St Aidan: Flame of the North and Light for Today

Here's my sermon for today's Group Service at Redbourne, celebrating Aidan.

Picture by Tom Richardson from geograph.org.uk and wikicommons.org

1 Corinthians 9:16–19

For when I preach the gospel, I cannot boast, since I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! If I preach voluntarily, I have a reward; if not voluntarily, I am simply discharging the trust committed to me. What then is my reward? Just this: that in preaching the gospel I may offer it free of charge, and so not make full use of my rights as a preacher of the gospel.

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

John 13:16-20

Jesus said “Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

“I am not referring to all of you; I know those I have chosen. But this is to fulfil this passage of Scripture: 'He who shared my bread has turned against me.'

“I am telling you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe that I am who I am. Very truly I tell you, whoever accepts anyone I send accepts me; and whoever accepts me accepts the one who sent me.”

Today's service is focused on Aidan of Lindisfarne, who is commemorated in the church calendar on 31st August.

We don't know much about Aidan, but we do know that he came from the monastery on Iona.  That monastery was founded by Columba and became an important centre of religious practice and literacy.  Aidan was sent by the fifth Abbot of Iona, Ségéne, to help King Oswald bring Christianity to Northumbria. Oswald was also raised on Iona, and may have been friends with Aidan there.

This morning I want to draw out three aspects of Aidan's life and think about what they might mean for us today.

Creation

The first is Aidan's connection with creation.  Aidan belonged to the Celtic stream of Christianity, which again we know little of for sure, but there does seem to be a particular connection with the natural world.  Like the early monastic communities which were formed in the desert by people like Anthony of Egypt, Columba wanted a place away from the populated areas, away from the hustle and bustle of life which might distract him and his fellow monks from their connection with God.  When Oswald invited Aidan to set up a monastery in Northumbria, he didn't choose a place on the mainland next to Bamburgh, where Oswald's power base was, instead Aidan chose Lindisfarne, now known as Holy Island.  Aidan valued its peace and solitude when the tide was in, cutting it off from the mainland; and also the ease with which he could travel across when the tide was out.

However, unlike the desert, Lindisfarne was not just chosen for its peace and solitude, the environment itself was also aid to contemplation and worship.  Aidan has been said to be “the St Francis before St Francis”, which is why we started the service with a hymn based on Francis' words.  Aidan, along with others in the Celtic stream of Christianity, saw nature as participating in the worship of God as well as helping us to see truths about our Creator through his creation.  The Apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:20 “God’s invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

The prayer attributed to Aidan that's on the back of the service sheets [and at the bottom of this page] also illustrates how the rhythms of nature guided his schedule: when the tide was in and he was cut off from the world it reminded him that he was to be holy and set apart from God, and to make time to be with him; when the tide was out and he was connected to the world again it reminded him that he was to take that presence of God into the world, so that others might come to know God too.

For us, Aidan's spirituality reminds us of the importance of the natural world.  However, it also provides a reason for our care for the environment.  Too often the environmental movement bases it campaigning on one of two reasons.  It sometimes appeals to the selfish desire to live in a nice world, or for our children or grandchildren to live in a nice world.  Or it sometimes, either implicitly or explicitly, has a neo-pagan motivation saying that by damaging the environment we incur the wrath of nature deities like Mother Earth, and so we need to appease them by caring for the environment.

In contrast, Aidan's care for and appreciation of the natural world sprung from his belief that the world was created by a loving Creator, for us to enjoy and for our benefit; not just in providing us a place to live and with food to eat, but also to teach us about the Creator and so join in with the creation's praise of God.

Care for the poor

The second aspect of Aidan's life I want to highlight was his identification with and concern for the poor.  Many of the stories about Aidan speak about his humility and his rejection of personal wealth.  As Bede recorded, often when Aidan was given money he went to the slave market to purchase a slave’s freedom – and then also offered to educate them.

Two of the most famous stories about Aidan are about his humility and his concern for the poor.

At one Easter feast with Oswald there was a crowd of hungry, destitute people outside the castle, asking for food.  Under Aidan's influence, Oswald ordered that the feast should be taken out to the people, and that the silver dishes that it was served on should be broken up and distributed among them so that they could eat another day too.

Many years later, when Oswald's son Oswin was king, Oswin presented Aidan with a fine horse with royal trappings as a gift to help him on his journeys around Northumbria.  Almost immediately Aidan gave it away to a beggar he met on the road.  When Oswin found out, he was furious, but Aidan responded that the beggar was a son of God and therefore worth more than the son of a mare.  Oswin realised his pride and asked for forgiveness.

Aidan preferred walking on his missionary journeys rather than riding a horse, partly so that he could identify the exact needs of the people he encountered and minister to them in specific ways.  Paul's words in our first reading speak of him being a slave to all so that he might win as many as possible – Aidan had the same attitude.  Both of them could have demanded a certain status and respect because of their positions; Paul as an apostle and Aidan as a bishop; but both of them waived those rights in order to be better able to serve those they came across.  They were both following Jesus' example and his instructions to his disciples as we see in Mark 10:42-45

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them.  Not so with you.  Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.  For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Now we are not apostles or bishops, but many of us have positions of authority or leadership, even if that's in a small matter or for a short time.  Aidan's example challenges us about how we use that authority or leadership or decision-making.  But that servant-leadership is not to be done because it is the most effective way to be productive, or even because it's what Jesus did.  Instead it needs to be done from a heart that sees everyone as someone who is made in the image and likeness of God, otherwise our leadership becomes manipulative and our charity becomes condescending and patronising.

Oswin realised that his pride stopped him seeing the image of God in everyone around him, perhaps our pride too stops us seeing people as Aidan did – what are our horses that we need to give up?

Evangelism

The final aspect of Aidan's life should be the most obvious, but it often gets overlooked in favour of his connection with creation, or his humility and care for the poor.

And that is of course, that Aidan's primary concern was to tell people about the gospel - the good news about salvation and life through repentance and faith in Jesus.  That was the reason Oswald asked Ségéne to send someone from Iona to Northumbria – so that his people could know for themselves the God who Oswald had come to faith in on Iona.

