Author Archives: hwwchurch

God Willing

In an earlier entry I wrote about the song “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” and its underlying assumption that the world is governed by “The Fates.”  (“Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow.”)  In writing it I discovered that the words “if the Fates allow” were actually a replacement for “if the Lord allows.”  This brings a whole new angle to the debate, especially in the light of the change that we are seeing from Christendom’s BC and AD to the post-Christendom BCE and CE.  Originally, the song emanated from a Christian worldview, but the lyrics were changed to eliminate the Christian dimension because some people felt it was offensive.  And maybe it is offensive to some; the idea that “the Lord” might not allow something we hold dear.  Let us see…

Christians understand “the Lord” is the God of the Bible, variously described, including Jonah’s phrase, “The God of heaven who made the sea and the dry land” (Jonah 1:9) and God’s own words recorded by the prophet Isaiah (46:9), “I am God and there is no other.”  Being humble before such authority is surely entirely appropriate.  In the Bible book which bears his name, James (who describes himself as “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ”) encourages his readers to be humble before God and chastises them for being arrogant in their boastful planning.  He writes, “What is your life?  For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.  Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’” (Jas 4:14-15).  It is from him that we get the phrase, “God-willing,” and it is this idea which is being expressed in the original lyrics of the song.

Of course, we don’t hear people say, “God-willing” as much today as was once the case.  This almost certainly says something about our society and is entirely in keeping with the change from AD to CE.  Like the people to whom James was writing, we have grown proud, believing ourselves to be masters of our own destiny; we rely not on God, but on our money, our talents, our connections or our reputation to open doors for us and provide us with our every need.  In our so-called enlightened society, The-God-of-heaven-who-made-the-sea-and-the-dry-land has become at best an after-thought, and at worst, a swear-word.  We behave, not as servants of God like James, but as if we were gods ourselves – with the right to do just as we please.  No wonder we find offensive the idea that “the Lord” might stand in our way and confound our plans.  How dare he?  Just who does he think he is?

At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus to Mary; a child born of a virgin, exiled to Egypt and raised by his adoptive father in the line of King David.  He made the blind see, the deaf hear and the lame leap.  Powerful men plotted against him, a friend betrayed him and false witnesses accused him.  Soldiers gambled for his clothes, he was mocked, beaten and crucified, though not one of his bones was broken.  Buried, he was raised to life on the third day.  All of this was prophesied in advance through the word of God.  Who then is the Lord?  He is the one who knows the end from the beginning, so we should approach him in great humility.  Yet Christmas also shows that He loves us deeply: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners” (1 Timothy 1:15) – good news indeed, even for arrogant hearts!

Freedom from the Christmas Beast

Has your credit been crunched?  This period of financial instability and austerity continues to have mixed effects.  And Christmas just messes with people’s heads.

I recall watching a news report on the way the crisis is affecting people in our region.  In this report a young woman was being interviewed about the very real prospect of having her home repossessed by the bank.  Her anxiety was tangible, but never more so than when she raised the immanence of Christmas; “I’m managing to keep up mortgage repayments now,” she said, “but I don’t know what’ll happen when Christmas and all its extra expense comes round.”  My heart ached for her, but I must confess my sympathy was directed not at her financial need, but rather her enslavement.

She was on the brink of homelessness, facing the prospect of her family having to move out of the home she loved if she were to default on her mortgage payments.  Yet her comments seemed to suggest that extra expense brought about by the Christmas season was inescapable.  In her head was what seemed to her to be a genuine dilemma; “Which ‘bill’ shall I pay – the bill for the house or the bill for the Christmas celebrations?”

Clear thinking about her situation shows there is no contest; the mortgage must be paid, and Christmas luxuries can wait – forever if necessary.  It would be wrong-headed to put them in the same category as essential household bills.  If the young woman truly loves her family, she will surely hold back from spending on turkey and trimmings until she has guaranteed they’ll be able to stay in the house into the New Year; far better to be housed than to have a new flat-screen TV and nowhere to plug it in!  Her problem is the strong message being transmitted by the commercial world; “If you love your family you will buy them ….”  It’s a lie, but it’s on every street-corner, and it has been carefully set up to resonate with our heartbeat until we begin to believe it and it enslaves us.

