Message from Tim

Angry Protests

We need to pray for our police force. The evidence suggests that although the Met got it badly wrong at the vigil for Sarah Everard in London, the police in Bristol got it absolutely right when faced with violent protestors last weekend,. However, twenty officers were injured, and the violence has rightly been condemned as unacceptable. The police have the unenviable task of enforcing legislation which is perceived as an attack on civil liberties. Although the risk of transmitting Covid-19 outdoors is low, the threat of spreading the virus has regularly been stated as the rationale for banning outdoor gatherings. The Coronavirus Act gave the government sweeping powers which they have used to impose disproportionately harsh penalties on offenders, such as a £10 000 fine for inviting people to a snowball fight in a park. There are fears that the controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (which includes penalties of ten years in prison for damaging a memorial) will be used to clamp down on gatherings and to criminalise protests long after the virus has been brought under control. The problem is that the less the law is perceived as being fair, the less the public is likely to respect it, and this opens the door to more extremist behaviour. While the perpetrators of violence need to be brought to account, people also need to know that their voice is being heeded, otherwise their pent-up anger will grow.

Jesus was angry the day after Palm Sunday, when he single-handedly launched his own violent protest in the temple, throwing furniture around, smashing open cash registers and scattering the contents, tying lengths of rope together into a whip and using this to lash out at traders as he drove them from their stalls. He stopped people going about their daily business, and these days he would likely have been charged with assault, and causing a public nuisance. The authorities in Jerusalem seem to have been caught on the back foot, because he left the scene without being arrested and went to ground for a few days outside the city. But a man-hunt was under way and when one of his followers accepted a reward for betraying his whereabouts, Jesus was arrested, summarily tried and executed.

What was he protesting against? Was it that the temple had been converted from a house of prayer into a market place? Was it the blatant profiteering of the traders? Was it that the temple authorities were so corrupt that the whole institution needed to be demolished before people could discover God’s presence with them in a new way? Whatever the reason, it is likely that Jesus paid for what he did in the temple with his own life, but he knew what the likely outcome would be, and was convinced that God would vindicate him.

We know Jesus was passionate about the Kingdom of God: this was the motivation for and the power behind everything he did, including that donkey-ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and his subsequent confrontation with the authorities. It looks as though his followers were totally unprepared for what ensued. But Jesus had been deadly serious when he said his disciples would need to take up their cross in order to follow him.

‘Jesus Christ is raging, raging in the streets,
Where injustice spirals, and real hope retreats.
Listen, Lord Jesus, I am angry too.
In the kingdom’s causes, let me rage with you.’
 
(John C Bell and Graham Maule)

Can we sing those words? Should we?