This week I was one of the lucky ones. My visit to the supermarket happened to coincide with a fresh delivery of toilet rolls and my timing was perfect. Like piranhas circling a wounded animal, customers hovered while the shop floor assistant attempted to stack the shelves. It was a pointless exercise. As fast as he unpacked them, they were gone in a feeding frenzy worthy of any nature documentary.

It just goes to show that despite appearances we’re not as nice as we might like to make out. It doesn’t take much for our selfish genes to come to the fore and provoke a me-first attitude. 

Perhaps we should add the words of St Paul to the top of our shopping list. He urges us to ‘do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus.’

How refreshing it would be if instead of needlessly stockpiling our homes with a lifetime’s supply of loo rolls, we could look first to the needs of those around us.

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We live in interesting times. Coronavirus is sweeping the world and for a short season at least changing the way we live. At the heart of our response is the need to avoid contact with those who are infectious. It’s the sensible thing to do. But here’s the story of a man who did the opposite:

One day Jesus came across a man covered in leprosy. This was not good news. While easily treatable today it was effectively a death sentence 2,000 years ago. The man was desperate and begged Jesus for help. In response Jesus did the unthinkable – he reached out and touched the man. Everyone watching would have gasped at this reckless act. They were sure that Jesus would contract the disease. But to their surprise not only did Jesus not get ill, the man got better. Instead of him giving Jesus what he had, he got what Jesus had!

As on many other occasions Jesus revealed the nature of the Kingdom of God with this one simple act. Everyone believed that in order to get close to God you first had to make yourself holy. Instead, in Jesus, a holy God drew near and made us holy.

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Elected to office on 26th August 1978 Pope John Paul I suffered a heart-attack and died just 33 days later. At first the Vatican reported that his body had been discovered by his male secretaries, but in truth it was two nuns who found him.

Why the Vatican was so reticent to tell the truth we will never know. Perhaps there was some embarrassment that the Pope’s body was found by women and not by men.

By contrast the Gospels make no attempt to hide the fact that it was women who were the first witnesses of the resurrection. This could easily have been of some embarrassment to the early church given that women had no legal standing and could not be called upon as witnesses in a court of law. Surely having Peter as the first witness would have carried far more credibility. How easy it would have been to have invented an account that made this the case. But the Gospels all agree – the women got to the tomb first.

However inconvenient, women were the first to discover the death of Pope John Paul I and tell the world. They were also the first to discover the resurrection of Jesus and tell the world about that too.

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Until now James Bond’s smallest nemesis was probably Nick Nack in The Man with the Golden Gun. But now Coronavirus has got him. Well to be more precise his latest film whose release date has been pushed back by seven months. For some reason considered more threatening than all the other viruses that affect us, our reaction to Coronavirus is having a significant impact. Cities in lock-down, stock markets crashing, sporting events postponed and sales of hand gel and face masks off the charts.

Our fear is that we might all catch it. The problem is that you only know you’ve got it once symptoms appear.

There is of course a disease far more deadly than Coronavirus about which we should be far more concerned. We all display the symptoms – sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, anger, rage, malice and slander. Like Coronavirus these are all symptoms we should be quick to avoid, and for that we need a vaccine.The good news is that while a vaccine for Coronavirus is still some months away, one for the problem of sin has been available for a long time. His name is Jesus.

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Apart from election day itself, there’s no bigger date in the American electoral cycle than Super Tuesday. Across 14 states Americans go to the polls to vote for the candidate they want to go forward to the election in November. Even to get this far takes enormous effort as each nominee tries desperately to present themselves as the best person for the job. Thousands of miles are travelled, hundreds of events spoken at, countless hands shaken, and millions of dollars spent. All this just to be in with a chance of becoming Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful nation on earth for a few brief years. And chances are in a hundred years most people will struggle even to remember their names.

Some contrast then with Jesus. The Bible says, ‘he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him’. He had ‘no place to lay his head’. He ‘made himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant.’ Without spending a penny, he left such a mark on history that we still remember his name and millions still give him their vote every single day. I think that makes him quite remarkable.