Aidan had that same compulsion to preach the gospel that Paul wrote about in our first reading: “Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!”  That was the reason Aidan avoided the distractions of the busy-ness of life, or of possessions.  That was the reason he liked to walk; so that he could meet more people and spend more time getting to know them and talking to them about Jesus.  It was the reason that he was fearless in standing up to kings, because he was on a mission from the King of kings.  It was the reason he spent time training up priests, so that they too could go out and tell more people the gospel.  And it was probably because he trained and sent Hybald that Christianity first came to this area – and that we are here now.

However, Aidan wasn't successful everywhere he went.  As Jesus says in our reading from John's gospel – he himself would be rejected and so we shouldn't be surprised if we who follow him are rejected too.  But he also promised that those who accept us accept him too.  And those who accepted Aidan's message did so partly because they saw Jesus reflected in Aidan's life.

Aidan was not the first monk that Ségéne sent from Iona.  A monk called Corman had been sent, but after a few months he returned home complaining about the stubborn, uncivilised people he was supposed to serve.  Apparently, Aidan quietly enquired if he perhaps should have spoken more gently to them, giving them the milk of the gospel as to small babies. And Aidan was sent to replace him.

We're not all called to be missionaries, we're not all called to what Columba called 'white martyrdom' that is leaving everything to go where God calls us to go.  But all who call themselves Christian are called to the Great Commission of telling others about the gospel – the good news of about salvation and life through repentance and faith in Jesus.  Aidan gives us an example of not being distracted from this calling by other things, but also of making sure that its not just our words that point people towards Jesus but our actions as well.

Conclusion

The name Aidan means 'flame' in Gaelic, and so he is sometimes called “The Flame of the North.”  He is credited with bringing light to Northumbria in what used to be called the Dark Ages.  Because of him literacy became more widespread; kings gradually became less like warlords and more like just rulers; and care for the poor became part of what a king should do.  Of course, there are many examples of the opposite of those both then and right up to now.  But this change is only possible because of the light which Aidan brought, which is the light of the gospel of Jesus.

Ultimately, creation is only worth caring for because it is the creation of God.  Ultimately, people are only worth caring for because they are made in the image and likeness of God.  Ultimately, we are only equal because our value is not due to our status, our education, our wealth or our physical attributes, but because we are equally loved by God.  Aidan lived by this light, and he dedicated his life to passing this light on.

If he were here today, he might ask, humbly, gently and lovingly: is this the light you live by and do you know Jesus, the Light of the World?

Prayer attributed to Aidan

Pictures of Easter

Here's my article for April:

There are many images associated with Easter: bunnies, chicks, decorated eggs, bunches of Spring flowers; but often associated with the religious celebration of Easter is a picture of a hill with three crosses on it, and sometimes a rising sun behind it.  For those who aren't familiar with all the details of the Easter story, this can be a bit confusing.  They might know that Easter is something to do with the death of Jesus on a cross, but who are the other two crosses for?  Perhaps they are for two of his followers?  The answer is that “Two rebels were crucified with [Jesus], one on his right and one on his left” (Matthew 27:38).

The crime of these two men is translated many ways, and traditionally they are said to be thieves, however the translation above is probably closest to the truth.  We know this because crucifixion was the penalty for  rebels or revolutionaries, especially if they were slaves (think Spartacus!).   Jesus was charged with blasphemy by the Jewish religious leaders for claiming he was divine, but the Romans put him to death on a charge of treason for claiming to be the king (John 19:1-16).  Ironically he wasn't leading a rebellion and that was one of the reasons the Jewish leaders turned against him!

So Jesus was crucified along with guilty rebels, and in the place of another rebel, Barabbas, whose rebellion also involved murder (Luke 23:18-19).  So it is likely that they too were guilty of violent and murderous insurrection.  Today we might call them terrorists.

These terrorists were trying to overthrow the occupying Romans and regain an independent nation, and they looked for a Messiah, a warrior king, who would do exactly that.  However, Jesus didn't come as a nationalist leader.  But this makes the words of one of the rebels to Jesus even more appropriate: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42).  The terrorist realises that he had been fighting for the wrong kingdom, and instead wants to join Jesus in his kingdom.

Jesus was not offering a Jewish nationalistic alternative to a Roman colonialist system, but a kingdom that is “not of this world” (John 18:36).  He was misunderstood both by his people and by the Romans, and he continues to be misunderstood whenever he is appropriated to a political cause.  Jesus didn't come to be a left-wing alternative to a right-wing government, or vice-versa.  Jesus came to inaugurate a kingdom where he is king; where all ideologies and world-views are de-throned; and our ultimate allegiance is to God.

So if you see a picture of three crosses on a hill, you may want to ask yourself which kingdom you are fighting for, and perhaps to ask Jesus to join him in his.

Lent Reflections 2026: Palm Sunday and Humility

We have spent the past five weeks thinking about humility, and looking to Jesus as being both the exemplar of humility, and also the one whose Spirit enables us to to become more humble.

Today, we start Holy Week by remembering Jesus' entry into Jerusalem a few days before his death and resurrection. The Gospels record how Jesus came riding into the city, whilst the crowds lined the road, waving branches in celebration and laying their cloaks on the road as a carpet. They praised him as God's representative and hailed him as king. We call it Jesus' Triumphal Entry; not only does he enter in triumph but his entry is reminiscent of that of the Roman Emperor.

This doesn't seem to be very humble!! It's sometimes said that Jesus is showing his humility by riding a donkey rather than a horse, but the meaning of this (as we see from the quote from Zechariah 9:9) is that Jesus is coming gently and in peace, rather than on a horse, which symbolises war. The Zechariah quote also says that it is the king who comes on the donkey.

So, Jesus is clearly coming as king. He could have walked into Jerusalem along with everyone else; he could even have slipped into Jerusalem unnoticed, as he did in John 7:10. Instead, he deliberately sets up the situation in which through symbolism he claims to be the Messianic King, coming to the capital city Jerusalem to claim his throne. How can this be the actions of someone who is humble?

