It Was What You Wanted … Wasn’t It? 

You see I have to ask because I was never quite sure and I am even less certain now.

Offering your cheek to Judas seemed such a little but enormous, and irreversible act. Once you were arrested and taken away there was no turning back. Nothing could now ever be the same again.

I wanted to shout out after you. “No. Are you sure this is what you wanted?” Because in my heart it is never what I wanted.

And perhaps I wanted all the wrong things. To be the leader, to be the rock, to be the bobby dazzler, the protector, the cutter off of ears, and to be loyal unto death. I never wanted to deny or betray.

I wanted you to have a regal Throne. I wanted you to have a golden crown but you wanted something else instead. A splintery cross and a crown of thorns.

I wanted the crowds to demand your coronation, not your crucifixion.

You tried gently, valiantly, patiently to tell me.

You clearly spelt it out that I would deny you no less than three times and I was left indignant. I would never do such a thing. You have read me wrong if you think I would let you down.

But of course that is just what I did. Within the space of a few hours on that dark and chilly night, I repeatedly denied ever knowing you.

“I don’t know him. I don’t what you are talking about, I am not one of them”

And perhaps I wasn’t ever. I certainly don’t feel as though I am worthy to belong to you and the crew. And then you turned and looked at me. The look that I can still see. Some might think it was anger and disappointment. I saw only your love and forgiveness and that is why I went out and sobbed and sobbed… and sobbed. I was inconsolable for you knew me and loved me even when, especially when.

You literally looked right through me. Saw everything that was there, everything that was lacking and still wanted me. And when you know you are loved like that, then it is easy to want the things that the other wants.

So in that look, just after the rooster crowed, your eyes told me that this was indeed what you wanted and it would help all those who squirmed when confronted by the truth and found that the truth gave them indigestion. The things I wanted for you, were not the things you wanted at all. There were other things you wanted, that you needed. Other things that simply had to be. That needed to be. Spear and nails and wood and myrrh and blood and tears and a stranger’s tomb. Mocking and spit and belting and bruises.

These are the things that you wanted, that you chose, and somehow I have to want them too, even though I writhe away in horror and disgust. These are what you wanted because they are the only things where we can find authenticity, truth and undeniable love.

So I come back to my question.

It was what you wanted… wasn’t it… well wasn’t it?? All this?

And even as I mutter these words I sense that once again I am seeking your approval, a pat on the head, self congratulations. To do the right thing so that you will love me. Almost like a boisterous young panting puppy dog … did I get it right huh… huh?

This is not what you wanted. It is not what you wanted for me. What you wanted was for me simply to enjoy you. It was never a business transaction. I do the right thing and you give me a treat. What you wanted, what you longed for was always relationship. This is what you wanted all along and it took me far too long to catch on and to catch up.

Well, all is  a bit of a garbled rant. I found some words from someone else and they sum up far better what I, Peter, am trying to say to you.

Lord,
When I am puffed up with myself,
Gilded
Over-egged
Full of self-importance
And empty of grace;
When I would rather shrink your vision to the limits of my own imagining,
than rise to praise the new horizons you have made;
When I would rather cobble together hasty platitudes and suffocate others with palaver,
than say the hard things graciously.
When I would rather cast doubts on the hurried solutions that I cobble together and make excuses for my faults.

Then, … look at me again with love,
Pierce the armour of my pride,
Stay the hand of my hasty activity, and bid me to put down my impetus sword.
See inside me.

Believe in me
And help me start again.

Lent 4 Mothering Sunday March 30th 2025

Dear Mum, You just don’t get me.

Dear Mum,

This letter will probably sound a little fractious, almost as if I am writing in anger. Actually, nothing could be further from the truth.

I am writing this letter out of my deepest love for you and I am trying to explain who I really am. So I put these words down to reassure you. It would have been impossible for anyone to ‘Get me, to understand me.’ No-one can ever truly comprehend the complete fusion between God and humanity and I never once expected you to. You might have naively hoped to understand me, but the brutal reality is that you were never going to. I mean, what mother ever completely understands their own child. Really. Children are always a googly, changing, mysterious enigma. A delightful bundle of incomprehension, joy and bewilderment. Everybody is all of these things growing up. A constant source of befuddlement, laughter, embarrassment and endearment. I’m sure Anne and Joachim would say exactly the same about you. This does not mean that they didn’t love you, but part of your attraction for them, as I am to you, is that parents almost get it and yet never quite do. We are always led further on and further into the mystery that is another human being. I wanted to say that it's OK. So please don’t be too hard on yourself because there are things that are going to happen shortly that will take you and test you, to your very limits and beyond.

