Jack Aizenburg

This is a brief account about a man I met during my career in Local Government.   I retired early in 1995.   So it was at some point before this that I met the man I came to know as Mr Jack.   This was what his workers at Constellation Luggage called him.   He had asked that someone call on him at Fernhurst Mill in Chadderton to advise him how he could reduce his Business Rates.   I am pleased to say that I could help him.   My advice was to move his production up one floor and leave the ground floor empty as this could be considered an separate assessment free from Business Rates.

I visited his place of work on a couple of occasions.   We went up in the lift and I spotted a swastika drawn on the wall of the lift.   Knowing he was Jewish I exclaimed " Don't they realise who is paying their wage?"   "They don't understand" was his simple reply.   It was a year or so later that I watched a new item where Holocaust survivors spoke to the sixth form at Clitheroe Grammar School about their experience.   There was Mr Jack with tears in his eyes as he spoke.   I realised how proud I was to have net him.   I had met a man who had survived the Holocaust.   I felt connected.

Tonight I watched a special Antiques Roadshow where survivors and their families brought
 items connected to those dreadful days.   It was an inspirational programme.   One part was about a patchwork created to remember the first young people to be brought to the UK and settled initially in Windermere in the Lake District.   I knew Jack was one of them because, being short in stature he lied about hi age and was successful in getting a flight here.   This was information I gleaned from a programme called "Strictly Kosher" on TV.   Below is Jack's square on the patchwork.

This is Mr Jack, my hero

It is important that the world never forgets what happened to all those Jews rounded up by the Nazis.   Most were murdered in an effort to create a purified race.   The truth was that it was simply racial hatred that brought about those awful deeds.   These people were all part of God's magnificent creation.   How the Lord must have cried over such barbaric treatment of human beings.   Here was another time when Jesus was crucified.   Mr Jack declared himself not religious but he was overjoyed when, in his eighties he was able to celebrate his Bar mitzvah.   God bless Mr Jack!

From the Old to the New

Over my life I have realised that people have this in common – They are reluctant to change.   As a young preacher aged 17 years I was a real advocate of change and took no prisoners when berating a congregation for its reluctance to change.   Such is the impetuousness of youth.   “Please, Keith,” said our church secretary, “We know how bad we are.”   It took many years before I realised that I too had become averse to change.   It seems to be a human condition that establishes itself in middle age.   We begin to ask “What is wrong with the way we are doing things?”   But, some years ago, I heard a speaker in a meeting about the environment saying “If we always do what we always did we shall always get what we always got.”

It is over 10 years ago that I heard a sermon in which a new terminology was used.   It was the expression, “risk averse”.   Since then I have encountered it in many places and within church circles I have seen it applied very often.   Being risk averse is an integral part of our, seemingly natural, resistance to change.   But to continue this is to completely ignore what Paul is saying in his letter to Ephesus.   If we ignore what Paul says quite clearly in the passage we are considering we can be sure we are applying the brakes on gospel progress.   It is one of the vital aspects of the gospel Jesus brought that we are called very clearly to radically change.   We have to positively dump our old ways in complete commitment to Jesus.   No one can argue with this, as we have always known.

I have often encountered advertisements for something that is described as new.   It is often a ploy to get people to try out the supposed latest thing.   Many years ago I worked for an Estate Agent who also sold insurance.   From time to time we had visits from people described as insurance inspectors.   They were, in reality, insurance salesmen of some seniority.   I am thinking now of Mr Cuthbert.   Mr Cuthbert would come to our office and have a chat with us.   The purpose of the visit was to keep us interested in selling policies provided by his company.   Each time he came he would produce some paperwork and say “Now, this is new.”   It was not really new but something he wanted to get us to sell to our clients.   It could be fairly described as something already existing dressed up as something new.

If you consider the world of motor cars you will know that every so often a car manufacture will introduce a new car.   Usually it is simply an updated version of what already exists.   If you take the Ford Focus, it now has a new radiator grille to distinguish it from its predecessor which my wife and I drive.   Sit inside the car and you will see very little that has changed.   You are seeing an upgraded model.   Very rarely does a motor manufacturer bring out something completely new.   It would be too expensive to do this in one move.   Eventually you will see a new body shape but it probably carries the same engine under the bonnet.   The changes have to be

 introduced gradually.   Many years ago we saw a revolutionary train on the West Coast line.   It was the APT, a new train that tilted on bends in order to maintain a high speed.   It appeared to be just what was needed on the winding west coast line.   It was introduced and almost immediately gave problems.   The worst problem presented by this completely new train was that the brakes used to come on and once the train stopped they could not be released.   The APT was taken out of service and nothing remains of it other than a power car in the National Railway Museum.   Ironically, the tilting mechanism was bought as a design and became a useful piece of technology for foreign competitors who sold the UK the Pendolino, a very successful design indeed.