The answer comes most vividly as we read the second set of petitions in the Litany of Humility: freedom from the fear of being humiliated, despised, rebuked, calumniated, forgotten, ridiculed, wronged and suspected. Jesus knew he was the Messiah, and he knew that that meant that he would “be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him” (Mark 10:33-34). He knew that his throne in Jerusalem would be the cross – above his head would be the words “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews” (John 19:19)

Jesus “humbled himself by becoming obedient to death – even death on a cross!” (Philippians 2:8), he was obedient to his Father, but he also humbled himself by putting our need for salvation above his desires for praise and even for life itself.   The proof of God's amazing love is that while we were sinners, Jesus died for us (Romans 5:8) – Jesus was hated so we could be loved.

Jesus rides into Jerusalem proclaiming himself as the Messianic King. But he would subvert the expectation of what that meant by pointing to what the Old Testament said about the coming Messiah. In doing so, he would show us what true humility looks like.

“This is our God, the Servant King. He calls us now to follow him.”

Curling: a great sport for Lent

Here's my article for March:

Photo by Richard Berling from Flickr

Last month we had the spectacle of the Winter Olympics in Italy.  Despite some people dismissing them as just lots of different ways of sliding, I really enjoy the Winter Olympics and will happily watch almost all of the events.  But my particular favourite is the curling.  For those that have never seen it, it is a cross between archery, bowling and housework on ice: players throw/slide stones into a target area (or 'house') and the team with the closest stones to the centre wins that 'end' and the team with the most points after a set number of ends wins.  I enjoy it because it's a games of tactics, but it's also dramatic with stones smashing into each other, and slightly comical with people sliding while sweeping the ice.

Target games like curling, archery, bowling and darts have an ancient pedigree, probably stemming back to practicing for hunting or warfare. They are useful practically but also metaphorically: we talk of being 'on target' to achieve things.

This metaphor helps us to understand what the biblical concept of 'sin' means, which is especially relevant in this season of Lent.  We often think of sin, if we think of it at all, as being individual acts that are morally wrong.  We also often rank some sins as being worse than others, almost like the rings of the archery target, and as long as we get closer to the centre than others, we feel satisfied with our performance, and consider ourselves to be good.  However, in some ways curling gets us closer to the biblical meaning of sin.

The stone closest to the centre scores and so do any other of that team's stones that are nearer to the centre than any stones of the opposing team. The non-scoring stones are discounted and swept away. Thus, one team can have all eight of their stones in the house, but if the other team has just one closer to the centre, all eight stones are worthless.

In the Bible, to sin is to 'miss the mark'; it doesn't matter how close you get, if you don't hit the target the effort is worthless.  Jesus tells us what the mark is: "be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48).  Anything less than being as perfect as God is being sinful.  Unlike archery where you get points for being near the centre, when it comes to morality only the bullseye will do, all other shots are worthless. (Of course, in curling you only have to have the stone closest to the centre and in the house, so you can score even if you're not in the centre, but this just proves that metaphors are limited!)

So Paul says “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), echoing Isaiah who said “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags”  (Isaiah 64:6).  That means that even our best efforts and best actions are so far away from the target that they don't count for anything. Therefore, “the person who keeps every law of God but makes one little slip is just as guilty as the person who has broken every law there is” (James 2:10 The Living Bible), 

If you want God to judge you on your good deeds, he will, but the target is perfection, the pass mark is 100%  - anything less and you fail.  But Jesus, the only one who hits that target, invites us to join his team so that we win the prize of eternal life, not because of what we do but because of what he has done.

Betrayal and how to deal with it

Here's my article for February (and my second inspired by The Traitors!!):

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

Again this year we seem to be in the grip of 'Traitors-mania': Celebrity Traitors before Christmas was widely praised and the latest series of the normal format started last month.  As the title suggests, it is all about trust and treachery and although “it's only a gameshow” it involves real people trusting other people and often being really betrayed.

Betrayal is doubly cruel because it not only means that someone has harmed you in some way, but that the person was someone you trusted.  We hear this double pain in the words Shakespeare gives Julius Caesar as he is being assassinated: “Et tu, Brute?”  Caesar would have expected his enemies to want to kill him but not his friend Brutus.  If we love and trust people we risk not only being let down by them, but also being betrayed by them.  Therefore Tennessee Williams said that “We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal.”  This is a potential solution, but it's not a world I would like to live in!  So, how can we cope with betrayal, whether that's in a small matter or in a significant matter?

In this season of Lent, our attention is turned towards the events of Jesus' final week before his crucifixion and betrayal is a common theme.  We might initially think of Judas' actions, but Peter also denied knowing Jesus (Matthew 26:69-75) and the rest of the disciples abandoned Jesus when he was arrested (Matthew 26:47-56).  Even the actions of Jesus' opponents in accomplishing his death are also cast as betrayal (Acts 7:52). 

The opposition to Jesus can be quite puzzling if we just see him as being a kind and gentle person who tried to encourage people to love each other.  But when we see Jesus' mission as bringing in the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom that challenges all earthly power and rule, the opposition of those holding earthly power becomes more understandable.  This shouldn't be a surprise if we pay attention to what we heard as we celebrated his birth at Christmas.  Simeon prophesied that “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against” (Luke 2:34). John tells us why this opposition was also a betrayal, using perhaps the most tragic words ever written: “though the world was made through [Jesus], the world did not recognise him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:10-11).

Jesus responded to this betrayal on the cross, saying “‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).  He forgave them not just with words but by dying so they could be forgiven.

Jesus' words of forgiveness apply not only to those who crucified him and to those who deserted him; they apply to each of us too, because we also do not receive him when we sin.  The good news is that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It's only by accepting the forgiveness Jesus offers for our betrayal of him that we can have the strength to forgive those who betray us.

Be far more retro!

Here's my article for December:

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Christmas is often a time when we indulge in nostalgia, recalling happy memories of past Christmases with family, friends and loved ones.    And perhaps trying to re-create those memories by carrying on family traditions, listening to the classic Christmas songs, and putting up the same decorations in the same place.  A visit to church for a carol service might also be part of an attempt to re-live those treasured times.  Because nostalgia plays such a big rôle in our experience of Christmas, it is a common theme in Christmas advertising, where companies try to persuade us that buying their products will help us replicate the feelings we cherish.