It saddens me to see the impact of this lie upon peoples’ lives.  The consumerist culture we inhabit is so inhospitable and short of compassion.  Market forces feel no sympathy towards the people they lead on, and ultimately their promises of deep satisfaction prove shallow and empty.  Christmas comes at a dark time of the year, and commerce, whilst promising light, often ends up adding an extra layer to the darkness we experience.

In light of the current on-going difficulties in the world economy, perhaps now is a good time to re-evaluate the way we celebrate Christmas and give a mind to what is truly important.  If we are in any measure simply slaves to the system, it is my prayer that we would be like those mentioned in Isaiah 9:2; “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light.”  The good news of Christmas is that in Jesus Christ, his only Son, God has sent us a Saviour to free us from all that entangles and liberate us to be what he always intended us to be.  This is something in which we can, surely, confidently invest.

The Reason for the Season

Finally, December has arrived and the run up to mas can begin in earnest.  Obviously the shops have been tempting us with mas goodies for ages, vying for our attention in a competitive mas market.  In a flash overnight, the “Seasonal” aisles and displays that were bedecked with the orange and black of Hallowe’en have become all green and red with liberal sprinklings of fake snow; ugly skeletons and witches have given way to jolly old Father mas and his reindeer.  There’s no doubt about it; there is a jolliness in the mas season.  I used to work with someone who didn’t get particularly excited about it, but I’ve never met a proper Dickensian Scrooge.  Somewhere in the mas festivities, there seems to be something that appeals to most tastes.

For the consumers amongst us (from the smallest children who begin to modify their behaviour in anticipation of Father mas’ midnight journey, to the most senior citizen whose collection of mail-order catalogue nick-nacks rivals some small mail-order companies’ stock list!) there are the gifts – mas presents are popular with everyone.  Others take the opportunity to be givers rather than receivers; either generously giving mas presents to friends and family or helping with a charity of some sort – perhaps a homeless shelter, or Age-Concern centre, providing a mas meal for elderly neighbours who would otherwise be alone.  The traditional mas dinner is something that has wide-ranging appeal; we may not be overly keen on Brussels-sprouts, but there’s usually plenty of other stuff to satisfy our appetites.  And don’t we all look forward to mas pudding?

Then, there are the office mas parties which go down a treat with young employees who are happy to indulge themselves on the company’s tab.  The radio stations all start to play the familiar mas songs, and there’s the annual competition amongst recording artists to be the mas number one.  The postmen and women bring joy to us daily with sacks bulging with mas cards, and we send our own mas greetings to family and friends all over the world.  Then there’s the special bumper edition of the Radio Times which contains all the TV and radio listings for the whole mas fortnight – children and parents drawing rings round programmes they want to watch or record; special film premieres for mas Day itself.  For the nostalgic who like to remember years gone by, there are plenty of mas carols to sing – and if some community-minded person has organised a proper event out in the cold of a December evening, so much the better.  We could even watch it done “properly” from King’s College, Cambridge, or we could pootle down to a local church at some point and reconnect with the well-known story of the little donkey on the dusty road, the starlit stable, the shepherds and the wise men; there’s always something massy going on in the church at this time of year.

All in all, in my experience, mas is popular with pretty much everyone.  It’s a great celebration.  I confess that I love it myself – for nearly all the reasons above.  But I’ve completely left out of my article the main reason for the celebration.  How ridiculous is that?  Imagine if someone actually did that for real?!

Dad’s Taxi – a 21st Century Dilemma

I’m sure that many of you will know what it means to be “Dad’s Taxi.”  As my children have grown, this part of my identity has developed rapidly.  I’ve been driving my children around for years, of course, but it would appear to be true that the amount of driving does increase in proportion to the age of the child.  In one sense, it’s been fairly easy for me to accommodate my daughters’ increasing transport requirement because I work flexible hours.  However, my ability to be flexible presents its own unique problem – I have a serious gap in my arsenal of excuses!

Consider the parent who works nine-to-five, commutes a further hour at the beginning and end of every day and is afforded only four weeks annual leave.  The question, “It’s half-term; can you take me to the swimming pool / shopping centre on Wednesday lunchtime?” is fairly easily answered; “No – I’m at work!”  Whatever the request, such a parent has a fairly robust argument to employ if they are at all unsure about the wisdom of letting their child attend the function in question.

