It's Not About Where You're From

There’s a huge Irn Bru advert at Glasgow Airport emblazoned with the slogan: ‘It’s not about where you’re going, it’s about where you’re from’. The message is that wherever you might be flying to in the world, what really counts is where you’re from. And what could be a more iconic symbol of Scottishness than Irn Bru?

We don’t tend to look on it as a good thing if people forget where they’re from. If someone from Stranraer ‘made it big’ and was being interviewed on a talk show in America, we wouldn’t take it too kindly if they were asked where they were from and said ‘Glasgow’. It might be easier for the audience to locate on a map, but for us it would feel like a betrayal.

I remember heading off to university and a fellow-supporter of my local football team asking, tongue-in-cheek (I hope!), which of the two big Belfast teams I was going to start supporting. Of course the only time I actually went to either of their grounds was when my hometown team was playing – and I was very much in the ‘Away’ end. I couldn’t have done otherwise and maintained any level of self-respect.

So on one level the Irn Bru advert resonates deeply with me. Though actually, the advert doesn’t really work if we apply it to someone from a more affluent area moving to somewhere people see as less attractive. It would fairly grate on us if someone moved here from somewhere like Oxford and were always negatively comparing Stranraer to where they’re from. At times we might even feel the need to tell people ‘You’re not in Kansas anymore’ – in other words, you need to forget where you’re from and get on with things where you are. We need to live life where we are, not where we might want to be.

So the advert isn’t applicable to all situations, because there are times when we want people to stop talking about where they’re from.

There are also many people who would rather forget where they came from themselves. Not because they’re ashamed of the place itself, but because they were the victims of abuse, bullying, gossip etc. Or perhaps they did things themselves that they are ashamed of, and they know they would not be welcomed back.

In fact, one of the reasons why the message of the Bible is good news for people in those situations is because it’s actually the polar opposite of the Irn Bru advert. Rather than where we’re from being all-important, the gospel tells us that where we’re going is what matters. In fact, we could sum it up as: ‘It’s not about where you’re from, it’s about where you’re going’. That’s an important message for those who, for good reason, would rather forget where they’re from. It’s also an important message for those who think that where they’re from makes them better than others. Who think that because they come from a particular family or a particular place – or have been brought up going to a particular church – that they are a cut above everyone else. They need reminded: ‘It’s not about where you’re from, it’s about where you’re going’.

So where are you going? The Glasgow Airport advert is clearly a reference to where your plane is going to land. You can fly from GLA to 75 places – but the Bible tells us that ultimately there’s only two destinations that matter: Heaven or Hell. To continue the airport analogy, I can’t make it to Heaven by my efforts any more than I could walk to America. What really matters is who’s piloting the plane. Jesus’ ascension into Heaven means that our place there is guaranteed if our trust is in him.

In some ways, the reverse of the Irn Bru advert would be the perfect slogan to write above a church door. We have people in our church from all sorts of backgrounds. Some who’d rather forget their past if they could. Others who have had to learn that no-one has any right to see themselves as better than anyone else. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.

You might be nervous about going to a church for the first time – or about coming back to church after years away. People worry about what to wear, or about what to bring or about not having someone to come with. But none of that matters. ‘It not about where you’re from, it’s about where you’re going’. And it’s never too late to start that journey.

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 3 August 2023

'Do not disturb' or 'Come on in'?

It’s the time of year when many people head away on holiday. Accommodation options these days are legion: AirBnBs, regular BnBs, caravans, self-catering apartments, and of course hotels. With four young children our days of staying in hotels are definitely on hold, and this summer we’re planning a house swap, which has the advantage of not costing anything!

But when it comes to hotels, one thing they all have in common are those little door hangers, which tell the cleaners whether they should come in and make up your room or not. Someone recently shared a photo of a hotel where the usual two options were put in a slightly different way. One side read: ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’. The other said: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.

 As someone who’s passionate about getting the Bible’s message across in everyday language, I thought they were brilliant. They perfectly sum up the only two possible responses to the gospel of Jesus Christ. Either we say to Jesus: ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’, or we say: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.

One of the misconceptions about Christianity that I and my fellow believers are often trying to combat is that it’s only for good people. Again and again we come up against the widespread idea that we go to church because we think we’re good, or because we think it will make us good. In fact, we’ve had people in church being told by their families: ‘you’re not good enough to go to church!’ Their families know what they’re like – or at least what they were like in the past – and think that church is no place for them.

And yet while it’s a misconception, it’s an understandable one. Undoubtedly there have been and are many who do think of themselves as good because they go to church. Undoubtedly there are those who have been regular church attenders, and have looked down on those who don’t go as somehow worse than them.