Fr. Philip Hall, the parish priest of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church of All Saints of Lincolnshire, Lincoln, wrote in his November newsletter of a current advert trying to persuade us that the “magic of Christmas” is to be found in retro-style decorations. However, he says, “we need to be far more retro”!  If we want the 'magic' of Christmas we need to go back not to our childhood, or even to the idealised Victorian Christmas, but we need to go back 2,000 years to remember the spiritual roots of our celebrations.

One reason we often look back to a 'golden time' of Christmases past is that those celebrations, especially when we were children, were responsibility-free – all we had to do was enjoy the presents, the food, the parties, the people.  We didn't have to worry about arranging them or paying for them; they just magically appeared!  As adults, the necessary but mundane, behind-the-scenes preparations often take the lustre off our enjoyment of the very experiences we work so hard to create.  No wonder we want to feel Christmas like a child again!

What we long for is a re-enchantment of Christmas, and not just of Christmas but of the whole of our lives: we wish it could be Christmas everyday, as long as it's the 'magical' Christmas we remember, not the pressurised adult version!  Fr Philip is right that if we want to re-enchant Christmas and our lives we need to be far more retro and go back to the source: Christmas is 'magical', not in the sense of wizards but in that it reveals to us another realm of reality beyond the mundane, natural universe; it reveals the super-natural to us.

Religions might affirm that the supernatural exists, or even that we might enter the supernatural realm after death, but Christmas tells us something far more wonderful; that the supernatural realm entered our natural realm as the baby Jesus, so that the supernatural could dwell amongst us, and our mundane world could be re-enchanted.  A re-enchanted world is one that has a meaning and a purpose; a naturalistic world, one that exists through blind chance and the laws of physics, has no ultimate meaning or purpose and is dis-enchanted.   Jesus comes to offer us life in all its re-enchanted fullness (John 10:10) that as we live in relationship with him, he lives in us. So if you feel discontented with the mundane, why not come to church and be far more retro?

Where can we find real and lasting community?

Here is the sermon I gave at the 2025 Broughton Town Council Civic Service:

Matthew 10:1-8

10 Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and illness.

 

2 These are the names of the twelve apostles: first, Simon (who is called Peter) and his brother Andrew; James son of Zebedee, and his brother John; 3 Philip and Bartholomew; Thomas and Matthew the tax collector; James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus; 4 Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

 

5 These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. 6 Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. 7 As you go, proclaim this message: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” 8 Heal those who are ill, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received; freely give.'

Sermon

As well as to asking God to bless us and guide us, our Civic Service is another chance to celebrate all that's good in our community. And so much of what is good in our community is done by volunteers. Alice has just read a poem praising volunteers who willingly give up their time to serve others. That includes many of you who are here today! So it's great that we have this opportunity to give you recognition and praise, which is so richly deserved.

It is always great to celebrate our community and those who work so hard to create that community, but it is perhaps even more necessary these days. Because we live in world where people are increasingly isolated because their attention is being given to online spaces rather than the people around them. This is not just a young person's phenomenon – all of us, whatever age we are, are susceptible to the addictive nature of online content, delivered to us through the handy, ever-present portal of our mobile phones. Community is breaking down because we care less about our neighbour and more about funny things that cats do.

Another downside of spending too much time in the online sphere is that the algorithms filter our content so that we increasing only see content we like and that we agree with. Therefore we are fooled into thinking that the majority of the world thinks like we do, because the majority of the content we see agrees with us – we operate in what are known as echo-chambers. So, people that disagree with us seem to be in a minority, and are often portrayed as ignorant and even dangerous. We saw this particularly with the response to the assassination of Charlie Kirk: some people's feeds portrayed him as the Messiah, other people's feeds said he was a very naughty boy. He was either a perfect saint or an evil sinner, with no nuance at all. With no grace at all.

Our discussions have increasingly also lacked nuance and grace , and instead of listening to other people's opinions and evaluating them fairly, we simply ignore them and, if possible, cancel them so no-one else can hear them. We may still have community but they are often online, mono-cultural and mono-opinioned communities, where no dissenting views are allowed. 

God is a fan of community. God himself is a community of three Persons in one. In Genesis when he created the universe, he created a huge diversity of plants and animals to live in harmony together. And when he created humans, as the pinnacle of his creation, as the only creatures made in his image and likeness, he declared that it was not good for Adam to be alone. And when God the Son became incarnate as Jesus, he gathered around him a community of twelve disciples.

 

We heard in our reading who those twelve men were, and it is easy to think that that list is insignificant; but on closer inspection this list tells us some important things about what true community is like. Most of the names, like Simon, are Hebrew or of Hebrew origin, but some, like Philip are Greek. Although all of the disciples are Jewish, their names probably reflect varying degrees of contact and comfort with non-Jewish people. We don't know much about their occupations but some were fishermen; some were owners of fishing businesses, and one was a tax collector, so there were varied levels of education and wealth.

 

But perhaps the most striking feature of this list is that Matthew was a tax collector and Simon was a zealot. As a tax collector, Matthew not only collaborated with the occupying Romans by collecting taxes on their behalf from his fellow countrymen, but he would have also extorted more tax than was due for his own commission: he was a thief and a traitor. Simon, on the other hand, was a zealot, someone who believed that the occupying Romans, and their collaborators, should be driven out of Israel by armed force. Ordinarily, Matthew and Simon would not have spent time together – these days they would have wanted each other cancelled, and denounced each other as holding views which are unacceptable in modern society.

 

But here they are, together in the community that Jesus brought together. I'm sure there were some animated discussions about how to deal with the Romans, and also what the relationship between the Jews and the non-Jews should be, but they didn't walk away from each other, nor did they expel each other from the group.

 

As humans we naturally want to spend time with like-minded people, and will often divide ourselves according to any number of factors, both trivial and serious. So what made the disciples stick together? The answer has to be the presence of Jesus.

