More Tea, Jesus?

by James Lark

  One subcommittee threw itself into the work but remained convinced that the party itself was never really going to happen. ‘The man who got us together was just giving us something to do,’ they argued, although some of them believed that the man himself didn’t really exist either. ‘It gives us a kind of security, knowing that there’s going to be a party, even if it’s never going to happen.’

  As a result of this subcommittee, further subcommittees were formed to ensure that all subcommittees believed that the party really was going to happen, declaring that the people in subcommittees which didn’t believe in the party were not invited.

  Other arguments started to break out amongst the people organising the party. One group of subcommittees remained entirely convinced that the party was to be a fancy-dress party, and spent much of their time trying on clothes and developing increasingly outlandish ways of looking like sea creatures. Another group of subcommittees considered this a waste of time, as they believed the man whose party it was made it very clear that it was to be a black-tie-only event.

  One of the biggest arguments that broke out was about the type of music they should have at the party; of course, everyone had different tastes, but certain groups insisted that there was a definite style of music that could be considered nautical, and no other should be used. Other groups ignored this point of view entirely, pointing out that it was a party and as long as they were all having a good time it didn’t matter what style of music was played.

  Another subcommittee had to be formed to deal with the subcommittee which wanted to use country-and-western music.

  Some people by this stage were so fed up with all the arguing that they left the subcommittees altogether and formed a completely new committee, determined to do what the original committee had been formed to do. Eventually, they forgot that they were working on the same party as the subcommittees they had left. Others forgot that they were working on a party at all, and thought that all the arguing was the whole point of the exercise.

  By the time the man who owned the house returned from Calais with an impressive stock of food and wine, his house and garden were in something of an uproar. Certainly, there were some parts that had been suitably decorated in a nautical theme, and it would be wrong to say that none of the party was ready, but there were still people half dressed up as shellfish and whales, arguing with others who were in black tie, with the subcommittee for nautical research pointing out biological inaccuracies in their costumes, and they were all getting in the way of the people still measuring the house, all of whom had long since stopped believing there was going to ever be a party, but were enjoying the measuring so much that they’d carried on doing it all the same.

  The man looked at the chaos, and listened to the arguments raging throughout his house and the different types of music coming from each area; he might have got quite cross at this stage, but essentially he was a good man and only wanted to have a party. So he put out the food and drink and had the party anyway.

  Sadly, some people were so busy arguing about the dress code, the music and whether or not the party was really going to happen, that they didn’t notice that it had already started without them.

  Palm Sunday

  Something big was coming. Whispers of things on their way had reached the furthest corners of the globe, although none of it was talked about on television or printed in newspapers. Indeed, many newsreaders and journalists had stopped going into work altogether because it no longer seemed important. Something was about to happen that was bigger than news, something so huge that it was spreading without the help of the media – spreading on the streets and in the market places, between houses and in shopping centres, spreading at the speed of rumour.

  But it was no rumour. Those who heard – those who really heard – knew that nothing would ever be the same again. The familiar things that had been would be left behind forever and those who were ready would be going to a promised land, though nobody was sure whether to expect a physical land or whether it would be more of a metaphorical land defying geographical definition. Whichever it was to be, it would happen soon. So all over the world, people waited with a mixture of impatience and nervousness – for, while they were anticipating a deeply exciting and unmissable happening, how could people help but be nervous about something so unknown, so immense and so far from the small world they were used to?

  In the village of Little Collyweston, however, Reverend Andy Biddle was far from nervous. He was aware that some of the people in his congregation were expressing anxiety about the strange things that were to come, the new world they were going to see. He had received visits from several people in the village who had never even set foot in the church. But he had been delighted to be able to reassure people that Jesus was with them, and with Jesus there, how could anything bad possibly happen?

  And there was Jesus now, standing in the pulpit of the church of St Barnabas, preaching to the largest congregation the building had ever seen. Well, not preaching, exactly. Jesus had clearly decided to cater for the vast numbers, particularly those less familiar with church services, by telling an amusing little story – hardly the sort of thing he would be doing if anything ghastly and apocalyptic was about to take place.

