The Rubbish Gospel

The Church of Scotland vs. the ‘Original Template’?
If the Church of Scotland had been around when Jesus came to Earth (please forgive the few ‘Scottish-isms’ in this.   If I, as a Tynesider, can learn them, so can you! For ‘Church of Scotland’, you can substitute any denomination you know – I’m certain the results would be similar!) Definitions: -

• Kirk Session – A meeting of Elders of the local church (not necessarily ‘old’…..but usually).
• Presbytery - A meeting of Elders and Ministers of local churches in a given geographical area.
• General Assembly – A curious yearly affair where thinly disguised antagonism is portrayed as healthy debate. A yearly event in Edinburgh for the Church HQ and regional contributors.
• Church Without Walls – A huge initiative to introduce change, which after about a decade has seen some excellent local initiatives in some churches, and also some complete and utter incomprehension in others.

‘Jesus gathered his disciples around to explain to them the things that were to happen to the Son of Man, that He must suffer, be crucified and then, ultimately, rise again to save people from their sins.

The disciples, unhesitatingly, protested (the Church of Scotland is, after all, a Protestant church).

“See you Jimmy, sorry, see you Lord, this cannot be allowed” said Simon “It has’nae even been submitted to Presbytery!”

“What?!” said a stunned Jesus.

“Michty me Lord” said Peter “An event of such magnitude would have to be debated by the Discipleship and Crucifixion Committee at the next General Assembly!”

The Lord, trying to regain control of the situation said, “Look you lot, this is God’s will so you’d better all get used to it.”

“God’s will? God’s will?” said James, brother of….er….someone, “I think that we’d all better slow down on this idea of ‘God’s will’. I mean, we’ll have to wait until the next Ministers’ meeting before they can tell us what ‘God’s will’ is or not. Good grief, whatever next!”

Jesus, aghast, shouted out, “Can we just get on here? There’s work to be done”

Phillip, the disciple that Jesus thought was really quite a nice bloke, said, “Come on Lord, you don’t expect us to introduce anything as radical as that without checking with the Kirk Session do you? I mean, can you imagine what the traditionalists and older people will say?”

“Yes Lord” said Thomas “I doubt we’ll get permission to do anything like that!”

“I have no intention of asking anyone’s permission to do anything” said Jesus firmly “This is what is about to come to pass and that is that! Why are you only interested in making sure you don’t upset the status-quo? Do you believe that it will keep everyone happy? Are the traditionalists the only ones who have to be deferred to? Why is it that everyone else’s feelings on matters is ignored and only the traditionalists indulged?”

This went completely over the disciples’ heads.

“Er….right Lord….. but as we were saying,” said Zebedee (or was it Florence….or Dougal?), blundering on regardless “Why don’t we just change a few things around in the temple, you know, make it a bit more, er, different?”

“Yes Lord” said Andrew (he was dreaming about having a nice Scottish University town being named after him, perhaps with some nice Golf courses) “We could set up a project to look at urban regeneration, you know, get Nazareth cleaned up. You never know, someone might name a rock band after it one day if it gets famous enough.”

By this time Jesus was shaking his head, which was buried in his hands and muttering, almost inaudibly to himself, “Please, no more, it’s enough to drive y’t'drink (communion wine only of course)!”

The disciples, panic stricken that something different might happen in the temple, began coming up with all sorts of wonderful ideas to move the Church of Scotland (and by definition, God’s will) forward.

“Why don’t we organise a ‘History of Stained Glass Windows’ class? That’d be really interesting”.

“Oh that’ll have them packing in” said Jesus with a weary sarcasm, which was completely missed by the disciples.

“Yes, and what about making the Temple flower rota more inclusive? Get more people on it? That’s a sure way to bring about the Kingdom!”

“Stop it; I can’t take any more of this ingenuity. No, really, I’m overwhelmed by the ‘blue firmament’ thinking here!” said Jesus in a dull voice, glazed eyes and anything but overwhelmed.

“I know!” said Lebbeus (or whatever he was called) “Why don’t we set up a commission to set up a review to set up a project to review what the temple does and we could review progress say, once every 10 years?

By this time, the disciples hadn’t even noticed that Jesus was lying against a tree, downing his third bottle of ‘Rolling Rock’ whilst casually flinging the empties at various disciples’ heads, narrowly missing on purpose, but it made him feel better.

“Oh this is so exciting!” chirruped Thaddeus (or something) “How about we revise the Psalm Book, making it more ‘slave and alien friendly’, make it a bit more non-sexist and we could get rid of the militaristic stuff? You know, make it all a bit ‘fluffy bunny’ and stuff.”