 

Jesus didn't just want students who would learn his teachings and then go out to pass them on to others; he wanted to create a community. Their message wasn't just that the kingdom of heaven had come near because God has come to earth as Jesus; but that the kingdom of heaven had come near because Jesus was forming a kingdom community, people living out what it means to belong to the kingdom of God. So the signs of that kingdom were healings and the driving out of evil: the physical healings were signs of the healing of our fallen, sinful nature and also of the healing of divisions between people; the driving out of demons were the sign of the defeat of the causes of those divisions.

 

And this was all possible only through Jesus: it was by grounding their identity in Jesus that the disciples could rise above the other identities that divided them; it was by working for the higher cause of living the kingdom of God on earth that all other causes became insignificant or found their real fulfilment; it was by Jesus' death that the power of the malevolent forces, and of sin, was broken.

 

We have gathered to celebrate community, even at a time when communities are being splintered by fear, suspicion and ambition. Well done to all of you who work so hard to build that community by serving others, often voluntarily. But if we want real and lasting community, we need to be praying that God's kingdom would come, that his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. True and lasting community can only be found by gathering together around Jesus: not just around his teachings but by becoming part of the community that he founded, the fellowship of believers, that brings the kingdom of God near, by living that kingdom now.

Attention, desire and character

Here is my article for October:

 Image by kp yamu Jayanath from Pixabay

There are many sayings that connect our choices with the consequences of those choices: how many of us were told as children when pulling a funny face, “if the wind changes your face will stay like that!”; or the slightly more logical “you are what you eat”?  I heard another recently that is much more profound: “what you give attention to, your heart will desire.” It is both a warning and encouragement: the things we fill our minds with will become the things we crave.

There are many benefits to modern media but one of the draw-backs is the constant stream of 'content.' No sooner have you finished one show or video or reel or article than the next one pops up. This means that sometimes we are exposed to a wide variety of materials (although the algorithms eventually narrow that down!) but it also means that we skip past 'uninteresting' content (i.e. normal life!!) trying to find something that gives us a dopamine hit. Thus the ordinary becomes boring and real life becomes drab.

The truth that what we focus on eventually shapes our character is one of the reasons that I maintain that Halloween is never 'harmless fun' but is always dangerous. To surround ourselves with decorations that celebrate and trivialise the forces of evil is to allow them to become influences on our lives. The mixed message of wicked, nasty or violent things being praised and rewarded with sweets is particularly dangerous for the impressionable young minds of children – ordinary life becomes boring compared with the exciting thrill of the darker side of the supernatural. But even for adults giving attention to the sinister forces will lead to an openness to further interaction with them and then a desire for continuing interaction. Hence the interest in witchcraft, Wicca, mediums, psychics, spiritism, ouija boards, tarot cards, horoscopes and other occult practices. All these expose us to forces that want to control our lives, but not for our benefit.

Knowing that what we give attention to our heart will desire, the Apostle Paul encourages us, saying “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable - if anything is excellent or praiseworthy - think about such things” (Philippians 4:8). However, before we can do that we need “to be made new in the attitude of [y]our minds” (Ephesians 4:23), so we cry out with the Psalmist “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me” (Psalm 51:10). Jesus, who defeated the power of the forces of evil on the cross (Colossians 2:15) and who promises life in all its fullness to those who follow him (John 10:10), offers each of us that fresh start, and as we pay more attention to him and his word, we'll find that he is the one we were desiring all along.

Conkering King

Here's an extended version of my article for September:

Image by Mabel Amber from Pixabay

With Autumn fast approaching, golden brown leaves will be falling to the ground along with various nuts and seeds, and perhaps the most nostalgia-inducing of all is the conker. The shiny mahogany-brown shell can evoke happy memories of childhood games, or even just the joy of collecting as many as you can. The game of conkers, like many traditional games, has many different variants, rules and scoring systems. Often a conker's score increases by defeating another conker, and it's designation reflects that: so, a conker that has beaten one other is called a 'one-er'; then if it defeats another it becomes a 'two-er' and so on. A variant of this is that the victorious conker receives all the victories of the defeated conker: thus a 'four-er' that defeats a 'two-er' becomes a 'six-er' (or sometimes a 'seven-er' if it also gets a point for the victory too – cue many a playground dispute!!).

Sometimes games and sports are seen as practice for, or imitation of, battles or geo-political events. And the system in conkers of ranking based on previous victories, and in particular of absorbing the victories of the defeated conker, has a parallel in ancient history. From the twelfth century BC onwards, it was common in the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent for the supreme ruler of the area to be known as the “King of Kings” often because they or their predecessors had defeated the other rulers in the region. Two of the Persian kings mentioned in the Bible, Darius and Xerxes, referred to themselves as the King of Kings, and variations of this title were used by the rulers of the Greek Empire which defeated Persia to become the regional superpower.

For us, the title 'King of Kings' is more usually associated with Jesus, and is often paired with a similar title 'Lord of Lords' – and these words will have many people thinking of the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah!!  The visions of the four earthly kingdoms in Daniel chapters 2 and 7 teach how “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, nor will it be left to another people. It will crush all those kingdoms and bring them to an end, but it will itself endure forever” (Daniel 2:44). Jesus' earliest followers saw that Jesus was the King of that promised kingdom, and therefore the ultimate King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The odd thing about this is that Jesus never had a position of power or authority during his earthly ministry. His death was that of the lowest criminal and the few followers he had at that time deserted him. The inscription on his cross ('Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews') was deeply ironic, as was the crown of thorns and purple robe the guards made him wear before his crucifixion, and Pilate's declaration “Here is your king!” (John 19:14). However, Paul tells us in Philippians 2 that it was because Jesus laid aside his divine majesty, to become human so that he could die to take the punishment we deserve for our sins, that his Father raised him from the dead and “gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord.” So we have a choice: either follow earthly authorities who grasp self-interestedly after power which will fade, or follow the One who gave self-sacrificially for us and will rule forever.

Becoming a New Creation

Here's my April article:

This year we've been having some work done on the Vicarage including having a new kitchen fitted. Anyone who has had work done on their house will know how disruptive it can be, but hopefully the end results make all the trouble worth it, because after all the chaos there's something new - a new creation.

