It can’t be that simple

I’ve had some strange Christmas gifts during the twenty years of my ministry: my first Christmas as a curate saw me gifted a CD of morris dance music, set of black towels and a photograph of cockling boats: different people, different ideas of what will delight a deacon. Each festive season of gift-giving celebrating Our Lord’s birth has been a rollercoaster of joy ever since. Food is a popular present to give, without which I’d have been but a wan wisp of a priest; years of observation of the cloth has  lead many to gift booze, little suspecting their established church pastor is in fact a  one man sleeper cell for the Primitive Methodists. However, many an organist has been glad of my habit of bringing along donated alcohol for general consumption at evensong. Among the stranger parcels at the bottom of the tree have been a framed personal portrait photograph that I had no idea was taken when it was (thanks, Ms Stalker, I only for once the camera had lied), a plastic sheep cotton wool case; a more tea vicar tea set, a more tea vicar mug, more tea vicar tea bag; a picture of Jesus with rays coming out of his chest, a figurine Jesus with a wobbly head, an animatronic dancing Jesus, a baby Jesus doll, various Jesus fridge magnets and a Jesus hologram. Can anyone see a theme yet? A small selection of pressies and I’m always touched that people think to bring some cheer to the bleak midwinter by putting something in the Rector’s stocking. All heartfelt and much appreciated, if sometimes for the thought rather than the aesthetics.

No gift given, however, can compare to this from a couple of years ago…

Who’d have thought it? Visitors to my study must wonder what on earth… when they see this on the ‘gift shelf’ where parishioner largesse is displayed, but so far everybody has had the taste not to blurt out ‘Father why have you got a large rubber aubergine on your shelf?’, though one or two must have sent an anonymous email to the archdeacon.  Said plastic fruit is needless to say nothing more sinister than the material manifestation of  long running joke  with a will-remain-nameless former churchwarden.  I hasten to add this comic use of the eggplant predates the emoji by several decades and so is not in any sense connected: rather is is a reference to  a TV sketch show from the 1990s which regularly featured a granny from the subcontinent who maintained that pretty much anything can be achieved with the help of just one small aubergine… Wrong of course; though if you said one small bottle of Shiaoxing wine you’d be closer to the truth. Anyway, as Chaucer said ‘”Ful ofte in game a sooth I have herd saye!”’ Had he been sober when he’d written that he’d have said ’many a true word is said in jest’. And the truth in the jest is that that one small aubergine illustrates neatly the universal human craving for simple solutions.

Let’s stay a bit longer in the 1990s – apologies to the younger members of the congregation but old people are like this- back to the 90s and everybody’s favourite brand of toilet paper, the Daily Mail. Which excitedly reported in July 1993 that scientists in America had claimed to find definite evidence of a genetic link to homosexuality and , I quote’ it could soon be possible to predict whether a baby will be gay and give the mother the option of abortion’. Subsequent decades of research must have been disappointing to the Mail as it turns out that the human heart it’s a lot more complex than that. But for a while they thought they had an easy answer to difference, less a simple solution more a final one.

Anyway, there’s a grim illustration, I’m sure you can think of more jolly ones,  or just everyday ones. The world may be infinitely complex beyond our imaginings, a vast universe of wonders we can never conceive or comprehend, but, hey, I’m sure there’s a simple solution.From cider vinegar to bicarbonate of soda, from Maggie’s monetarism to Trump’s inject bleach covid cure,  we always want to believe there’s an easy answer to life’s bewildering complexity. True, occasionally there are simple solutions- like vaccines and not electing convicted criminal former hosts of The Apprentice as President, and it’s delightful when they appear,  but mostly life remains resistant  to the power of the small aubergine. Despite experience over and over again demonstrating to us in no uncertain terms that simple solutions are rarer than winning lottery tickets we still find the  nostrums of the snake oil salesman almost irresistibly attractive and want our answers to be short and sweet and easy. 

I guess this is why you often find Christianity trading in simplistic solutions.

‘Admit Jesus as your personal  Lord and saviour’ and, well, that solves just about anything.

‘It’s all in the Bible, the manual for life, all the solutions you need are in the good book’.

‘Just have faith and you will be healed.’

How we wish it were true. How I wish it were true, But it’s not like that is it?

Now, I’m not running my faith down, or the Bible or the importance of personally owning your love for the Saviour. 

But our faith is not a simple solution and certainly not an easy one. 

‘If anyone would be my disciple, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me.’ 

That’s Lent’s catchy strapline, the advertising exec’s nightmare.

No simple solutions, no easy answers, no instant results.

Christianity is a vast construction, a towering Baroque edifice that makes Gaudi look like a minimalist.  It is by far the biggest religion in the world with billions of adherents. Even in England where a majority eschew the spiritual life it is by far the biggest faith. Millions upon billion of trees have perished to feed the Christian desire to read books;  more music than could be heard in the longest lifetime has been written for our faith;  endless sermons good, bad and usually indifferent have been snooze through for the best part of two millennia. Christianity is humanity’s defining culture. . It is wrapped around and within the life of nations and peoples; wherever you live in England you are in walking distance of a church depending on how much you life walking. It is an assemblage of a scale beyond imagining.

Yet this vast metropolis rests on tiny foundations. At it’s heart, Christianity is a creed of very little.

Love God, love your neighbour.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

That’s it. In the words of Bugs Bunny, ‘That’s all folks’

Just occasionally there are simple solutions. How many of the problems that beset our lives could be solved by these precepts?

Love God, love your neighbour.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Simple, in the sense of straightforward. But not simple in the sense of easy. Not effortless. Not instant. Not painless.

Love God, love your neighbour.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Elegant written on the page; something more cross-shaped in practice. A cross made not of wood but of love. That is the gift your baptism gave you. The gift that keeps on giving. Cherish it. Love it. Live it.

Love God, love your neighbour.

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.