Walking trees and foolish churches
8 August 2004 – Simon Jenkins, editor of Ship of Fools: "We want to know if you see anything valuable or hopeful in creating church in the way we have in the past 12 weeks."
The reading was about Jesus' healing of the blind man in Mark 8:22-26.The story in our reading is one of my favourite stories about Jesus.
At this point in his life, Jesus is famous for healing people. He makes people see, or hear, or walk, or get up out of bed again after being sick for a long time.
So when Jesus comes to a town in Galilee, a small group of people lead their friend out to meet him. Their friend is blind.
One of the things I love about this story is how physical it is.
Jesus doesn't wave his hands in the general direction of the blind man. Instead he leads him outside the village. He spits on his sightless eyes. He puts his hands on his eyes. Jesus is so active and physical! It tells us Jesus was a flesh and blood human person, up to his elbows in the real stuff of living.
And like a lot of stories in Mark's Gospel, Jesus is quite a tough guy. He's decisive. He's a man of action. He's not meek and mild. He's not nice. Jesus spits. Where Would Jesus Spit? Make that into a Christian product line!
The second thing I love about this story is that Jesus gets the miracle wrong.
He spits on the blind man's eyes and then anxiously asks, "Do you see anything?" He doesn't know if it's worked. And the man says he sees people, but they look like trees walking.
So Jesus has a second go. He's like the cable guy, adjusting the TV when the picture's not quite right. It's only after Jesus' second attempt that Mark's Gospel tell us, "Then were the eyes of the blind man opened..."
I think this suggestion of human imperfection in Jesus is important. It tells us he is one of us. It tells us about his powerful faith in God and his fearlessness in taking risks for God.
Church of Fools, in a tiny way, follows the same faith and risk-taking of Jesus. Our first go at doing church online has been risky and in lots of ways hasn't worked as we hoped. But like the man who saw people looking like walking trees, it's begun a process which can be sharpened up. This is something we can learn from, just as Jesus learned from his miracle that was only 50 per cent of the way there!
And as Jesus asked the blind man, we now want to ask you all: "Do you see anything?"
We want to know if you see anything valuable, anything important, anything hopeful about creating church in the way we have in the past 12 weeks.
We need you to tell us. Because our biggest desire is to help people see Jesus for themselves, standing before them, opening their eyes to the beautiful light and love of God.
May God open our eyes so we can become the church he calls us to be.
Simon Jenkins is a writer and designer, the editor of Ship of Fools, and co-editor of rejesus.co.uk.
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