Easter is all about new life and new creation: chicks hatching out of eggs; spring flowers growing from dormant bulbs; new-born lambs gamboling in the fields; and chocolate… well I'm not quite sure how that fits in! These are symbols and God-given signposts of how Jesus' resurrection ushers in a new creation: that is the new heavens and new earth that will fully come when Jesus returns (Revelation 21) but can be seen in part here and now. But this new creation is not just about the world being redeemed, renewed and put right, it is also about us as individuals being redeemed, renewed and put right. In both cases, this new creation comes through disruption.

This sounds very similar to countless self-help books and motivational talks. Phrases like "No pain, no gain" are applied not just to physical transformation but also to personal, mental, professional and even spiritual transformation. The message from the transformation gurus and influencers is that you need to kill your old self in order that your new self can emerge, and this transformation is hard work, disruptive and painful, but worth it in the end.

But this is not the message of Easter. It might seem like the new creation of Easter only comes after the hard self-discipline of Lent and the self-sacrifice exemplified by Good Friday, but that would be a misunderstanding of the Christian message. Jesus is not a transformation guru who coaches us from the side, encouraging us to work harder. Instead he tells us that we cannot transform ourselves, no matter how hard we try: we don't need a trainer, we need a Saviour.

Just like I would not be able to fully fit a new kitchen but need someone else to do it for me, so I cannot transform myself. That's why God says "I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you…[and] I will put my Spirit within you" (Ezekiel 36:26-27). It's God who transforms us; we do not create a new heart within ourselves because we cannot. We need something from outside of ourselves to redeem, renew and put us right. We don't just need a better version of ourselves, we need God's Spirit to transform us and re-create us. The pain and disruption we need to go through is not the pain of self-correction and trying harder to be good, it is the pain of admitting we cannot redeem ourselves no matter how hard we try; it is the pain of swallowing our pride and admitting we need help. This is the message of Easter: God offers us the new creation we long for and that we cannot achieve by ourselves.

Faithful or Traitor?

Here's my article for March:

Photo by Lance Reis on Unsplash

“Are you a Faithful or are you a Traitor?” This question reverberated around the heads of many people who watched the latest series of 'The Traitors' which bills itself as being “the ultimate reality game of trust and treachery.” IMDB summarises the show as “Twenty-two strangers compete in a series of missions for a chance to win £120k. However, amongst the players lie the 'Traitors', who meet in secret and decide who to eliminate from their fellow players known as 'Faithfuls'.” The Faithfuls have to try to guess who amongst them is a Traitor and vote them to be banished. It's basically an elaborate game of wink murder!

I only started watching it halfway through the previous series, but it has an addictive quality akin to morbid curiosity, and I'm not quite sure what to make of my interest in it. There is something about the premise of the show which revolves around lies and deception that makes me uncomfortable, and although “it's only a gameshow” it involves real people trusting other people and often being really betrayed. And I'm not sure whether it makes it worse that these are 'good' people pretending to be bad, but doing actual bad things in order to win a game. In some ways I'd rather it were 'bad' people doing bad things because ironically at least they would be being 'faithful' to their nature.

But perhaps what really makes me uncomfortable about the programme is the mirror it holds up to me. In reality I am like the 'Traitors' – projecting a 'good' persona to hide my inner self-interest. Jesus was the first to use the word 'hypocrite' in the way we use it today (before that it simply meant an actor), and he once said to the religious leaders of his day “You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness” (Matthew 23:27-28.)

The temptation is to blame our surroundings for the way we behave; just as the contestants justify their behaviour because 'it's the game', so we say we have to be self-centred because the world and everyone else is fallen. However, the Christian doctrine of Original Sin exposes that as simply an excuse. There are many jobs that we say we will do 'when we get around to it', but the COVID lockdown proved that many of those jobs don't get done not because of lack of time and opportunity (there was plenty of that in lockdown!) but instead because of a lack of will and motivation. According to Douglas Murray, Original Sin teaches us that “we are this very, very contorted being which is capable of incredible greatness and beauty and kindness and forgiveness and also capable of their opposites and that it's not that you are one and other people are the other but all of us all of us are both all the time.” In the perfection of the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve chose disobedience and self-centredness, and demonstrated that the problem is not our environment, but ourselves. As is often said “the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart.”

Jesus likened himself to a doctor (Luke 5:31) who both diagnoses the problem but also offers the remedy. In Lent we are encouraged to face squarely our hypocrisy, not to crush us with guilt but to direct us to Jesus who took on that guilt, our guilt, on the cross. We are all 'Traitors' but the one we betrayed died taking our punishment – that is a priceless prize!

Reindeer names and nicknames

Here's my December article:

You know Dasher and Dancer, and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen, and you will also know Rudolph. But do you also know about Flossie and Glossie, and Racer and Pacer, Reckless and Speckless, Fearless and Peerless, and Ready and Steady? In 1823, the poem “A Visit from St Nicholas” made famous the first set of reindeer (minus Rudolph who wasn't created until 1939.) Almost eighty years later, L. Frank Baum (who wrote “The Wizard of Oz”) wrote a book called “The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus” and gave the second set as Santa's reindeer. We don't know why he decided to use different names, but it shows that Christmas traditions are not set in stone!

The reindeer names are probably meant to tell us something of the character of each of them, even if their characters aren't developed in the stories, and this is a common feature of story-telling. It also happens in real life as we name pets and even give each other nicknames based on character or skills.

In church there are many Christmas traditions, and we hear familiar readings from the Bible telling of the preparation for Jesus in the Old Testament and the accounts of the events around his birth. Some of these readings give nicknames for Jesus that tell us important things about who he is and what he came to do.

Perhaps the most famous is the titles Jesus is given in Isaiah's prophecy in Isaiah 9:6 “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

'Wonderful Counsellor' tells us that Jesus is wonderful in the sense that he arouses in us a sense of wonder and awe and marvel. As we approach Christmas, familiarity blind us to the amazing events surrounding Jesus' birth, like the angels, the star and the virgin birth itself, so we need to recover our wonder at the very coming of Jesus, how “...within a manger lies / he who built the starry skies.” As Counsellor he imparts wisdom and truth to us, not as just one more voice among many but as the one who has the words of eternal life (John 6:68), who is Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:24) and Truth (John 14:6).