I know that for most of the time it was normal growing pains on both our parts. The joy and gurgle, the sleepless nights, the bemusement as I learnt the language and the way I was intrigued by the goings on at the local synagogue. The normal hurly burly and grist of simply growing up and becoming an adult.

But then there were a couple of times when you bumped into and were confronted by the ‘other’.

I well remember our ‘adventure’ when we all went up to Jerusalem for the passover. I was twelve and I stayed behind to argue the toss with the local clergy. It was all rather entertaining and they were amazed at my theological parry and thrust. Of course I was well fed and had somewhere to doss down at night. I was having a lovely time. You however, were incensed and worried. You relentlessly scoured all the streets of Jerusalem when you should have realised that of course the temple, the place of worship and sacrifice, is where I was always going to be.

I can still hear your words ringing around the walls of the temple and in my ears.

“Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.!”

And if you thought I was going to be apologetic and remorseful, then this is one of those times when you simply didn’t understand. I bet you remember what I said.

“Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

I answered your question with questions of my own.

You didn’t get me mum.

But then… How could you? How could anyone?

And only a few years ago at the wedding of Josiah and Dorcas we had another difference of opinion. By now, you had realised that there was this other side to me. That where there was a pastoral need I was always persuadable to help. But at the wedding I still wasn’t quite ready. The hour had not yet come.

When the wine gave out you suggested that I might like to do something about it, if only for the sake of Josiah and Dorcas. So in front of the waiters you simply said ‘Just do whatever he tells you’. Always pointing to me whether I wanted you to or not. You left me no other option and the rumour wheels began to furiously spin.

In a few days time there will be other things which I am pretty sure that you will not understand. You will find yourself with John and a few others watching me die at the hands of others. It will not be pretty and it will not be pleasant. You will wonder what is going on. This is the bit where the sword will pierce your heart.

I’m going to try to explain it now for when the time comes and for days that will follow.

It may not look like it, but right there in the blood and the tears is where you will again glimpse something of that ‘otherness’ about me.

To completely and utterly offer yourself for others without holding anything back, that is stuff of the God who created the heavens and earth. That is more powerful than the holding back of the Red Sea and the providing of water and manna in the desert.

And it is also what makes you so beautiful Mum, because you gave your all, body and heart and tears and soul to the very same God who asked everything of you. I know that you have pondered all these things in your heart without coming to a neat, tidy, concise answer. You may not have quite got me and those who will string me up will not get it either. But ultimately, you said ‘Yes’ and that is what makes you the most blessed of all women. I am thrilled to be able to call you …Mum.

Always your Son and always with love

Jesus.

A Case of Mistaken Identity

A colleague of mine tells a story from their youth, so if you like it and find it helpful, any credit must go to them. Any sulkiness should be directed straight back to me for shamelessly stealing it.

Once upon a time, a young lad was climbing down long ladders in the opal mines. All of sudden he finds that he is ‘frozen’ and unable to move his feet. He’s just there paralysed by fear, vertigo, or whatever the correct phrase is.

The local wizened, weathered gentleman at the bottom is waiting patiently and after a while twigs to what has happened. Our local hero discreetly and sensitively rescues my colleague. Further, the saviour never said anything about this (mis)adventure to anyone. Ever!?

My colleague made the point that much of what clergy and others do, is like that. We discreetly serve others, free them to get on with things and take the knowledge of the incident with us in our coffin.

Now I had always assumed that I was the rescuer in the story. Of course I was the one who helped others and hopefully kept my mouth shut.

But notice please that there are actually two people in the story. There is also the one who needed rescuing. You know where this is going right?

I’ll bet a bottle of my finest that most of the time I have been the person who needs rescuing rather than the one who rescues.

There must have been incalculable times when I was paralysed by indecision, frozen by my own fear and flummoxed by the circumstances in which I found myself. Unable to go back, impossible to move forward.

It took me far too long to learn that the first step to mobility is actually to say just one word. ‘Help’.

Jehu, the Guy with the Really Big Stone

Dear Jesus,

You don’t me but I sure as heck know you. I was one of the people responsible for all the ruckus last week. However, it wasn’t all my idea.

Silas and I knew each other well. I’m a Pharisee and Silas is a teacher of the law and we both have a bit of a thing for Margarita. She was comely and attractive with those dark eyes and a winning smile. We would see her at the market and our overtures were always met with a disappointing but firm declining of our advances. It drove us nuts.

So we dreamt up this plan. As a Pharisee and a teacher we had heard about you. How forgiving and patient and understanding you always were. A faithful, practising rabbi but somehow different. A bit out there. You drove us nuts in quite a different way. Just when we thought we understood you, you warped our minds and lives with a new saying, a new teaching, a new challenge. Were you for us or against us? We could never work it out.