I don’t have that luxury.  So if I don’t want my children to go, for whatever reason, I can’t hide behind the convenient (albeit partially true) “I’m at work” excuse.  I have to give the proper reason. But actually, this is no bad thing.  After all, if I want them to forge relationships which are based on honesty, faithfulness and mutual respect, then I have to model that in my relationship with them.  So I have to be really clear in my own mind about what is good for my children.  I must make right judgments about allowing them to grow up at an appropriate speed and, above all, I must surely communicate my thinking with them in a way which doesn’t exasperate them (Eph 6:4) but which demonstrates my love.

So “Dad’s Taxi” is part of my identity, but it is inextricably related to my being “Dad.”  Indeed, if I were just “Taxi,” there would be something desperately wrong.  It is in my daughters’ best interests for me to be Dad first and Taxi second.  And that means I have to work out what it means to be a good dad.  So where do I look for guidance on this?

Christmas is coming when we celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  He was brought up by Joseph (“a righteous man” – Matthew 1:19) as his own son, but the New Testament makes clear that Jesus was (and is) the Son of God.  He taught his disciples to call God “Our Father,” and the Apostle Paul wrote that, as we entrust our lives to Jesus, so we receive “the Spirit of sonship … by him we cry ‘Abba (Daddy), Father.’” (Romans 8:15)

I dare to suggest that, since God has revealed himself to be “Father,” in God’s world, surely the best way we can care for our children is to model that care on the Fatherhood of God.   And the best way of understanding the Fatherhood of God fully is surely from the perspective of a beloved child.  The joyful good news of Christmas is that we can experience this – “To those who received [Jesus] … he gave the right to become children of God,” (John 1:12).  So have you received him?  Or are you just Taxi?

A Merry Little Christmas

Now that summer has gone (and come back again for one last hurrah, then properly disappeared at the sight of the snowflake symbol flashing on our dashboards), it’s definitely that “approaching Christmas” time of year again.  In fact, the TV adverts are already telling me that “It’s Christmas” (not just approaching Christmas!).  It surely won’t be long before the radios of the land will be beginning to play the usual festive tunes, and DJs will sound excitable and nostalgic all at the same time.  Noddy Holder and Roy Wood can look forward to another bumper royalties pay-out, as can George Michael’s erstwhile musical collaborator, Mr Ridgley, while shops and offices sway to the themes of Last Christmas.

Constant radio-play drills these songs into our heads.  Today’s children don’t know the National Anthem, or even some of the best traditional Christmas Carols, but you can be sure they know Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer’s special song!  Loads of these popular Christmas songs refer to nostalgia, winter weather and to the activities of one red-suited white-bearded gentleman with a supersonic sledge.  To find any reference to the Christ of Christ-mas you’d probably have to listen to Cliff Richard.  Indeed, very few songs refer to the religious aspects of the Christmas season at all.  I find it fascinating, then, that, despite the normal pattern taken by writers to avoid religious motifs of any sort, one of the most popular Christmas songs actually treats us as if we believe in the tales of Greek mythology!

The song is “Have yourself a merry little Christmas,” popularised by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM film, “Meet me in St Louis,” and subsequently recorded by notable others including Frank Sinatra and the Muppets (separately!).  Having spoken of “Faithful friends who are dear to us” who “gather near to us once more,” the song speaks of a hope that, “Through the years we all will be together, if the Fates allow.”

The Fates may sound like a slightly dubious 1960s pop-group, but they are in fact characters from the Greek pantheon: Clotho (the spinner) spins the thread of life for each human being; Lachesis (the measurer) chooses the lot in life each person will have and measures off how long that life is to be; and Atropos (she who cannot be turned) finally cuts the thread of life with her shears, so bringing each person to death.  In the world of Greek mythology, everything is subject to them – even the gods themselves.

Can there be anything more out of place in a Christmas song than a reference to three hag-like characters who wield such an impersonal and determinative power over the whole universe?  I’ll grant you that Rage Against The Machine’s Christmas number one of a few years ago was in pretty poor taste, but I reckon this line is probably more unhelpful still.  It taps into our society’s materialistic understanding of the world and encourages us to shrug our shoulders along with Doris Day and say, “Que sera, sera!” (or as today’s teenagers might put it, “Whatever!”) as if life doesn’t really matter.