The name 'Mighty God' has overtones of powerfulness and strength particularly in battle, and this reminds us that Jesus didn't just come to do miraculous deeds, or give amazing teachings, but that he came to fight the spiritual enemies of sin and death. To call Jesus “Everlasting Father” reminds us of his eternal, divine nature and also that his character is father-like. His government will not rule by fear and oppression but will be characterised by peace, justice and righteousness, and he is also the 'Father' of our redemption (Hebrews 2:10-13 and 12:2).

Jesus' title of Prince of Peace is probably one of his best known and reminds us that through his death and resurrection he brings peace and reconciliation between humanity and God (Romans 5:1) and therefore also the possibility of peace between people.

But there are two more names that sum up what Christmas is all about: Gabriel tells Joseph “to give him the name Jesus, [which means the Lord saves] because he will save his people from their sins.” And Matthew tells us “All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 'The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel' (which means 'God with us')” (Matthew 1:21-23). So this Christmas why not find out more about the God who comes to us as a baby to save us from our sins?

Photo by Norman Tsui on Unsplash

Should we still remember?

Here is my sermon from this year's Remembrance Sunday service at Broughton:

It's now over one hundred years since the first Remembrance Sunday took place at the end of the First World War; this year we commemorated the 80th anniversary of D-Day; next year we'll celebrate the 80th anniversary of VE Day – and very few of those who remember those events are still alive today. So it might be reasonable to ask the question, do we still need to carry on remembering? After all we don't still remember the battle of Waterloo in the same way, and that too was a war to stop a dictator taking over Europe.

It seems to me that Remembrance Sunday is important especially for those who don't believe in God but still want to hold on to the idea that there are moral absolutes – that some actions are right and others wrong; that some actions are good and others are evil. Without God to define what is right and what is wrong it is necessary to come up with another standard for morality and so the moral and ethical code for many in our society is summed up in the golden rule: “Don't be like Hitler!” And so Remembrance events are annual reminders of that secular basis for morality.

This, however, makes our sense of good and bad a matter of comparison: “I may not be perfect but I'm not as bad as Hitler”! As the old joke says, if you're in a place with bears you don't have to be able to run faster than the bear, you only have to be able to run faster than your companions! As long as you're not the slowest, you'll survive. And that's the way morality is seen too: as long as I'm not the worst I'm OK. We compare ourselves with others, even those around us, and as long as we are better than they are, we satisfy ourselves that we are good. And even if we've got no-one around us who is worse than us, we are still good because we're not Hitler.

In our second Bible reading (Mark 10:17-27), a man comes up to Jesus to ask a question and calls him “Good Teacher.” “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone.” In doing so, Jesus was making a point about himself – in calling him 'good' the man recognises that Jesus is divine; but Jesus is also making a point about us – we are not good. Even if we obey a lot of the Ten Commandments like the man had, we are still not good. The man was relying on his good deeds for his salvation, for his reputation of being good, but Jesus reminds him and us that it is impossible for us to be saved, to be good by our own actions.

The problem is our perspective. When we compare ourselves with others we will always find people worse than ourselves: even Hitler thought he was morally better than others – which is why he put so many into death camps. Unlike the Mitchell and Webb comedy sketch, the Nazis didn't look at themselves and ask “Are we the baddies?” - they thought they were the goodies. We may think that morally we are as far away from the Nazis as we are in distance from Australia, but we are looking at it from ground level. Jesus reminds us that the moral standard is God himself – only he is good. And when we compare ourselves with him, we are as far away from him morally as we are in distance from the edge of the universe. And from the edge of the universe, the distance between us and Australia is ultra-microscopically small. Compared with God we are as bad as Hitler.

A film came out last year called “The Zone of Interest” about Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig who strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden beside the camp. But what makes this film different to other Holocaust movies is that instead of getting us to identify with the victims, it wants to show us our similarities with the perpetrators.

So while Remembrance events are good for reminding ourselves to not be like Hitler, it is Remembrance Sunday that teaches us the most important lesson: peace will never come through human effort. Because all of us share that inner sinfulness that is only a step away from committing the horrors we see in war. We need to be reminded not to be like Hitler because we are like Hitler. The Commandments Jesus doesn't mention in his list are Commandments about putting God first in our lives, and by failing to do that our inhumanity towards humanity will continue. But the good news that introduces the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:2) is that that God saves us not on the basis of our good deeds but on his love for us – which is shown supremely in Jesus' death which takes the punishment for our sins and attributes to us a goodness that we could never achieve ourselves.

Our first reading (Isaiah 2:2-5) tells us that one day those who are willing will learn God's ways and walk in his paths, and that is a good thing to start doing now. But it is only through Jesus that peace will come because he is the good one who will judge between the nations and settle the disputes for many peoples. That is why he is called the Prince of Peace; that is why the peace doves we have here today come out from the cross.

Harvest Sacrifices

Here's my article for the October magazines:

Harvest time often brings back fond memories, including memories of the hymns and songs sung at this time, many of which are well-loved favourites. Although not strictly a harvest hymn, I have fond memories of being in the school choir singing John Rutter's setting of “For the beauty of the earth”, and it's always a sadness when it's sung to a different tune!

The words were written by Folliott S. Pierpoint (great name!) in the spring of 1863 as he sat on a hilltop outside his native city of Bath mesmerized by the beauty of the countryside that surrounded him. As we now sing Pierpoint's words, in response to the wonderful things around us; in nature, in human relationships, and other blessings from God, we raise a joyful or grateful hymn of praise, or in Pierpoint's original lyrics, a sacrifice of praise.

The idea of a sacrifice brings us around again to the harvest theme. Although the Harvest Festival as we know it only developed in the mid nineteenth century, many cultures have rituals around the agricultural year stretching back to the beginnings of human history. A lot of these rituals involved making sacrifices to the deities they thought responsible for the weather and the growth of crops. Sacrifices of food, drink, animals and even humans were made to curry favour with these deities or to appease them when their displeasure was shown through things like adverse weather or crop failure.

