Think Question Believe

More people go to their GP suffering from depression than any other affliction. Mental health problems among all ages, but also increasing among the young are ever rising.
Now we can point at the alarming political news daily on our screens; we can cite workplace stress, the accelerating pace of modern life, the commoditisation of people in our aggressive materialist economies, a breakdown in traditional community structures, so many people living on their own, in fact a whole host of distressing reasons
But least part of the answer, was taught to us over two thousand years ago, but sadly as G.K. Chesterton once commented: 
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.”
Of course we need to put food on the table, clothes on our backs. Of course, we want ourselves and our loved ones to be safe and healthy and happy.
But is the relentless, single-minded, blinkered pursuit of possessions the means to fulfilment and peace, of truly realising our human potential?
Do we work on the state of our souls, our precious inner spirit, do we devote as much time, attention and care to the person that we are and might yet become, as we do to the accumulation of the so-called treasures of this world?
So what is Jesus trying to tell us, and why don’t we listen?

John the Baptist presents a heroic but tragic figure. Crying out in the wilderness, giving voice not only to his own heartbreak, but also to the pain and suffering of all his people.
However much the Romans might be bravely resisted, it was almost inconceivable that they might be repelled.
Almost.
For men like John still tried, still hoped, still preached that whatever worldly power the Romans might possess, nothing could withstand the might, in echo of Isaiah’s words, of ‘the one who is to come’, the promised Messiah.
For some Jesus was a disappointment, those for whom military might could be the only mark of the Messiah. Far from Isaiah’s notion of the Suffering Servant, they expected nothing less than a second King David, a victorious warrior, triumphant general, a kingdom of this world.
 
Jesus was an impossible claimant to the title; impossible and scandalous. A betrayal of the very ideal.
Today new fractures are emerging. In certain countries and certain political cultures we are seeing the emergence of what might be called Christian Nationalism, where the faith of Jesus is being twisted and contorted into a reversal, a perversion of all that he stood for – hatred in place of love, racial discrimination instead of compassion , the glorification of the obscenely rich and the denigration of the poor, the celebration of the gun instead of peace.

‘….the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
These are the words of a young man named John, a young prophet of wild and dishevelled appearance preaching to the people of his time, about the saviour who was to come:
‘The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” ’
John presents a very odd picture indeed. Matthew describes him as wearing clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt to hold his ensemble together – eating locusts and wild honey – we can imagine dishevelled hair – a wild man, shouting, accusing almost raving.
When today we see John as the forerunner we vastly underestimate his significance,
For John was very great indeed, there were many religious groups and movements around the Judean wilderness, but John’s charismatic preaching and baptism attracted vast crowds including Jesus himself.
There was also a rivalry between the followers of John and Jesus that persisted well after John’s death.
Lives and relationships are complicated, even, sometimes especially, in the most important and profound relationships. And whilst the voice of the leader of any organisation and movement must usually take priority over those of their followers, nevertheless other voices can carry messages of great value and significance.

Apocalyptic writing is sometimes called the “literature of the dispossessed”. It is the product of a people oppressed and alienated who have little chance of fighting back against those who dominate them with political, economic and military power.Sometimes the oppressors are their own corrupt politicians, sometimes outside ‘foreign’ regimes. And sometimes the stranglehold that our western companies have on their economies and their industries. A stranglehold in which we as consumers, demanding lower prices in the shops, are sadly complicit.And this is should be the goad, the spur for us to reflect upon, and change, our own behaviour, towards each other and within our world. Scripture, and our own eyes, tell us what injustice, cruelty and greed look like, we can also recognize the opposite. So if we say we want to see the Kingdom, and in our prayers we claim that we do, might we not anticipate what the Kingdom might look like, as best we can, and start to behave that way now. And not to wait for others to start, that way the delay is forever, but instead consider our hoped for place in the Kingdom and start to behave as if it were already here, that way, we might have some hope of actually seeing the Kingdom, of catching even catching some glimpses of the way of peace, justice and love, that we claim to desire so much.

Luke’s story of the boastful Pharisee and the repentant tax-collector addresses the theme of what we might call ‘holy reversal’.That the standards of this world, the values of so much of our world, the one with which we are so familiar, in which some of us deem themselves so successful and dominant, are in fact but the shadows of the true reality to which we are called.Up is down and down is up.But what of our present world?Daily on our news we see the Christian faith upended into a cult of greed, pride, hostility and hate – lovers of guns and violence parading Jesus as their hero and guide. But when once we might have at least contented ourselves with the belief that these things happened far away, and in cultures different to our own, now we see, that the sickness has spread rather closer to home, the emergence of enmity and prejudice, no doubt deceiving itself that it is something else.How are we to contend with this challenge both within our world – and within ourselves?