So one night after a few wines, Silas and I hatched a cunning plan.

We knew that pretty Margarita always went down to the cellar on market day to collect the herbs and olives ready for the customers. Silas would follow her in and if she didn’t see his point of view, then a bit of torn clothing, a bit of shouting and distress and he would bring her in front of you claiming adultery. My job was to round up the crowds and bring them along for the spectacle.

So it was, at the appointed day, at the appointed time everything aligned. You were in town, Margarita had gone down into the cellar and I was hanging out with a few other teachers. The signal was given and it all unfolded. The crowd quickly gathered. Silas dragged a dishevelled, protesting, struggling Margarita before everyone and made the accusation. Not necessarily towards Margarita but to you. His words were smooth and articulate.

“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.  In the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

All of us had picked up filthy great rocks and we were set to stone her. I could feel the comfortable weight in my hand and I was determined that I was going to be first.

You were composed and unfazed by the shouting around you. You met our noise and questions with your silence.

It was obvious that you could see the trap. If you said ‘Yes, stone her’, then your reputation of compassion and forgiveness was out the window and down the drain. If you said ‘Forgive her’, then you were clearly in breach of the faith that had been handed down and your license as a rabbi would be revoked by the Professional Standards Board.

But you said… nothing. At least not to start with. You just bent down and doodled in the dust. What the heck?

We kept up with our questions louder and louder and then you rose and looked at us. I felt like you were looking straight at me and I prickled. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. It was as if you knew everything about me.

And then you said it.

“Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”

And then you just bent down and started to scratch around in the dust again. Just left us to our own thoughts. Left us to work it out for ourselves.

The old codgers were first to drop their rock and walk away, but it took me a while.

I had let my emotions manipulate me. My unreciprocated attraction to Margarita and my theological angst toward you. I was not in control of these things. I was at their mercy, slave to their every whim.

Somehow you knew all this. You knew exactly what to say and the way to say it. Gently, calmly, in a measured voice but again with that dastardly unmistakable compassion. What is more, you knew that I needed to hear these words and obviously I have never forgotten them.

I said at the start of this letter that you did know me, but it turns out you did. You may not have known my name or where I lived, but you knew me in ways that no one else ever had. You saw straight through me. You knew my every flaw and wrinkle. Every rough edge and every chip on my shoulder.

You knew me… You know me. You know me very well indeed. Better than I know myself.

So I dropped my stone and went away fizzing with irritation and humiliation. I just had to write to you and tell you.

Oh, one last thing.  I wonder …what if it was you personally, who was on trial before the crowds?

Would you be so forgiving if someone flogged you, spat upon you, mocked you, denied you, betrayed you; drove some nails through your body and pinned you to the wood? What then? Would you cry out for retaliation, revenge and retribution? Or would you pray ‘Father Forgive’?

Just a question

Yours in the disorientation of my very different dimension.

Jehu
Teacher and Quarryman.

The Sin of Certainty

Way back in January, I went to see the film ’Conclave’. It was a fictitious story about the election of a Pope. Towards the beginning of the film the Dean who helps to co-ordinate the trickiness, delivers a stunning homily to the assembled cardinals. For some of you, it might sound a bit Churchy, but hang in there and read this little gem. What it has to teach us as Christians and indeed people of any faith is sage, honest and essential.

I Quote

“St Paul said, ‘Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.’ To work together, and to grow together, we must be tolerant. No one person or faction seeking to dominate another. And speaking to the Ephesians, who were of course a mixture of Jews and Gentiles, Paul reminds us that God’s gift to the church…is its variety. It is this variety, this diversity of people and views which gives our church its strength. And over the course of many years in the service of our Mother the Church, let me tell you, there is one sin, which I have come to fear above all others. Certainty. Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Even Christ was not certain at the end. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” He cried out in his agony at the ninth hour on the cross.

Our faith is a living thing, precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty…and no doubt…there would be no mystery…and therefore no need… for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts.

And let him grant us a Pope who sins and asks for forgiveness, and who carries on.”

The woman who anointed Jesus for burial

Dear Mary,

I wanted to write to you about a few things but first of all, I should mind my manners and ask how Martha and Lazarus are doing. It was quite a spectacle when your brother emerged from the tomb after four days. There were a good number of tears, many of them mine and lots of people muttering about my noisy sobbing.

And you Mary, even in your deep grief, your faith was unmistakable.

I will never forget the words you spoke so firmly and with that lovely, steadfast conviction of yours.