This is complete madness, since the whole point about Christmas is that we matter immensely to God.  He doesn’t stand back, unable to overcome the power of the Fates (who don’t actually exist).  Rather, in His great love, He breaks into our world in the person of Jesus to rescue us and make us His children.  For those who feel helpless in the face of “fate” or other powers and authorities, He brings hope; the creator of the universe cares enough for us to search us out and bring us back to Himself so that through the years, we will be together.  And that’s a story that guarantees my celebrations each year can be described as “A merry little Christmas”.

More famous than the Beatles

A couple of years ago it was Paris, Lindsay and Britney.  Nowadays its Kim, Cheryl and Katie that seem to be the movers and shakers – the newsmakers whose every move finds its way onto our breakfast table or computer screen.  And for what?  Some are famous merely for being famous; some, despite some initial promise are now famous for being out of control; some are both.  Is this freak-show really what life has become?  The cult of “Celebrity” seems to be in the ascendance.

As relational creatures, human beings have always been interested in the exploits of others, so this fixation with celebrity is not necessarily anything new (though perhaps it is on a new scale).  According to my diary, during October (the month I’m writing this) there are 28 people from down the centuries that the Church of England thinks we might like to remember and for whom we should thank God.  The lives of those whose names I recognise from this list are vastly more appealing than some of the dross we see on television.  These include the social reformer, the Earl of Shaftesbury, and St Francis of Assisi in whose name the chapel in Hunsdon is dedicated.  Also on the list are Martin Luther (the German priest who radically altered the religious and political landscape across Europe in the early 16th century), William Tyndale (who translated the Bible into English and was martyred for it in 1536), and Bishops Ridley and Latimer (who preached the Bible and were martyred for that in 1555).  Tucked away also is the renowned Nurse Edith Cavell, whose relative Kitty once lived in Hunsdon.

Though we rarely remember them, the impact these people have had on our lives is immeasurable.  There’s no doubt about it, these people changed the world.  It’s not surprising, then, that some have decided these notable characters should have a day on our calendar in their memory.  Somehow I can’t see the same honour being bestowed upon Ms Kardashian, Price, Cole, Hilton, Lohan or Spears!

But there is one who is even greater than these celebrated saints.  His exact dates of birth and death are unknown, but every year we commemorate them both.  His life did not inspire a single day to remember; rather, his life is the foundation for the whole of our calendar.  As we approach Christmas this year, let us remember that Christmas starts with Christ; the one who changed the world and keeps on changing it through his people.  And may the one who is more famous than the Beatles hold your hand in your hard day’s nights and whenever you need help.

 

Preparing for Christmas

So, here we are, half way through Exploretumn and the nights have really drawn in.  I guess it’s round about now that most people start thinking more seriously about Christmas.  Office parties are being booked, town-centre lights are being erected, and we’re conscious that time is pressing on – if we don’t get the cards written soon, the intended recipients will not know we’ve been thinking about them.   This season of preparation has a lot in common with the church’s season of Advent, which begins four Sundays before Christmas (1st December this year) and in which Christians look forward to the Christmas Day celebration of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem 2000 years ago.  One of the similarities between the seasons is that there’s a clear end-point to both: it’s quite plain that Christmas shopping must be complete by Christmas Day; and the season of Advent is defined as ending as Christmas Eve wanes.  There’s no avoiding the fact that Christmas Day is definitely the end of the pre-Christmas season!

But there’s a difference between the seasons too.  As well as helping Christians prepare for the celebration of when God became a man in Jesus to rescue sinners and make them his children again, the season of Advent has a second purpose.  Remembering Jesus’ birth is only part of the deal – Christians also look forward to his return as judge and king at the end of history.  Preparing for this is slightly more difficult than preparing for a Christmas celebration; “the end of history” has a date and is therefore a deadline every bit as definite as “Christmas Day”, but nobody actually knows what that date is.

For most people, this uncertainty tends to result in an understanding that “the end of history” is a long way in the future – so far, in fact, that it is of very little relevance.  And because it is so far in the future, most people – even the super-organised ones – put the task of preparing for it a long way down their list of priorities.  Indeed, I would venture to suggest that very few people give it much thought at all.  Now you might think that it is a bit bold of me to make such a sweeping claim, but I do so on the basis of surveys that have been conducted recently into people’s attitudes to Christmas itself.  Apparently, in the UK, just 12 per cent of adults know the nativity story, and more than one-third of children don’t know whose birthday we are celebrating at Christmas.  In what many still like to regard as a Christian country, a staggering 51 per cent of people now say the birth of Jesus is irrelevant to their Christmas.  I reason that if people are not including Christ in their Christmas despite the Christian heritage of our nation, they almost certainly aren’t thinking about his return.