The harvest rituals in the Jewish tradition, however, were of a different kind. There was an acknowledgement that “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it” (Psalm 24:1) and therefore “Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand” (1 Chronicles 29:14). We cannot give sacrifices to God because he owns them all already! Instead, the harvest sacrifices were demonstrations of faith and trust in God – they were to give the firstfruits of the crops (Exodus 23:16) trusting God that he would provide the rest of the crop. They weren't to give the surplus or the left-overs but what, at the time it was given, was the only crops they had.

Our Harvest Festivals give us a chance to raise a sacrifice of praise to the God who continues to provide for us through the labours of others and the wonders of creation – not in order to appease or pacify God but in response to his generosity to us. This generosity is seen most of all in Jesus who on the cross offered for all time one sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10:12) so our sins could be forgiven. The proper response to that generosity is praise, repentance and faith in Jesus.

Do you want a new start?

Here's my article for the Scawby and Hibaldstow magazines for August:

This year's Year 6 production at Scawby and Hibaldstow schools was High School Musical. They did this previously in 2019 and the children who performed then have just finished their GCSEs! With the recent change of government it seems appropriate to look at the HSM song “Start of Something New” though of course it's nothing to do with politics!

“Start of Something New” is the opening song of HSM and is the first time the two main characters, Troy and Gabriella, meet; both being called to sing this karaoke duet at a New Year's Eve party. The song sets up the premise of HSM that people will change from 'living in their own world' to 'taking a chance' and 'opening up their hearts to all the possibilities' and this change is going to come about through Troy and Gabriella's relationship.

Change is a part of life, and both advertisers and politicians want to make us discontent with our lives so that we will want the change that they're offering. But so often the change that's offered is either illusory or it doesn't solve the problems we have.

Jesus' call and invitation is also to change, to the start of something new, which he describes as being 'born again' (John 3:3). As we repent of our past sins and failures, of how we live in our own worlds not caring about others; and as we trust in him, putting him at the centre of our lives, we become, as the apostle Paul says, “a new creation...the old has gone, the new is here” (2 Corinthians 5:17). But this isn't just a call to moral reform, as we know that however hard we try to make ourselves better people, we will always fail. This is instead a call to a relationship that changes not just how we see the world but how we respond to it and behave within it, as Troy and Gabriella sing “the world looks so much brighter / with you by my side” and that is the start of something new.

As we live in a relationship with Jesus, we start to see the world as he sees it. In some ways it is much brighter because we see in the natural world God's love of variety and God's love for us as humanity in providing such a wonderful universe for us. We also see in each other the dignity that we each possess because we are made in the image and likeness of God. But we also see the darkness in the world and in ourselves, especially the darkness that comes from rejecting God and his ways, and ignoring the dignity in all humans.

It is only through a relationship with Jesus that we can truly be a new creation; without it our 'changed' lives are just window-dressing or a quick dust, and our 'something new' is really just the 'same old, same old' pretending to be different. So if you are disillusioned with your life, however outwardly or superficially 'successful' it seems, turn to Jesus who comes to bring us life in all its fulness (John 10:10) and it will be the start of something new.

Assassination, the Hand of God and demonisation

OIKOS is a fantastic ecumenical initiative in Brigg, that run a Christian shop, a Food Bank, a Community Pantry and more! I was asked to write some short 'thoughts to start your week' for July 2024 for their Facebook page. This is an expanded version of the thought for 21st July.

As some recover from the disappointment of the England men's football team's defeat in the final of Euro 2024, others think that they shouldn't have got to the final in the first place. England won a penalty against the Netherlands in the semi-final but there have been disagreements ever since about whether the penalty should have been given. However, on Facebook, the football fanzine 'When Saturday Comes' commented:

“Maybe it wasn’t a penalty but Maradona’s was handball, Lampard’s goal was over the line, Beckham’s was never a red and Campbell’s goal should’ve stood. Couldn’t care less.”

Whilst not everyone would recall the last three of those incidents, even for those who aren't interested in football, Maradona's goal against England in the 1986 World Cup is infamous. And it is all the more infamous because of his response when asked if he scored it illegally; stating it was made "a little with the head of Maradona, and a little with the hand of God."

Divine intervention is very much in the news at the moment with Donald Trump's claim that his survival of an assassination attempt was the work of “God alone.” Whilst there is shock about this attempt, it perhaps shouldn't be that much of a surprise to us; after all, as George Bernard Shaw said “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.” So much of contemporary political and public discussion involves personal (verbal) attacks on people and a desire to silence contrary views. Wherever people are on the political spectrum, rhetorical attacks are part and parcel of the discourse but they can often tip over into demonisation not just of opinions, but also of those who hold them. And it's not a huge step from a desire to silence an opinion to a desire for a world where those who hold those opinions don't exist any more, and thence to approving of the permanent silencing of those people. As Gavin Ashenden wrote “The assassination of the human character is only a short distance away from the assassination of the human person.” 

But what of God's rôle in all of this? Did he really intervene to save Trump's life? Some would argue against this on the grounds either that God doesn't exist; or that he doesn't intervene at all in the world; or that even if he did he wouldn't do so to save someone like Trump. Christians affirm that God is not disinterested in the world and that he does indeed intervene in the world: the Bible is full of accounts of God's intervention and the heart of the biblical narrative is God himself becoming incarnate and entering the world in Jesus, and intervening through his life, death and resurrection to achieve our redemption and salvation (2 Corinthians 5:18-19). And he continues to intervene through miracles and answers to prayer. But these interventions are by definition rare, and often the only way we can tell whether something is by the hand of God is by looking backwards and seeing the consequences of an event.

So we may never know for sure if God intervened to save Trump, but what we can be sure of is that the demonisation of people makes assassination attempts more likely. And here we can't just point the finger at those with public platforms and 'followers.' We all have a tendency to treat those who differ from us, particularly with our political views, as being less wise, or intelligent, or compassionate, or just, than we are. Labels like 'bigot' or '...phobe' are used to dismiss and disparage not just opinions we disagree with but also the people who hold them. And that is a dangerous path to start going down.

Where we can be sure that God has intervened is in the creation and design of each one of us – we are fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13-14). We all fall short of God's standards in our living, thinking and speaking, but we don't need to be demonised – we need to be redeemed.