving in Jerusalem at the end of a long journey in what turned out to be the final week of his life, Jesus escaped the crowds to relax with friends. Bethany, on the outskirts of Jerusalem, was where Lazarus, Martha and Mary lived. He was used to their hospitality, eating at their table, often bringing a crowd of friends with him too. This night, they did what friends do best: Lazarus sat with him at the table, Martha served up a great dinner, and Mary resumed her habit of sitting at his feet listening to him talk.

I like the emphasis here on what they did for Jesus. It’s easy to put the spotlight on what Jesus does for us, but this is another little glimpse into the way he lived out his life as a real human being. This time, though, there was an extra and unusual element in what Jesus received from his friends – for instead of just listening, Mary made an extraordinary gesture with a jar of perfume, something that was not only generous in the extreme, but full of symbolism.

Virtually every street market in England has a stall selling imitation perfumes. They look and smell like the real thing, but usually the smell doesn’t develop in the same way and doesn’t last so well.  It was the same in the ancient world: Nard was one of the most expensive perfumes available, and there were plenty of cheaper substitutes for it. Pliny the Elder wrote that nard-like perfumes were produced from no fewer than twelve different species of plant. Real nard, though, was made from the root of spikenard, a flowering plant that grows in the Himalayas, and was as expensive as it was rare. Nard was used in worship, being one of eleven ingredients that made the incense used in the Temple at Jerusalem and also in temple worship in ancient Egypt. There was great excitement when a jar of perfume was found, still intact, in the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Analysis showed that it was pure nard, confirming previous theories that it was used at royal burials. In some forms of traditional medicine, nard is used to treat emotional pain and deep seated grief; it’s also used in palliative care to ease the transition from life to death. Mary, then, anointed Jesus with the precious oil that was associated with grief and pain, with the ointment that ushers in the time of death. With nard she was anointing a king for his burial, and offering up worship to him as God.

More than anything else, though, what nard was famous for was its value. And Mary’s jar of pure nard wasn’t just a little jar, it was a whole pound of nard, more than half a kilo. Imagine the size of two packets of butter – that much of one of the most expensive perfumes available in its purest form. Whatever it symbolized in terms of worship and kingship, for Mary it represented her life’s savings, her dowry, her future, her pension, her prospects.

It’s interesting that Jesus simply let her carry on pouring it out on his feet. He didn’t stop her, he didn’t say, ‘It’s OK Mary, you don’t need to do that. I know you love me, but save some of this to look after your own interests.’ He just received her extravagant, completely over-the-top act of adoration. This tells us something about Jesus’ own needs. He knew events were coming to a head, he needed to be loved and cared for by his friends at this critical point in his life, and he allowed them to pour themselves out for him. If even Jesus needed that, how much do we need it? It’s something worth remembering when we’re tempted to be self-sufficient under stress.

Perhaps we should also bear in mind, though, that this act of Mary’s doesn’t represent a daily habit of worship. This was a once-in-a-lifetime act of generosity, something she’d never done before and would never be able to repeat. Perhaps she, too, sensed the enormity of what was to come and knew, deep down, that this was her last chance to express her love for Jesus. If we have something precious to give to God that represents all that we have, then we too need a sense of the right time to give it.

If we’re to give our lives in the service of God we do need to be willing to offer everything we have for him, but we need to choose our moment. You can only pour out your life’s resources so many times. We need to know and understand the value of what we have – not just our possessions, but our gifts and talents, our time, the welfare of our children and family, all that makes up our ‘fortune.’ We often hear gospel messages about being willing to give more, and about not hoarding up what we have, and these are good messages. Equally, though, if we constantly pour out all that we have without a thought for the timing or the effect, when we find ourselves at a moment of great significance there will be nothing left to give.

Adapted from Giving it Up:

The same creative team has now set up an EASTER PATH, which is on now and until Easter. You can download the map and walk it yourself, or go on a guided tour on 10th April (Good Friday) at midday. I'm going, and looking forward to it no end. 

Today we remember the awful suffering and crucifixion of Jesus. He stood for life and love and justice and faith, upsetting convention and exposing hypocrisy, until the world couldn’t stand it and tried to stamp it out of him. The Early Fathers saw this death as God tricking the Devil; the Devil would have him dead, and failed to understand that the son of God cannot remain dead for long. 

In one of the most heart-rending images of the cross, Brazilian sculptor Guido Rocha portrays the fact that Jesus really suffered through his torture. It calls us to assess soberly what kind of Christianity we are prepared to take on – a comfortable, conventional, respectable faith? Or one of radical action that will really cost us something too?

Rocha’s sculpture also calls to mind the fact that Jesus endured real, vile torture to the point of death. As we remember Jesus, let’s also pray with compassion, and act in courage on behalf of those who are victims of torture somewhere in the world today. How? You have to find out. But when we look at religious imagery like this, it lacks something to say in our prayers that we wish we could take Jesus down from the cross and end his suffering, but not to do the same for those who suffer today. That’s not just a "social gospel" – it’s the call of jesus himself, when he said, "I was hungry, and you gave Me something to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger, and you invited Me in; naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me…  ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did this even to the least of my brothers or sisters, you did it to Me.’

The Resurrection is the final instalment of Geza Vermes’s Jesus trilogy, which began with The Passion and The Nativity. Vermes again adopts his trademark forensic textual analysis to separate fact from myth: "I wanted to explain exactly what the New Testament does tell us about the resurrection. People usually rely on others to interpret the gospels for them and St Paul’s assertion of the physical resurrection has become a cornerstone of Christianity for many people. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then faith is rubbish.

"Yet if you look at what Jesus actually said, then you get a different picture. If he did talk about the resurrection, he forgot to write it down; so it’s more likely he didn’t. And if he did, then why did his resurrection come as such a surprise to the apostles? No one said, ‘Of course, Jesus said it would be like this’ when his tomb was found to be empty; even Mary Magdalene assumed that someone must have moved the body. Nobody’s reactions correspond to the expectation of a resurrection."

Vermes goes on to argue that subsequent sightings of Jesus are best understood as visions in which the apostles felt his charisma working as it had done when he was alive. "Jesus had promised to be with them and he was," he argues. "It’s a resurrection of the spirit in the hearts of believers. The idea of an afterlife predates the Christian era and the preaching of eternal life is well attested; a physical resurrection is not essential to a belief in spiritual survival."

from an interview in The Guardian – read the rest here

Moot is a community and a blog that I follow regularly, as I know some of the guys there. I played a tiny part in getting Moot started by acting as Patron, and they have done some fab and creative things over the last few years. Ian Mobsby has a new book appearing shortly, which looks v. interesting.

But the thing that particularly inspired me this week was this short talk on Martha, Lary and Lazarus, from Phil. (Go to Moot and click for the MP3)