Until it came to the second Sunday in December in 1973, and the 6.30pm gospel service at Carluke Gospel Hall which we were by then attending. Over the autumn, the tension and despair had heightened. The Winter of Discontent had led to power cuts, the three-day-week, a miasma of crisis. In October there was war in the Middle East. Surely the end of all things was at hand, and still I couldn’t find the door.
The speaker that Sunday evening was one of the local ‘saints’ John McEwan. He read the passage from the Bible he was about to preach on. It was Jesus’ story about a rich man, outside whose house a beggar named Lazarus habitually stationed himself, asking for alms from passers-by. The rich man’s heart, however, was untouched by Lazarus’s need. In time, the beggar died and was taken to heaven, or, as Jesus put it in the symbolism of the period into ‘Abraham’s bosom.’ Later, the rich man also died, and found himself tormented in hell. In anguish, he begged Abraham to send Lazarus across to where he was to place on his tongue a drop of cool water. ‘Not possible,’ said Abraham. ‘No-one can cross from where we are to where you are, or from where you are to where we are.’
‘Well, if that’s not possible,’ implored the once-rich man, ‘then restore Lazarus to life on earth to warn my five brothers about the reality of this place so that they will take heed, and avoid finding themselves here when they die. ‘But your brothers can read the prophets’ warnings about what lies beyond death any time they want,’ Abraham replied. ‘But don’t you see?’ said the once-rich man, ‘They would really believe if someone returned from death and gave them the warning personally.’
As John McEwan read this story in the old language of the King James Version of the Bible, my eyes and heart raced ahead of him, and I reached the punch-line of the story, which spoke to me powerfully – ‘But Abraham said, “If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they won’t listen if someone rises from the dead.” ‘
In a millisecond, I realised I’d been assuming that because of the spiritual mess I perceived myself to be in, God would have to do something extra, something beyond the ordinary if he were to reach out and rescue this particular lost sheep. But I also recognised that not only had I ‘Moses and the prophets’, in the Old Testament part of the Bible, but I had in my hands the New Testament as well, with its story of Jesus coming among us, and still I was slow to believe. And the accuracy of Abraham’s diagnosis of human nature in the story was proven by the fact that though I not only had the whole Bible, but also evidence that a man (Jesus himself) had been raised from the dead and had returned to tell us about his experience, yet STILL I did not believe. And I saw clearly that what God had done for me was enough to draw even me back to himself.
I can’t think of any purely psychological explanation why this verse should have spoken to me so powerfully while any number of other sermons and Bible readings I had listened to during the dark years had left me superficially anxious, but untouched at a deeper, healing level, and I believed then as I believe now that God himself met me in those words and brought them alive to me.
That evening as usual I helped run the Bible Class after the evening service. With the teenagers who attended, we were working through one of the Bible study courses produced by an organisation called Emmaus – I think it was called Lessons for Christian living. Among the questions we considered that week there was a comment which went something like this: ‘Perhaps you are not sure that you are a Christian. If this is the case, you can pray now, and ask Jesus to enter your life.’ This simply confirmed to me that God’s invitation was open to me, and that night at home I prayed, and unlike so many of my other Sunday-evening prayers, it seemed that my words were carried upwards into the very heart of God, and I was touched by joy, peace, and hope. But the real change had taken place in the corrugated iron hall in Church Lane when my heart leaped in response to God’s voice: what happened at home later was merely a confirmation.
‘I became a Christian tonight,’ I said, breathlessly, to those who were close to me.
‘Don’t be silly! You’ve been a Christian for years.’
I turned, and walked slowly away. I felt as though I had taken to share with them my most precious treasure, and it had been dashed out my hands.
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