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Robb Sutherland

Home of Robb Sutherland

Feb92011

The Trial | Worship Idea

Each year all of the churches in town walk through to the town square and have a short act of remembrance on Good Friday.  Last year I had no idea what they were expecting.  I put on a Death Row shirt and slung a giant wooden crucifix over my shoulders and carried it at the front of the procession.  This year they asked me to do some form of bible reading in the Town Square when we get there.  It is a public performance really.  I suppose I’ll put on the convict outfit and hold a life-size cross whilst I do it this year.  I have rewritten John 19 (abridged) based upon The Message.  Please bear in mind that many of the phrases are easy to say in a broadish Yorkshire accent as I use the tools I’ve got.  Also, the bold parts will be practiced with a baying mob so that they don’t all shout them in unison.

The Trial (based upon John 19)

Pontius Pilate was the man responsible for governing Jerusalem.  He’d had Jesus publicly whipped because he was a troublemaker.  They were worried because too many people were following him. The soldiers who did it made a crown from thorns for him and rammed in down onto his head.  They kept giving him grief.  They had thrown a purple robe over him like he was royalty whilst shouting “Hail, King of the Jews!”.  Then they kept slapped him in the face.

Pilate went to the baying mob and said to them, “I present him to you, but I want you to know that I don’t find him guilty.  He hasn’t committed any crime.”

In a frenzy the crowd shouted, “Crucify him! Crucify him!”

But Pilate told them, “You take him. You crucify him. I find nothing wrong with him.”

Pilate did his best to pardon him, but the Jews shouted him down: “If you pardon this man, you’re no friend of Caesar’s. Anyone setting himself up as ‘king’ defies Caesar.”

When Pilate heard those words, he took Jesus outside into the square and sat down at the judgment seat.  It was noon on the day everyone was preparing for the Passover festival.

Pilate said to the Jews, “Here is your king.”

They shouted back, “Kill him! Kill him! Crucify him!”

Pilate said, “You want me to crucify your king?”

The religious leaders answered, “We have no king except Caesar.”

At this Pilate caved in and sent him to be crucified.

They took Jesus away. Carrying his cross, they led him out of the city to the place they called Skull Hill.  Here they nailed him up, they crucified him with two criminals, one on each side and Jesus in the middle.

Pilate wrote a sign and had it nailed to the cross. It read:

   Jesus the Nazarene
   the king of the Jews.

Feb72011

They Are Watching

I made the mistake of jokingly saying “I can’t wait for them to just put an implant in my brain that does all of that” in front of my wife yesterday.  I am a typical tech geek.  I have an iPhone 4 that does everything.  People say to me “you’re never off facebook” and my reply is usually, “I’m never on facebook, I am on the bus”.  I connect to people all the time and it rarely impacts upon daily life as it happens whilst I commute, walk or eat my lunch.  Yesterday my mother in law mentioned that she had lost her phone (old fashioned nokia) and asked me to text it to ask anyone who may have found it to contact her.  I said “if I lost my iPhone I could go to your computer and find it on a map.  I could send a message to it, lock it down and wipe it’s memory.  At this point wife had a small fit and said “Are you mad?  You are half way through reading 1984!!”

She has a very good point.  Technology is able to set us free, connect us with those we love and enable us to network with others… but it could also be used to perpetuate a regime.  I have a mobile device in my pocket that identifies me and my movements.  Some people even use it to publish where they are via facebook or foursquare. 

There is of course more to this interaction between husband and wife yesterday and the conversation progressed.  I recalled that a couple of weeks ago we went to a friend’s house and they have a new Xbox Kinect.  I didn’t play but I did watch people jumping around their living room looking foolish (I suspect this is better than playing).  Yesterday afternoon I mentioned that it was “cool” and speculated that I would possibly like to have one in the future if I ever had the money.  Wife again had a small fit and said she wouldn’t have one in the house.  She had noticed something else about the experience.  When the three-year old child walked past the screen it said “hello Toby”.

I’m not a particularly paranoid person but when wife said “can you imagine if they put one of those on every street corner?” I was left with an icy chill running down my spine.  Will I one day be hiding from the Xbox and iPhone and writing by hand using a contraband journal and pen?

“The thought police would get him just the same. He had committed–would have committed, even if he had never set pen to paper–the essential crime that contained all others in itself. Thoughtcrime, they called it. Thoughtcrime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for a while, even for years, but sooner or later they were bound to get you.”
– George Orwell, 1984

Jan272011

Literally | A Fresh Expression of Wedding

A few colleagues were talking about weddings the other day.  They discussed things that they had been asked to do and whether they were prepared to incorporate them into the day.  It was a bit of one-upmanship.  Who had the most crazy request?  One said that they had been asked if they could wear reenactment outfits.  I said “what period”?  The conversation continued and I was told “They wanted to have a guard of honour at the door of the church when they left”.  “What period?” say I, “What type of reenactment?”.  It turned out to be Viking and Saxon reenactment.

I guess they weren’t expecting me to say “I used to do Viking Saxon reenactment and I was in a guard of honour at a wedding.  I also have a friend who married in a rifleman’s uniform AKA Sharpe’s rifles”.  When I say these kinds of things people often don’t know how to react.  In the last two days, all the old photos have started to appear on Facebook.  That is literally how I came to share with you this video that @revdrach sent me!

There are legal ramifications to a wedding and much of what is done is prescribed by law.  If I had a pound for every person who has asked me if they can “write their own vows” because they have seen it on Home and Away I could retire at 32.  Never the less, we live in a world that is looking for meaningful personalised experiences in all sorts of different ways.  When they turn to the church to have them, how do we respond?  61 million people have seen that video but how many would put their foot down and say no? 

My experience as a groom was that we walked out of church to this.  We looked at the congregation.  The metalheads were looking at each other and going “is it”?  I looked at Mrs Changingworship and an unspoken thing happened.  We ran.  The emotion was so overwhelming that we were now husband and wife that we ran down the aisle and left them to it in all of its punk glory!  We went to snog behind the church.  We were wedded.  We were now one.  And it was all about the three of us, me, her and God.

So what does it mean to be real with people as “The Church” when we come together for a couple’s wedding?  What can we do to convey the message that it is about the couple and God?  What facilitates their celebration of their love for one another in the presence of their creator?

I was fortunate:  I married the vicars daughter – literally.