What Paul is saying to his followers, as he languishes in prison, is that there has to be a radical change in order to truly follow Jesus.   It is not possible, if one is to become a Christian, to simply bolt on a few new ideas.   He is talking about radical change.   When we encounter Jesus we are called to start thinking and acting anew.   Whilst there are inevitably things that continue almost unchanged we are talking about a fresh approach to understanding God.   He does not desire to have us continue in the same old way as before.   In Jesus he is teaching us to completely rethink how we live and what we do.   If you look at the Magnificat, for instance, you will see that God’s values are not the traditional values that might be upgraded a little.   Listen to what Mary sings in her song:   “He has brought down mighty kings from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly.   He has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away with empty hands.”

Here is the truth that God is about to intervene in history in a momentous way.   He is not looking for humankind to amend their ways so much as to rewrite the traditional values.   For centuries the chosen people thought they had the right approach to their religion and their relationship to God.   Suddenly there was to be a very different mission for them.   They had thought for a long time that anyone who was rich had been rewarded because they had pleased God in some way and were to be honoured accordingly.   Yet what was coming was a new way altogether.   It was now time to start from scratch and establish rules and laws that God had fashioned.  

During the ministry of Jesus there are scenes in which rich and influential people are keen to take on the new life but discover there is a huge change they have to make.   Nicodemus was told he had to be born again – of the Spirit.   This was, perhaps, the best clue to the radical change required.   Here was no moderate change to the old ways but a completely new start through a new birth, this time of the Spirit.   The rich man was told that, in order to have eternal life, he would have to give away his many possessions and money to the poor.   He could not take that radical step.

Again we have the meaning spelled out that it will be a new start in which the old values will be substituted by ones that really make a difference.   Go back to Isaiah 43 and you hear, “Do not cling to events of the past or dwell on what happened long ago.   Watch for the new thing I am going to do.   It is happening already – you can see it now!   I will make a road through the wilderness and give you streams of water there.”   This is how we are to understand the impact of the gospel of Jesus Christ.   It is new and it is so powerful that it will totally change everything we have known.

Just consider the way in which Jesus called his disciples.   I have always thought it amazing.   In Matthew 4 we read: “Jesus was walking by the Sea of Galilee when he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen.   Jesus said to them, “Come with me, and I will make you fishers of men.   At once they left their nets and followed him.   Going on further, he saw another pair of brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John; they were in a boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets.   He called them, and at once they left the boat and their father, and followed him.”

The command was short and crisp and their response was just as sudden.   They dropped everything and followed Jesus.   In a split second their minds were made up and they followed Jesus immediately.   I have often been impressed at the immediacy of what they did.   Most people I have encountered have followed Jesus after a period of thought..   We listen to the story and then make our decision.   Yet those Galilean fishermen heard no story and just dropped everything and went with Jesus.

But in this context we see a little more than at first.   Sitting there in prison, Paul writes to the new Christians and tells them that they are to simply discard everything they have known and take up the new way.   It is much the same approach as we see with the first disciples.   It is a very simple process of discarding the past and venturing into the future under new rules.   That is what Paul is expecting of his followers.   He has introduced them to Jesus and now they must start anew and accept new rules for life without even testing them first.

In our turn, we too are challenged in the same way.   We are called to become new people and live and act very differently.   Looking back over the years I have been involved in church life I am aware of a great reluctance to make this decision to make a fresh start.   We tend to still want a bolted-on upgrade rather than a radical new start.   Yet the call is one where we are required to drop everything from the past and go forward in a new way.   It really is a great challenge.  

Our hearts and minds have to be made completely new.   There can be no reversion to our old ways, no looking back and wishing that things could stay as they are.   It is paradoxical that the Christian Church is looked upon quite often as an old fashioned and out of date organisation that has no link with modern times.   Yet this same Christian Church is the very organ that advocates radical change by calling people to meet Jesus Christ.   I must say that I do have some sympathy for those who see the church as an irrelevancy when I think of the lengths to which some go to preserve buildings that are accepted as architecturally excellent.   But we do not attend church to sing hymns in a lovely building.   We simply come to worship God whose grace ignores everything about us which has been offensive.   We come in the knowledge that our sins are forgiven.   Humankind may not be forgiving but God is.   We come to him and find pardon.

This pardon comes when we cast off the old ways and commit ourselves to this radical new way of thinking and doing.   We are challenged, therefore, to step into uncharted waters.   I am reminded of the young penguins, standing on the edge of a wild sea, plucking up the courage to plunge in and start the long swim into adulthood.   It’s rather like standing at the swimming pool edge, asking how cold is the water.   We have stripped off and wear our swimming costumes ready to take the plunge.   We really want to have a swim but we are fearful of a possible very cold experience.   This is the point when we have to just jump in and start a new life in Jesus.   This is what Paul is calling the churches to do as he languishes in prison awaiting his fate.   He can’t be with them but he can write and say what is required.   Like them we are called upon to simply drop the old and embrace the new in total faith.