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Viewed straight on the painting of Virgin and Child with Saints Jerome and Dominic doesn’t look quite right.  The picture shows the Virgin Mary cradling the infant Jesus on her knee, with the saints at prayer in the foreground. But the perspective is off, and the hills in the background look as if they might topple out of the picture. Jerome and Dominic seem awkward and uncomfortable. 

It was art critic Robert Cumming who realised that the painting was never meant to hang in a gallery, but was intended as an aid to prayer.  The artist had assumed that those viewing the picture would do so from a kneeling position. It was when Cumming fell to his knees that he finally saw all the details of the picture in their proper perspective.

Sometimes we make a similar mistake in trying to comprehend the nature of God. We look at him from our perspective and try to understand him on our own terms, as if he were our equal. But if we could understand God in this way then surely he would not be God.  It’s only when we are willing to fall on our knees in worship and look up, that we gain a proper perspective.

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By rights Edward Bransfield ought to be a household name. Pressganged into the navy at the age of 18 he quickly rose to become a skilful navigator. So when merchant sailor William Smith spotted some mountains off the coast of South America, Bransfield was sent to investigate. He sailed from Chile in 1820 and pushing south through stormy seas eventually spotted the Trinity Peninsula – the northern most tip of Antarctica. He was the first person in the world to do so. The problem was no one in authority was much interested, and instead of being hailed a hero he ended his days in obscurity.

Had he known him he might have had some sympathy with St Peter, who made the greatest discovery of his age. Called from his life as a fisherman to follow a charismatic carpenter-turned-preacher Peter was the first to realise who Jesus really was – the longed-for Saviour of the world. Like Bransfield’s discovery it took a while for those in authority to realise the significance of what Peter had found, but once they did it changed the world forever; and where they led many have followed to see for themselves.

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The Biblical account of creation includes these lines, God said “Let us make mankind in our image, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

God’s intention was that we should be good stewards of His creation, following the example of the One who created it all as an expression of His love in the first place. As just one example Shark Fin Soup reveals quite how disastrously we have gone astray.

God’s commission to ‘rule over’ animals is intimately connected to our reflecting His image as loving creator. But that image is only sustained when we live in relationship with Him. Break the relationship and the image starts to fade and instead of ruling wisely as good stewards we selfishly exploit and destroy. So it is that sharks are slaughtered for their fins which, while tasteless, act as a thickening agent in a soup that suggests the diner has made something of themselves.When we care about the natural world it is a sign that we are reflecting something of the image of God in which we are made. It should also remind us that He still longs for relationship with us.

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A famous Christian of the 19th Century John Henry Newman, spoke of the journey of faith as an accumulation of probabilities that in the end led to certainty in the heart of the believer. He was pointing to the fact that while it’s impossible to prove the existence of God, there is enough evidence to make it reasonable beyond doubt.  For some this is not enough. Many a commentator has said that if Christians can’t prove that God exists why should anyone believe.

Well here’s a question for those of you sending cards and gifts to a loved one to mark St Valentine’s Day: can you prove that they love you, or can they prove that you love them? The answer is no.  All you will ever have is evidence on which to decide whether it is reasonable to believe that you are loved or not. You will never have proof because love is about a relationship to be experienced, not a mathematical problem to be solved.

The Bible is clear that we were created for relationship with God, and like all relationships it relies not on proof, but on the experience of love, trust, and faithfulness.

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As storm Ciara clears the British Isles and the clean up begins, at least we can say we weren’t taken by surprise. She had a name and we were tracked her journey across the Atlantic. We were waiting for her. Just thirty years ago that wasn’t the case. On 15th October 1987 the people of southern England went to bed with no idea that the worst storm for 200 years was barreling in from the Atlantic. By morning many would be dead, and 15 million trees blown down. Indeed, the weather forecast that evening specifically denied that any such storm was on its way.

The lack of warning and the failure to prepare led to devastating consequences. But lessons were learned to prevent a repeat in the future.

In Mark’s Gospel Jesus begins his public ministry with a warning – the Kingdom of God is coming. God is going to start putting right all that has gone wrong with the world, and He starts with the problem of the human heart. It’s our selfish hearts that lie at the root of the world’s problems. Repent, he says, turn back to God while you can, and believe the Good News that He loves and cares for you.

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