Village Shepherd

I recently watched a televised tribute to Dame Judi Dench, who really is an outstanding actress. She'd been selected for a special BAFTA award, so it was a glittering occasion gathering in the great from around the world.

Many famous names gave testimony to Dame Judi's terrific acting ability, but what came over from almost everyone who spoke, was that Judi Dench doesn't act, she actually becomes the person she's portraying. And she has portrayed many different characters during her years as an actress, from a prostitute in one of the earliest versions of "Z cars" (the original television police drama), to Queen Elizabeth 1st and Queen Victoria.

Yet even though all the accolades were glowing, Dame Judi looked a little uncomfortable and it emerged that she's a very modest person who hates to see herself on screen and never watches any of her films. It also emerged that she gets very nervous before a performance, and that the nervousness is getting worse as she grows older.

When I heard that, it seemed to me to be all the more remarkable that Dame Judi is able to throw herself so completely into a role that her audience is immediately transfixed. Although she's quite a self-conscious person, when she's acting she's completely unselfconscious and so she "becomes" her character, and it all looks incredibly easy. Few are able to be quite so unselfconscious even when acting, and anyone who has dabbled in amateur dramatics will know just how difficult it is to act convincingly. Perhaps most of us lesser mortals are so afraid of making fools of ourselves that we're never quite able to let go of the self-consciousness and so can't quite convince ourselves, let alone other people, that we've "become" the characters we're supposed to be portraying.

Perhaps one of the biggest fears of many human beings is the fear of appearing foolish. When adults suffer a fall, very often their first thought isn't whether or not they've broken any bones, but how embarrassingly stupid they feel having stretched their length on the ground. It can be painful and humiliating and embarrassing to appear foolish or ridiculous, and most of us either turn that to our advantage by becoming comedians of some sort, or we avoid all possible ridicule.

In previous generations the forerunner of the professional comedian was the fool or jester. Every court had its fool, who had an important part to play in court affairs. As well as entertaining the court, the fool was sometimes the only person who could make a political comment about the king, so part of his job was to keep the king earthed by reminding him from time to time that he too was only human.

St Paul quite often uses the theme of "fools for Christ" in his letters (see also 2 Corinthians and Colossians). In today's reading from the beginning of his first letter to the Corinthians he introduces the theme of the "foolishness of the cross". And indeed, at this early stage of the beginnings of Christianity the cross must have seemed like foolishness to all but the handful of people who had accepted the new faith.

It's difficult for us at a distance of 2,000 years to imagine the shame of death by crucifixion, but perhaps you can imagine the shock we'd all feel if the Pope was tried in a court of law, found guilty of some heinous crime, and sentenced to the electric chair. Can you imagine the newspaper headlines across the world, and the damage it would do to Christianity? Yet there would be millions of people who would believe in the Pope's innocence, because any guilt would be unthinkable.

When Jesus died there was only a handful who believed in his innocence, and few of them had any power or influence. So the cross was a huge obstacle to Christianity. Who was going to follow a religion where the leader was apparently a criminal, and who died in impotence and absurdity?

Yet it's through the cross that we're saved. Our sins were nailed to the cross for all time, so that forgiveness became possible without causing any period of uncleanness for us and without requiring any sacrifice or reparation. Because of Jesus we now receive forgiveness as a free gift. We can't earn it by anything we do, but only accept it. The important fact about all this is that forgiveness makes us right with God, so that our relationship with God need never be damaged again. We can always call on him, he is always there for us and will respond to our needs and act - sometimes amazingly and powerfully - on our behalf.

St Paul sums all this up in today's reading from 1 Corinthians by saying, "..the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." And that word "power" is crucially important. For those who don't know God all this is just foolish words, but for those who have a living relationship with him his power is real and manifest.

The wisdom of the world is very seductive, and it's hard for Christians to bear the constant ridicule that society heaps upon Christianity. But as St Paul said, God works through those who are low and despised. Perhaps we need to become more like Dame Judi in her acting and lose all self-consciousness. Then perhaps we too will be happy to become fools for Christ.