  ‘Another subcommittee had to be formed to deal with the subcommittee which wanted to use country-and-western music,’ Jesus quipped, and Biddle laughed heartily with his congregation. He had always known that Jesus would give an entertaining sermon. The light-hearted tone was exactly the sort of thing that delighted the congregation and Jesus was telling the story so well. And wasn’t it great to have the Son of God addressing them!

  Biddle wanted to punch the air. Things had never been so good at St Barnabas. It was for moments like this that he’d become a priest.

  Sathan Petty-Saphon listened with a tight smile on her face. Naturally, what with Jesus being the Son of God, she wouldn’t dream of criticising him. But she couldn’t help wondering if Reverend Biddle had given him the wrong idea about what kind of thing to preach. It seemed to her that Jesus was overcompensating for the need to make his sermon simple and accessible.

  ‘Sadly,’ Jesus was saying, ‘some people were so busy arguing about the dress code, the music and whether or not the party was really going to happen, that they didn’t notice that it had already started without them.’

  Petty-Saphon sighed. Stories were fun, of course; exactly the right sort of thing for a family service, for instance. But there was no need for Jesus to be making it all so basic on an ordinary Sunday. Since he was the Faithful Witness, the Firstborn from the Dead and the Ruler of the Kings of the Earth, she had hoped that they might get some proper, challenging theology for once. And possibly even a few questions answered.

  Jesus leaned forward in the pulpit. ‘He that has ears …’ he was concluding. Petty-Saphon sniffed impatiently; surely the Messiah ought to know not to use sexist gender discriminations in his sermons? It ought to be ‘they that have ears’. Or ‘folk who have ears’, if he was bent on being archaic. But she kept smiling in case Jesus was watching.

  Ted Sloper wasn’t thinking about the sermon at all. He had a hangover. After several more pints with Bernard Lomas the previous evening, they had made an abortive attempt at moving the harpsichord, before going back to Ted’s house and drinking their way through quite an expensive bottle of whisky. Ted wasn’t quite sure why he’d done it. He wasn’t sure why he’d come into church today. And he was particularly unsure what they were going to with his harpsichord.

  He tried to put out of his mind all the sounds around him, in the hope of shutting out some of the nauseous thumping in his head.

  At least he had a new bass in the choir.

  Next to Ted in the choir stalls, Bernard Lomas sat with a happy smile on his face. He couldn’t think why he hadn’t tried singing before – it turned out that he was a natural! He had belted out the hymns and found that, even after an unwisely late night of drinking, he had an astonishingly lo
ud voice. Like that man he had on a CD singing opera. He hadn’t listened to it for a while, but now he could see that it was no wonder he’d grown tired of opera so quickly – he wasn’t content to sit and listen to it because he was clearly cut out to perform it himself!

  Bernard knew that his future lay with this choir. Well, maybe for a few months – after that, after a little more experience and getting used to his singing voice, who knew where it could lead? It probably wasn’t wise to stay in this tiny choir for too long but, for the moment, he felt it was a good training ground. And, in a way, he was standing in for his wife.

  Poor, silly Harriet, still in bed with a migraine which he was sure she’d brought on entirely by herself. It was all a bit childish, really. Wait until he told her that he was going to be a singer!

  He saw himself in a few years, singing to huge audiences in the Royal Albert Hall. It was only a matter of time.

  After Jesus had finished his story and the rest of the service had been dispensed with as usual, the congregation of St Barnabas filed out of the church, shaking Jesus’ hand and heading for the church hall where they could finally have tea and biscuits and talk to each other.

  ‘Lovely sermon,’ smiled Mrs Carpenter, shaking Jesus’ hand and walking on past. Biddle stood next to his honoured guest preacher, nodding and smiling his thanks to the congregation. They continued to walk past, smiles on their faces, nods and words of encouragement.