But for those who have been born again, the truth is exactly the opposite. We go to church, not because we think we’re good people, but because we know we’re not. And yet we’ve heard about someone called Jesus, who his enemies called ‘a friend of sinners’ (and they didn’t mean that as a compliment!). As New York Times bestselling author Tim Keller put it: When God opens our eyes we discover that ‘we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.’

Jesus once told a story about two men who went to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ‘The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.”’ He didn’t pray for mercy; he didn’t think he needed it. He was clean enough – or so he thought.

‘But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”’

Thinking that church is for good people leads only to pride (for those who think they are good enough) or despair (for those who know they are not). On the contrary, the Bible tells us that there has only ever been one truly good person who has ever lived – Jesus Christ. The reason he came to earth was not primarily to set an example for us (which we could never have lived up to anyway!). Instead, he came to live the perfect life that we fail to live, and then die in the place of his people.

As a result, being a Christian isn’t so much about ‘doing’ but about ‘receiving’ – receiving the free gift of new life that he offers. There are many (not least among those who sit in churches) who say, ‘thanks but no thanks’ – ‘I’m clean enough: please don’t disturb’. But by God’s grace there are others who have gratefully said: ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’.

Jesus himself says ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’ (Revelation 3:20). What will your response be? ‘I’m clean enough: please do not disturb’? Or ‘I’m a right mess: come on in’?

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 29 June 2023

Not My King?

It was revealed last week that the Queen’s funeral cost the government an estimated £162 million. The cost of the Coronation has not yet been calculated, but it is estimated to have been £50-£100 million. That’s just one of the reasons why the hashtag #NotMyKing was trending in the lead-up to the big event. As much as I have my reservations about our new king however, slogans and protests don’t change the fact that Charles III is now our monarch. A recent Guardian cartoon made a similar point in the wake of reports that global temperatures were heading towards ‘unchartered territory’. The drawing is of the earth with a sign stuck in it saying ‘Not my planet’. But for better or worse this is our planet – and Charles is our king.

In a way it reminds me of what the Bible says about a far greater king – Jesus Christ. Indeed, the whole Coronation service is designed to remind us that there is a greater king than the one being crowned. As the new monarch is given the orb he is told ‘remember always that the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our God, and of his Christ’.

Just as King Charles was anointed, so was Jesus. ‘Christ’ is not a surname; like ‘Messiah’ it simply means anointed. Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ – he’s God’s anointed. As the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed at the Coronation: ‘Thy prophets of old anointed priests and kings to serve in thy name, and in the fullness of time thine only Son was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be the Christ’. This was prophesied long before Jesus’ birth in the likes of Psalm 2, where God says ‘As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill’. Elsewhere in the psalm he is called God’s ‘Son’ and his ‘Anointed’.

On one level a psalm like that could be understood as speaking of a human king, like the Biblical King David. But the language is far too exalted to describe any mere human being, as the Apostles realised when they quoted its language in reference to Jesus’ crucifixion (Acts 4:25-26).

And there’s the rub. The Christ was long-expected – but quickly rejected. Jesus’ friend Martha once told him: ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world’. But though he was expected, when he came, he was crucified.

How did the world react to their King? It reacted, and still reacts, just as Psalm 2 predicted: ‘the nations rage…the kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD and against his Anointed’.

In other words, the world – including each of us by nature – respond with the hashtag #NotMyKing. Jesus’ rule looks restrictive. We believe the whispers that to follow him would conflict with human flourishing. And so we say of the LORD and his Anointed: ‘Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us’.

How does the psalm tell us that God reacts to this? By wringing his hands? Not at all: ‘he who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision’. How we react at the enthronement of a king says more about us than it does about the king.

Last month, as Charles and Camilla visited Merseyside, the BBC shared a video of protestors chanting ‘not my King’ being drowned out by children chanting ‘he’s our king’.

It was remarkably similar to a prediction in another psalm that even if God’s anointed king is rejected by the sophisticated of the world, children will worship him: ‘Out of the mouth of babies and infants, you have established strength because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.’ (Psalm 8:2). Jesus quoted that very verse to the religious leaders of his day when they complained about children praising him.

The coronation of an earthly king is designed to point us to a greater King. One man who realised this at the Coronation of William IV in 1831 was the Reformed Presbyterian minister Thomas Houston. William IV, who was crowned at the age of 64, was the oldest person to assume the monarchy until Charles III. On the morning of his Coronation, Houston wrote in his journal:

‘Today, the King of these nations will be crowned, and many will be anxious to testify to him their affection and loyalty.  Let me ever bear faithful allegiance to Messiah the Prince of the kings of the earth.’

Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 1 June 2023