“Lord, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Odd, isn’t it, that it is in death and weeping we often feel empty-headed, empty-handed and empty-hearted, but that is not how I saw you. That is not how you really were. With your tears and anguish, you were actually quite magnificent and offered so very much to those around us.

Then, just last night we saw each other again in a different place, in a different house, with different people. It was in Simon the Leper’s home. Lazarus was there as was Judas and a gathering of some miscellaneous folk.

I’m aware that you weren’t actually on the guest list but I was overjoyed to see you.

We both knew why you had come and we both knew that the clock was ticking… quickly it seemed. While the guests laughed raucously, we were both acutely aware that a death, my death was imminent and urgently and poignantly you wanted to make things tidy and ordered. To do your part in the preparations for a death that would in turn change every death.

You just didn’t know it at the time… but you would… later.

So you came. And while there was an authentic smile on your lips and you were delighted to see me, your eyes were brim full of tears, almost toppling over with delicate drops.

The perfume you offered was magnificent and the scent filled the house with the fragrance of a healing death and deep beauty.

I reckon everyone there misinterpreted what you did next. Their crusty, accusatory gossip was quite audible.  And when you bent down, that is when you could no longer hold back your tears and they spilled onto my feet. And I understood that not only were they tears of repentance for the way your life had turned out, but the droplets were genuine gifts of grief.  So Mary, what with your heady perfume, your tears and your hair drying my feet, I finally knew that now I was ready. I had been touched, anointed and sealed in love.

I get that you probably thought you had nothing to offer me last night. That you felt that what you had done wasn’t nearly good enough. In fact, you probably thought that nothing you could ever do was going to be enough. But the reality was the opposite. I was now ready to go to the grave.

I shall never forget you leaving that night. You turned, snubbed all the naysayers by you ignoring them and you walked slowly towards the door. Needing to leave, but yet… not wanting to leave. You stopped .. Everyone was watching you. The silence hung heavily in the room like the delicious aroma of the nard.

You looked at me as I looked at you. We gazed at each other and for a brief but long moment, nothing else mattered. There was only you and I.

We smiled, we looked, we knew. All was ready now. Everything that could be done, was done. Not even the harshness of denial, betrayal, crucifixion and a cold borrowed tomb could taint and diminish what had passed between us. Nor could it stop its eternal consequences for all people, for all places, for all time. In fact it was your potent ingredients of steadfastness and selflessness that would roll away the stone and wipe away every tear.

As you walked away that night you probably thought that you had seen me for the last time. That you would never see me again. But no! You and I Mary; we are people of Faith. We are people of courage. We are people of captivating, irresistible and inescapable love. We are people of surprise.

The surprise of Lazarus’s continued life was made possible by faith, courage and love. Your visit to Simon’s place was all of those things. What will follow in the days and weeks after the Passover will be all of those things and so much more.

So wait Mary, it is not much longer now. Forgiveness is already yours, it always has been. Wait, weep if you must, but you must always, always know … you did a beautiful thing for me and it will be told through all the ages, for as long as I love you. Forever and ever, yours,

Jesus.

What’s your colour?

Well, it’s official. We're going to have an election.  The scurrilous rumour was confirmed with a postcard that came into my letter box the other day.

I expect to get many such postcards, all of them passionate, (as you would expect) offering different perspectives. For all our rolling of eyeballs and heavy sighs, it’s great that we live in such a colourful democracy.

In my dotage, I’m more aware of the different colours that different parties sport. This is an excellent marketing instrument and you know immediately which clan your postcard is from.

But the thing I come back to in the midst of the high vis vest, words, hard hats, and my beloved postcards, is the people behind the various hues. While I might dispute reverently and appropriately, while I might dis/agree passionately, I must never forget that these are only academic thrusts and parries. Each of the folk who front up behind a microphone, or splash around with words on a screen, has feelings and emotions. Cut any of them and they bleed. Tell them a half-decent joke and they smirk. They have relatives and friends, they engage in jocularity and tears. Growing up, they have had their hearts broken and probably broken a few hearts along the way.

Sure the postcards are helpfully colour-coded as I triage them across the desk. But it's the person behind the colour that’s the most important thing. To all of those who are running, no matter what your colour or policy, all the very best. To those of us who vote, remember that first and foremost, at the top of the ballot paper, these are real flesh and blood human beings, exactly like the one you see in the mirror.

Judas to Jesus

Dear Jesus,

I have wanted to write this letter for some time now. You see, I have this burning, puzzling question that I can never get my head around. It’s a complex thing and I’m hoping that by writing this letter I can clarify a few things in my mind, but especially in my heart.

It all has to do with our rather awkward and bizarre relationship, especially about the issue of control.