By this time, Jesus had vanished and the disciples were busy, organising and planning, getting more and more excited about the various projects they had in mind.

Anyway, 2000 years (and a bit) on, the world never did have the crucifixion, Jesus had taken the rest of his carry-out back up to Heaven along with a nice kebab and decided to let the Church of Scotland get on with it. So, the upshot was: -
• No one had heard of the crucifixion
• There were no nativity plays (some might actually think that no bad thing!)
• Barrabas stayed in jail but eventually got his own slave through Human Rights legislation
• ‘Cliff Richard and the Shades’ became the first UK band to top the charts for 100 weeks with their hit single, “Why should the Devil get all the bad press?” but they split after 25 years when Cliff Richard bit the head off Hank Marvin.
• The Jews were busy trying to update the Temple since its complete rebuild after 1506
• The site of the Vatican is a sacrificial theme park
• The General Assembly never did debate the crucifixion due to more pressing matters requiring inclusion on the agenda including: -
o The urgent matter of the missing Women’s Guild uniforms from the back of the temple
o The need to organise a very pious protest against the new ‘Tridents’ being used by the Roman soldiers occupying the Holy city of Jerusinburgh
o Whether the oldest member of the temple and longest serving elder really was fit enough to represent the Temple of Scotland at this year’s Gladiatorial Games and…
o Whether homosexuals, adulterers (women only), single mothers, thieves and other supposedly worthless creatures should be stoned using properly blessed and holy stones as picked by the Priests or whether any old stone could be used from the surrounding area.

• The Psalms were updated and brought out in a new form known as PS IV and it included such notable psalms as: -
o He who (would have) valiant been
o Where you there when they (didn’t) crucify my Lord?
o Come let us sing of a wonderful love, Jesus (didn’t) save
o Stood up, stood up by Jesus
o When I survey the (pretty ordinary really) cross
o While shepherds watched their flocks by night, a-wondering what went wrong
o As with (sad)ness men of old
o I danced in the morning when the world was begun, but I gave up in the evening when Church of Scotland won
o Yahweh hear the prayer we offer
• The Church did indeed bring in a new initiative and called it ‘Sacrifice Without Walls’. Oh it’s been a wonderful success. Since its inception 300 years ago, there have been reports of real discernable change. Some change has even been captured on time lapse cameras set to the longest delay (for amateurs hoping to try this at home, set your camera to a time lapse of 60 years). Apparently, one church managed to introduce some ‘Unfair Trade’ animals for the daily sacrifice but this was stopped due to lack of support. Another temple had two people rather than one person handing out the new PS IV (latest version of worship collection) at the temple door but it has to be said, it was strongly suspected that this had more to do with the weight of the new scroll than any desire to introduce change.

There never was a rock band called Nazareth.

The BBC television programme ‘Songs of Praise’ never actually happened…….I’m not saying ANYTHING!

The world still awaits the FIRST coming………

The Good the Bad and the Rest of Us

Have you ever seen those ancient pictures of Biblical stories?   Moses coming down the mountain with the tablets of stone, the Disciples, strong and brave, battling bravely against all adversaries with stoic looks of thunder and piercing eyes. Angels looking, well, angelic.

Looking at these one immediately gets a sense of, er, well, inadequacy….well, I’ve often done at any rate. These figures, looming large in their historical context seem to me to have just walked on to some Shakespearian stage, with their voices booming, “Lo, thou sinner” (ever noticed how they seem to be about to spout forth in Authorised Version language? No? OK then, well I do). Towering over us mere mortals, they present us with an image of perfect Christianity, of which us lesser mortals can only dream (that’s when we’re not dreaming of stardom, greatness, adulation and other stuff we’d rather not tell our friends and family).

Then there’s the pictures of Jesus, standing there with his right hand raised, two fingers cocked like the barrel of a gun, blessing us. It’s a bit like the church Minister does as s/he stands in front of the congregation at the end of the service blessing us all (aahhhh, isn’t that nice?). Jesus too, is portrayed as some sort of aloof authority figure, pouring out his condescending blessings, ‘for which we are truly thankful’.

I’m not having a go at Jesus, Moses, the Disciples, angels or anyone else in the Bible; it’s just that I wonder sometimes whether these images accurately reflect reality. I mean, let’s face it, Jesus washed His disciples’ feet, the disciples did all sorts of things including bitching, position jostling, ‘denying’ Him and being racist and as for Moses, well he murdered someone and ran away!

However, it’s another great way to ensure that I’m a fully paid up member of the Rubbish Christian Club.    Join now, you know it makes sense.