| In the long-lost days of my childhood, far away in those distant years of the 1950s, there was no television to speak of, no computers, and certainly no game-boys.
In fact, the only thing with a screen was the local flea-pit, which in my case, was a choice between the Pavilion Cinema, Lees, on this side of the Pennines, or the wonderfully-named Electric Theatre in Marsden, on the other.Copyright St Elisabeths.
Faced with such exotic distractions, we Saddleworth lads thought it more amusing to play games: So we did various things with balls, like marbles and rugby; and, when we could get our hands on it, we used simple equipment and played games like ‘whip and top’.Copyright St Elisabeths.
But on bad days, when spoil-sports has taken their balls home, and no one had a whip, we amused ourselves with simple games like Hide and Seek and Chinese Whispers.
“Chinese Whispers” is probably game now lost in the mist of time, so I’d better outline what happens. You, and your friends get in a circle. You think of a suitably silly phrase, like “Shoe-shine sally in the shoe-shine shop, she sits and shines all day”. And you pass it round, whispering in the ear of the person next to you. She passes on to the one next to her and so on. Yes, girls played this too!
The amazing thing is that what you get back usually has little resemblance to what you first said. It is distorted, changed by the thoughts and the accents and the mis-hearing of the players; altered, made something strange and new.
* * * *Copyright St Elisabeths.
Sometimes, on bad days, when no one wants to play, I think the Christian faith can be like a game of Chinese Whispers. We begin with the vision of a loving, welcoming, and redeeming God. But as the message is passed round, each of the hearers blots that vision with a little bit of his or herself, a finger-print, a piece of their spiritual DNA; a scratch, or a mark, or a scar.
We human beings imprint ourselves on everything we touch. And we have an amazing habit of leaving the worst of ourselves behind as evidence. Look at this planet, and this mess we are making of it. As an 19th-century poet put it, “And all is smeared with trade, bleared, and the earth shares man’s smell……”
Copyright St Elisabeths.
And if the earth shares man’s smell, so too to do our images of God and our thoughts about God. They share our smell, bear our imprint, have been touched and changed in the passing-on. Our images of God are altered, and not always for the good.
Yes, our faith is subject to Chinese Whispers. Every man and woman who speaks the message adds something to it of themselves.
Copyright St Elisabeths.
This can be positive. A person who has lived and loved and prayed, and known forgiveness will reveal something of God to us in their generosity and vitality. Their whisper may be one of great insight into the loving heart of God.
Every man and woman who speaks the message adds something to it of themselves.
But sadly, this can be negative too:Copyright St Elisabeths.
A person with no life, a loveless person, a tightly screwed-up, holier-than-thou, spotlessly clean, ordered cupboards and tidy-drawers person, can whisper very clearly that God punishes and demands vengeance; that God desires us to earn love, work for salvation, keep all the rules, smite others when they break them, and generally pass on our own hurts to all we meet.
There are many people, outside the Church, in God’s world, who think that this is what religious people are about. Yes, there are many people, outside the Church, in God’s world, who think that Christianity is a nasty religion of judgmental spoil-sports, and rightly, they have dumped it.
The religious people brought a woman to Jesus. Perhaps she was a whore, an object for men’s abuse and fantasy.
Or perhaps she was simply a woman who had fallen in love with a married man, or he with her.
Whatever she was, Israel’s law said she was an adulterer. There was no doubt about it. It wasn’t a case of tabloid gossip. They’d seen her at it, caught her in the act. They knew.
And they knew also that the law said she must be stoned to death.Copyright St Elisabeths.
So they brought this woman, terrified, sure of her fate, to Jesus. They brought her not because they wanted or even valued his advice, but because they had heard enough of his radical teaching and they wanted rid of him.
He threatened them with his forgiveness. He embarrassed them with all this dangerous talk about love. And so they brought a guilty sinner to try and catch him out.
They wanted Jesus to be this woman’s judge.
Now judges, in Israel, sat upright, formally, imposingly. They wrote down their judgements on scrolls as a record for ages to come.
But Jesus bends down and writes not a permanent record on a parchment scroll. No, he writes in the dust of the ground. And he does this quite deliberately, to show that our sins are a mere speck of sand on the shore of God’s mercy. And God can blow these sins away and make our lives into new and fresh landscapes on which to lavish his love.
Jesus writes on the dust of the ground. But the religious people continue to press him. “What do you say we should do with her?”
And Jesus says to them “Whoever here has never sinned themselves can throw the first stone.” And they slouch off, slowly, with the grievance of defeat.
Jesus turns to the woman now - not formally as a judge, but as a human being who knew himself what it was like to be hounded and misunderstood. And he shows this woman, this sinner, the Father’s compassion. “I do not condemn you” “I do not condemn you - go, and do not sin again.”
* * * *Copyright St Elisabeths.
At the heart of the gospel is radical forgiveness and huge understanding of what it is to be human.
At the heart of the gospel is a love always ready to reach out to the misunderstood and the oppressed.
At the heart of the gospel is the Sacred Heart of Christ burning with redeeming love for the world, for me and for you.
And our task is to let that fire re-kindle the parched ashes of our lives. Our task, this Ash Wednesday is to allow ourselves to be touched by Christ and allow his energy to flow into us. Our task today, as, indeed, everyday, is to allow the whisper of the rumour of God to change us and transform us and make us more loving.
This is what this and every mass is for: to let Christ touch us and energise us through his word, and through his sacramental presence in bread and wine.
* * * * *
It’s so easy to use Lent as a time for self-justification, as we inflict intense suffering on ourselves by giving up the innocent pleasures of booze, fags, and chocolate. The trouble is that the suffering often is also inflicted on the people round us as they cope with our bad temper and lack of fun.
But, worse still, when we do this, when we see Lent as a time to give things up, we miss the point.Copyright St Elisabeths.
Lent began as a time when those preparing for Baptism at Easter went through a rigorous period of instruction and prayer in order to share in resurrection life.
Sharing in resurrection life is our privilege today and every day. Sharing in resurrection life is also our duty. This means listening to the whispers of Good News and acting on them, showing by our lives, our treatment of others that we are changed and made new. In means to loose the bonds of injustice, to let the oppressed go free, to share our bread with the hungry.Copyright St Elisabeths.
Our lives, yours and mine, should whisper the Good News of God to others. And any imprint we leave on that Good News, any touch of ourselves, must reflect the goodness of a God who has touched us, and made us in his image, and forgiven us, and renewed us, and constantly accepts us and understands us.
If you think the abandoning of chocolate, and the giving-up of booze can help you reflect that God in your life, well, bully for you.
But I suspect that going around sharing your bread with the hungry and removing the bonds of injustice might be a better advert for God in the world.
Getting a life too always helps God’s cause.
You see, in the end, you are made to be God’s picture, created in his image, a screen on which the world sees the message of his love.Copyright St Elisabeths.
So lighten up this lent. Let Christ’s light be reflected in your life. Whisper the Good News of God through acts of love and service. Come to the altar, to this sacrifice which takes our sins away, and here be fed and energised by Christ’s gift of himself.
And at Easter, as we gather at the font, water sprinkled, vows renewed, a new taste of resurrection life will be yours. Amen.
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