You see, I had always assumed that you were the Master and in complete control of absolutely everything. You were the leader, the boss, the guru, the chairman of the board. It was you who had the power over all of us. Especially over me. Hec! You could have asked me to jump off the temple and I would have done it for you cheerfully if that’s what you had wanted.

You called me and I followed you. I watched with awe, surprise and glee as you drove out demons, healed the sick, fed the hungry and said the wise, hard things graciously.

You even ticked off the powerful Scribes and Pharisees. Surely you had it all there at your fingertips. And so the question eventually came bubbling up in my mind … Is there anything you couldn’t do? Surely that was a better place to start. I was completely enthralled by you and so it seemed was everyone else, even though they may not have liked you or gone away tittering, mumbling and irritable. Even raising Lazarus’ corpse after a few days in a tomb was not beyond you. I listened and I obeyed. I was even the treasurer which is the most tiresome job of all. ‘The poor we always have with us’ You said so yourself.

So here’s the thing. That if you could do all those things and they were wild and whacky and indescribably astounding…how come ….how come you didn’t stop me when I went to the chief priests to sell you down the Jordan.

You knew what I was up to. ‘What you must do .. do it quickly’

So I did and I believed with all my heart that that was what you wanted of me. The directive was simple as it was clear.

I knew where to find you that night and it’s almost as if you were waiting and expecting us.

And when I led them to you in this black night, with blazing torches and fearsome eyes in the dark, you did not run away, although I sort of wanted you to, hoping that the confrontation would not happen and that it could be avoided. That you could mysteriously evaporate all the angst and anger. Just quietly slip through the crowd.

But you just simply stood there turned to greet us and then in a gesture that flipped my heart, you offered me your cheek to kiss.

What you must do ... do it swiftly. So I did. Is this what you wanted all along?

Where were your power and authority when the crowds turned nasty and you plummeted in the polls before Pilate in a matter of hours? Where was your influence and control as you fell heavily, bleeding out onto the dusty, rocky road?

I stood there watching you. The ferocious din of the crowds rang in my ears… thinking… any moment now… he’s going to get up and make all this stop. It’s all going to be sweetness and light and honey. But No… you just staggered on like some crazed loon with that hideous glazed look in your eyes. The life ebbing out of them.

And in a hideous twist, there was a moment when it was as if everything stopped. The memory is always before me every time I close my eyes. There you were, sprawled in the dust like a beautiful insect pinned for heinous amusement. Never, ever,.. have I felt so powerless.

So here are my questions to you Jesus.

Who was in control? Was it you? For a while there it certainly looked like you had all the answers and were supreme over all things. Or did I have all the power, because I made it all happen?

And on a more personal level which is why I’m writing this wretched letter anyway, did you really have power and authority and control over me or not? That’s what I’d really like to know. Need to know.

Because if you did, then surely the most loving thing you could have done was to stop me. Call me out publicly or privately, wouldn’t have mattered and said the hard, hard things graciously which was of course what you always did.

And afterwards.. when the noise had stopped and the crowds had gone back home to their bread and olives for the Passover…if you were/are God almighty, could you not have washed away my guilt and stopped me from taking my own life? Wouldn't that have been the compassionate, caring, loving thing to do? Aren’t you here to save me, to save us all?

I await your prompt and courteous reply

Your servant (I think)

Judas.

The Lie I Believed

My father died swiftly and unexpectedly.

The whole thing was shocking and surreal at the time.

One of the many things that came out of it was the brutal realisation that one day it will be my turn. With the generation ahead of me now gone I was ‘next in line.’

‘Hec’, I thought. ‘I better have something in place for when I die.’

So I phoned a funeral director I knew well and I put the kettle on. While I was waiting I thought, ‘This is going to be a cinch. I’ve watched this process lots of times.’ In fact, it was brutal and confronting.

We went through everything and at the end of the process he handed me a piece of paper. “Now David, this is what we have agreed upon”.

As I took the piece of paper a little voice whispered a lie to me. ‘This is what your life amounts to. This one bit of paper sums up all there is about David Oulton’

Now typing it out and reading it, I can see how ludicrous the lie was, but at the time… it was quite plausible and for a few fleeting seconds I believed the lie.

The truth is actually something quite different, right at the other end of the spectrum in fact. No bit of paper, no wicked act, no good deed, no heroic action, no flimsy prayer, no error of judgement, no act of compassion, can ever come close to being the totality of who we are. We are of infinite, immeasurable, beauty and worth. Nothing can ever encapsulate all that we have been, all that we are and all that we will be. And if it is true of our own selves, then it must be true of every other person in our lives and beyond.