  ‘Oh, it was so funny!’ Noreen Ponty said, shaking Jesus’ hand rapidly. ‘No, I shan’t forget that in a hurry, no!’ She laughed again and added, ‘The bit where you – where the people – oh, I can’t remember now, but – well, as I said, it was terribly good fun, thank you ever so much!’

  ‘Jesus. Vicar,’ croaked Ted Sloper, walking past them hurriedly.

  ‘Great! Yeah, really great!’ enthused Bernard Lomas as he walked past.

  Jesus nodded, allowing his hand to be shaken, smiling at the words of thanks. But Biddle was sensing a kind of unease from Jesus – perhaps because the reaction from a parish church, effusive though it was, wasn’t really on the scale he had come to expect.

  ‘It seems to have gone down well,’ Biddle commented reassuringly. Jesus nodded. ‘I wish that my sermons got that kind of response!’ added Biddle with a chuckle.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Sathan Petty-Saphon, who had positioned herself at the end of the line of people leaving the church because there is an implicit hierarchy in the order in which the preacher receives comments. ‘What a lovely sermon, extremely entertaining, very well done.’ Jesus nodded his thanks. ‘I did wonder if you need to – oh, what am I trying to say here?’ Petty-Saphon thought for a moment. ‘It’s not always necessary to make things so simple – we’re quite an intellectual congregation in some ways; you don’t need to worry about us understanding what you’re saying. I mean, if you ever do want to go a little deeper.’ She smiled encouragingly. ‘But it was lovely, and it’s lovely having you here. Are you coming for tea?’

  ‘I’m afraid I have other things to do,’ Jesus replied. ‘But thank you.’ As Sathan Petty-Saphon left, thinking that Jesus might make a little more effort to get into the life of the community, Jesus turned to Biddle. ‘I’m going soon.’

  ‘Would you like the keys to the vicarage?’ Biddle asked.

  ‘I mean that I’m leaving.’

  ‘Here? Leaving here?’ Biddle suddenly felt uneasy, shocked. He had always known that they’d lose Jesus eventually, but it hadn’t occurred to him that it would be so soon. ‘I hope you’ll be able to stay for our Easter services.’

  Jesus looked at Biddle intensely. ‘I want to know if you’ll be coming with me.’

  ‘Me?’ Biddle chuckled, nervously. ‘But there’s so much to do here … I couldn’t possibly, not without some notice.’

  ‘I’m leaving soon,’ Jesus repeated. ‘There isn’t much time left to make your mind up.’

  Biddle nodded, thoughtfully. ‘Yes, quite. I will … think about it, of course. The problem is that this week is one of the busiest in the church year …’

  Holy Monday

  Holy Week was indeed one of the busiest in the church year; so much to organise, so many services and, most tiringly, an awful lot of ritualised grief to go through. Having said that, Biddle wasn’t sure how possible it would be to give the first part of Holy Week its usual sense of doom and misery with Jesus around. It was all very well remembering Christ’s death on the cross, but it was probably going to have less impact when Christ was there in the church, alive and well.

  This wasn’t a problem, necessarily, and overall Biddle was looking forward to the whole week. But there was a lot to do. He could certainly do without additional complications caused by Bishop Slocombe.

  ‘I’m getting together a special service in London for Jesus,’ Slocombe barked down the phone at Biddle, in his most efficiently organisational manner. ‘At the moment, it’s merely a question of which building it’ll be in, but they’ll have to get themselves together pretty fast – my guess is St Paul’s, though it’s covered in scaffolding at the moment as usual. Seems a bit of a shame to bring the Messiah to that. Still, maybe he can do a miracle on it or something.’

  ‘That’s fine, but I’m not sure that Jesus will come to a special service in London,’ Biddle explained, experiencing a rising irritation inside him and wondering if this was what it felt like to lose patience with somebody.

  ‘There’s no problem, Biddle, we’ll organise transport,’ Slocombe insisted.

