Thoughts for Wednesday 13th May 2020

Psalm 102:1-17; Proverbs 3:13-18; John 8:31-38

 Wednesday 13 May - Rev. Jerry Eve

 Hairmyres Hospital has a plaque ( see picture below) near the main entrance. Unveiled in the centenary year of George Orwell’s birth (1904), it’s something I’ve often glanced at, and sometimes I’ll go over and read it again. The inscription begins,

 While being treated for tuberculosis in Hairmyres Hospital from December 1947 to July 1948 George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) began work on his new novel ‘1984’”

 We are then treated to the opening paragraph which famously begins with the opening sentence, “It was a cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

 Our passage from John today reminds me of Nineteen Eighty-Four. My recommendation would be that you read from verse 31 right through to verse 47, or even further although that’s probably far enough for today. And then you get a sense of just how tense an exchange this was.

It’s a conversation / discussion / dialogue / argument / disputation about ‘freedom’, I would suggest. Jesus’ antagonists believe themselves to be free, but Jesus doesn’t think so. First of all, they claim that this is because Abraham is their father i.e. they are people of the covenant / God’s chosen people. But they’ll know from John the Baptist’s teachings (see Matthew 3:9 & Luke 3:8) that God can take stones even and make descendants for Abraham; and that the really important thing to do if you really want to honour and obey your father Abraham (see the Ten Commandments) is to turn from your sins and repent!

 So they then claim that, well, if Abraham isn’t their father then they can do better than that, and that God is their father instead. And what does Jesus’ say? Why, he tells them that their father is not God, but the Devil. No wonder they wanted to kill him! And these were ‘those who believed in Jesus’. What about the Pharisees (see vv. 12-13) and the Jewish authorities (v. 22)?

 Here in the West during the Cold War we were encouraged to think of ourselves as living in the Free World. But, in the same way that Jesus’ adversaries use the term ‘free’ in John 8, it was propaganda then, and unfortunately I think it’s probably mainly spin, fake-news and post-truth now. Or as George Orwell put it: Newspeak and Doublethink.

 Let us pray:

 Disturb us, O Lord

 when we are too well-pleased with ourselves 
when our dreams have come true because we dreamed too little, 
because we sailed too close to the shore.

 Disturb us, O Lord

 when with the abundance of things we possess, 
we have lost our thirst for the water of life 
when, having fallen in love with time, 
we have ceased to dream of eternity 
and in our efforts to build a new earth, 
we have allowed our vision of Heaven to grow dim.

 Stir us, O Lord

 to dare more boldly, to venture into wider seas 
where storms show Thy mastery, 
where losing sight of land, we shall find the stars.

 In the name of Him who pushed back the horizons of our hopes 
and invited the brave to follow.

 Amen (Desmond Tutu).

 

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