Jesus himself advises that this is a terrible mistake.  He describes the day of his return as coming “like a thief in the night.”  The image he uses is deliberately shocking in order to wake us up and make us take notice.  He will come suddenly, without further warning – we are already on notice.  On this basis, the sensible thing to do is to put the task of preparing for his return at the top of our priorities so that we are ready when he comes, whenever that is.  So, will you spend the next hour searching the internet for the perfect Christmas gift-wrap, or would it be worth spending some time reflecting on your relationship with God?

Christmas is coming, and so is Christ – may you all be ready!

Moving the goalposts

As a parent and a parish priest I have been involved in a number of schools up and down the country.  As a school governor I’ve even been involved in a couple of Ofsted inspections.  One thing I have noticed is that, in the quest to raise standards, judgement criteria change fairly frequently, and this is quite challenging for schools.  The phrase, “moving the goalposts” springs to mind.

Praise God, then, that when it comes to our relationship with God, the Bible makes it crystal clear where the goalposts are; about what God expects of us.  Jesus said, “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” (Matt 5:48).  With the target set as high as this, we can be confident that the goalposts won’t move – there’s nowhere higher than perfection!  But it does then beg the question, how will we ever reach our target?

The answer is that on our own we won’t.  None of us will ever be perfect (and even if we think we’re good people, deep down we know we still have dark thoughts and ugly attitudes).  So are we lost, consigned forever to miss the mark?  No, praise God!  The Bible also brings us the good news of hope in Jesus Christ.  Because of his perfection, and by faith in him, we can be counted as children of God.

The Bible is clear about this, but sadly, our hearts find this difficult to take.  We find the idea of coming to Jesus for help somehow offensive; it runs completely against our pride.  And what we end up doing is trying to move the goalposts to suit us.  Each of us imagines they are somewhere slightly different.  For one, it is sufficient that they were baptised as a baby.  For another, the goal is reached by their charitable good deeds.  Others choose to remember that God is love and anticipate, therefore, that he will ultimately turn a blind eye to their sin.  Tragically, they forget he is also just (promising never to acquit the guilty) and holy (unable to look upon sin).  Our attempts to move the goalposts are completely futile.  We can pretend all we like, but they will actually remain where God set them.

We’re fast approaching the season of Advent when the church looks forward to Christ’s return as the judge of all.  But whilst the return of Christ is good news for his friends, it is not good news for those who reject him, and I am anxious for everyone who diminishes his importance.  This month, may I urge you all as a matter of some priority to consider how you relate to him?  Do you trust Jesus to carry you to the goal, or are you trying to move the goalposts?

Words of Jesus

Jesus is widely regarded as a good teacher.  Other religions recognise him as a wise man or a prophet.  He is so influential we even set the calendar by his span of years – he quite literally lies at the centre of history on the BC/AD divide.  Yet loads of people don’t really know much about what he taught or said.  In fact, a lot of those who profess to be Christians are not aware of his teaching – either his public teaching or the instruction he gave to his disciples.

This term’s sermon series focusses upon the Words of Jesus as recorded in John’s Gospel; words of prayer, comfort, truth, restoration, assurance and many more.  There’s something for everyone here; why not join us on a Sunday or listen online from our main website and comment about what you hear.

 

Melvyn Bragg Wide of the Mark

I learned something new on Good Friday; Melvyn Bragg wrote the screenplay for the Rice/Lloyd-Webber Musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.”  According to Lord Bragg, adapting that theatrical piece for the big screen proved to be the start of a fascination with Mary Magdalene; a fascination which would eventually produce a documentary to air at 12 noon on Good Friday, the BBC’s flagship “Religious” programme for the 2013 Easter season.

I had been warned in advance that the show would be screened at that time (to coincide with Jesus’ crucifixion?) and encouraged to watch.  So I did.  In the end I was probably less offended than I had prepared myself to be, but I did watch the closing titles with sadness of heart.  The BBC had used its prime-time slot at Easter to present a fanciful alternative to the Christian message rather than something more factual or something that might help people to reflect upon the central figure of Christianity; Jesus the Christ.  Melvyn Bragg was wide of the mark.