  ‘That isn’t the point. I’m not sure that it will fit into his agenda.’

  ‘You’ve given him an agenda?’ demanded Slocombe.

  ‘No. But he has his own agenda.’

  ‘Now listen, Biddle, it’s great that Jesus decided to visit your church and, credit where credit’s due, you seem to have looked after him. But you can’t just keep him to yourself.’

  Biddle sighed. ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘You don’t imagine that Jesus intends to spend Holy Week in the tiny parish church of St Barnabas, do you?’

  ‘He’s been rather vague about where he intends to spend Holy Week, full stop,’ Biddle said, his irritation (with both the Bishop and, it had to be said, the Messiah) showing in his voice.

  ‘Now, we’ll have a lovely big service, get a lot of bishops there, maybe get John Rutter to write a special anthem, that sort of thing – that’s what he’ll be expecting.’

  ‘Who, John Rutter?’

  ‘No,’ Slocombe tutted, ‘what Jesus will be expecting.’

  ‘But it’s not about what Jesus is expecting,’ Biddle tried to explain. ‘It seems to be that whatever we expect turns out to be wrong.’

  ‘I don’t think you understand the importance of this event,’ Slocombe told Biddle. ‘This is the Second Coming! That’s something to be taken very seriously!’ That was quite ironic, thought Biddle, given that Slocombe hadn’t even believed the Second Coming was a real event until a couple of days ago. ‘It’s certainly something that goes way beyond a parish level, so pull yourself together and stop hoping that you can keep hold of Jesus for yourself.’ He paused momentarily. ‘I wonder if we should involve the Catholics,’ he mused.

  ‘I don’t—’ began Biddle again, but Slocombe interrupted.

  ‘Now, there are various people I’m waiting to hear back from about meetings with Jesus this week, but I’ll keep you informed and we’ll have a schedule drawn up for him. The Church Times will want to do a piece on him.’

  ‘A piece on Jesus in the Church Times? That’ll be a first,’ commented Biddle.

  ‘Yes, very funny. Now stop being snide and go and tell Jesus that we’ve got everything under control.’

  I sincerely doubt that, thought Biddle as he put the phone down. He went through to the lounge where Jesus was praying.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt you,’ said Biddle, ‘I know you’re busy, but … that was Bishop Slocombe.’

  ‘Did he phone to tell you he’s organised a lot of
things for me to do this week?’ asked Jesus.

  ‘That’s right. He wants you to do an interview for the Church Times and … stuff,’ Biddle lamely informed the Author of Eternal Salvation.

  ‘And when will that be printed?’ Jesus asked.

  Biddle shrugged. ‘I doubt they’ll get it in this week, they always have special articles lined up for Easter. So they’ll probably be looking at a week on Friday.’

  ‘I’ll have left by then,’ Jesus said. ‘There wouldn’t be any point in an article about me.’

  ‘You’re really going?’ asked Biddle sadly.

  ‘You know that.’ Jesus stared at him. ‘I want to know whether you’ll be coming with me.’

  Biddle looked awkward and shrugged again. ‘You know that I want to, but I … I can’t just leave everything.’ He paused. ‘When are you going?’

  Jesus continued to stare at him. ‘Soon,’ he said.

  Holy Tuesday

  ‘Do a what?’ repeated the editor of the Church Times.

  ‘An interview with Jesus,’ the sub-editor shouted across the room, holding the phone against her beige cardigan so that the Bishop she was speaking to wouldn’t hear the conversation.

  ‘That’s a bit specific, isn’t it?’

  ‘Apparently it’s the Second Coming,’ the sub-editor replied.

  ‘Oh. I suppose we ought to do something on that,’ conceded the editor grumpily. ‘Although it’s the kind of thing I’d expect the broadsheets to cover. You know, in a way it’s not in our remit to do these big stories. It’s not as if we can really add anything that other publications won’t have said.’ The editor paused thoughtfully. ‘Can’t we find some kind of Anglican slant on it?’ he asked.