Chopsticks

On sunday 16th October the artist Charlie Mackesy came to speak about his experience of Christianity. Before he became a christian he had a deep loathing for religion, and his least favourite was christianity. He saw it as neurotic, where people created an imaginary friend to make themselves feel better. He believed that God cannot be proved (and didn’t pay much attention to the fact that He couldn’t be disproved either). He liked being an atheist but still was looking for something more, he wanted transcendence.

Charlie spoke about the biggest cover up and lie is that Christianity is dead and is all about guilt. He recounted the time he travelled to Romania and was given a can of tuna. The problem with the can was that the packaging let the tuna down:

This is a good metaphor for Christianity: it looks crap from the outside. But when you take time to open it and taste it, it’s delicious. Atheism didn’t feed Charlie – it was a view of life that made him remain hungry. When he eventually became a christian he became proud thinking that it was all about himself. He became what he hated about religion – he became a self appointed bouncer at the gates of heaven making others feel insecure and inferior. This had nothing to do with faith. Charlie recounted the story of when he was in South Africa and realised how far wrong he had gone, and then decided there wasn’t a God – we were just a combination of time, matter and chance.

Feeling reckless he decided to go for a swim in the sea – after getting stung by jelly fish he ended up being on a collision course with a great white shark breeding ground. Realising that this was probably the end of his life he let out a cry and a scream, saying sorry to God. Amazingly he survived. When he got back to the shore he was perplexed where that cry had come from – even though he didn’t believe in God. Some local men who heard his story laughed and said that ‘your soul knows more than your mind. Therefore you should try and listen to your soul a bit more’. He realised that although his mind was a great gift, the truth that his soul knew deep down was that he was loved by a loving God. Life wouldn’t be satisfied until he accepted God’s truth – only this would feed him.

No one ever arrives. Everyone’s on a different point in their journey of faith – and that’s ok. We belong to a community. We belong first and then we change. IT’s a process. Alpha is just a small part of this journey. Our world is thirsty – the signs show that we’re out of kilter with ourselves and God. We’re uncomfortable with the word ‘God’, but God is Love.

Charlie spoke about the way Jesus is his favourite person in history, and the story of the prodigal son is his favourite story Jesus told. It tells us about the incredible love of the father. Charlie felt that faith was moral and legal, but in fact it is more relational. The whole point is about the love of the Father – it’s the greatest gift to manking. It’s not easy, but it is the pearl of great price. Your faith is totally unique – you are unique. Charlie shared the story of a famous pianist:

The story was of a little boy who was taken to a Paderewski concert by his mother.  He slipped away from her, made his way to the platform, sat down at the concert piano and began to play Chopsticks.  The security guards where about to take the boy away.  But Paderewski, when he realized what was going on, went to the piano and began playing along with the boy, whispering to him, “Keep going.  Don’t quit, son.  Keep playing.  Don’t stop.  Don’t quit.” He then started playing with the boy and turned what sounded crap into something beautiful.

We might find ourselves frantically trying to play chopsticks in our life, trying to make things ok, but being human we mess up – whether you’re a christian or not – we all mess up. The message of the prodigal son is that all we need to do is accept these arms. God can make something beautiful out of something messy. At the cross our shame was covered – Jesus was the agent of liberation. Alpha is a great place to dig deep into the big questions of life and find out more about this story.