To his credit, Lord Bragg was honest about the limited scope of the Biblical evidence about Mary Magdalene.  He was even happy to admit that her status as the first witness of the resurrected Christ (some have dubbed her “the apostle to the apostles”) gives added weight to the veracity of the resurrection accounts – in those days, the testimony of a woman was not regarded as having any value, so the fact that she is mentioned in this light points to the truth of the matter (nobody would make it up!).  But most of the programme was about other things.

First, there was the way the church of later centuries treated Mary Magdalene.  Bragg spoke of the way that the senior and influential figures in the church confused and merged different women in the Gospel accounts together as “Mary” in such a way that she could be presented as a strong example of a penitent sinner.  The church was presented as “wrong” on this matter.  (I don’t disagree with this verdict, but it is painful to hear nonetheless, because no distinction was made between the failures of the early church and the state of the church today; what the audience heard was “The church was/is wrong.”)

Second, there was the uncritical appeal to the minority report of the Nag Hamadi texts – literature from the “Gnostic” sect of Christianity which was around from the end of the 1st century and which believed a very different message to orthodox Christianity as we know it today (or as we find in the letters of Paul and the rest of the New Testament).  Predictably, Bragg highlighted the one fragment of a text in which Jesus is reported to have favoured Mary above the other disciples and “kissed her on the mouth often,” but, regrettably, though one of the scholars did admit we could not be sure what such kisses really meant, none of them identified that the fragment is actually damaged just where the word “mouth” would be.  The real issue is not that we don’t know what a kiss on the mouth might have meant in those days, but rather that we don’t even know what the text really says!  Of course, the real issue is of no interest to the programme makers; they just want something sensational to interest the public.

Strikingly, Bragg promoted the view that ancient documents (again, without qualifying this at all) suggest strongly that Mary Magdalene was “Jesus’ lover, or even his wife.”  I confess I found this most bizarre; that Lord Bragg should find it somehow of more concern that Mary be Jesus’ wife than his [unmarried] lover!  Of course, the evidence for such a relationship is virtually non-existent and the hints come only from late, scarce and unreliable sources; the silence of the canonical Gospels on this matter actually speaks a far more authoritative word.  However, the TV audience just heard that she “might have been” (in context “probably was”) his lover… and the reputation of both Jesus and his church is tarnished once again.

Third, a significant assumption made popular by Dan Brown’s novel, “The Da Vinci Code” were repeated.  This was that the Gnostic “Gospels” were written as early as the four Gospels we have in the Bible.  Reputable scholars suggest this is highly unlikely – suggesting the origin of the Gnostic material is almost certainly a century or so later.  Similarly, the programme promoted the view that the Emperor Constantine was instrumental in choosing the books that would officially become parts of the Christian Bible so that they would convey the message he wished others to hear rather than the “truth”.  The real way the books of the New Testament were chosen by and authorised for use in church gatherings is much more complicated (but this doesn’t make such controversial television!).

Fourth, and connected with this, Constantine’s suppression of certain branches of the church (Lord Bragg called them “Christians” without qualification) was connected with the suppression of women; the outlawed Gnostics seemed to allow women to rise to positions of leadership, and, of course, this would never do.  Thus Bragg neatly linked ancient history to an issue which is currently proving difficult for the church – “Things might have been so different,” he mused.

All in all I guess I found the programme most disappointing because of the thread running through the programme that “the church was/is wrong”; wrong about Mary’s identity, wrong to exclude the heretical Gnostic texts, wrong to hide Jesus’ alleged affair with Mary, wrong to take the view it did on women in leadership.  There was a sense in which the programme presented Lord Bragg as “finally, a sensible voice!” on these matters, unearthing secrets the church would rather stay hidden.  He made some sensible conclusions (like him, I do not believe that Mary Magdalene was sent off in a rudderless boat, ended up in France and performed a miracle by praying that the wife of a local prince might conceive a child).  But in his quest for a sensational story, he literally went all over the place, up every dead end street drawing attention to all manner of false beliefs and raising all kinds of false hopes.

What a shame he didn’t settle for the most sensational news of all time; the news which Mary Magdalene herself encountered and shared – that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave; that death is defeated, and that forgiveness of sins is freely given in his name to all who will believe.  Now that would have been an appropriate programme for the Easter season!