The Party is Real.

It is party season in Cambridge. My apologies if you have a life which renders this blog completely unseasonal because you’re in the middle of lots of ordinary hard work – but here, in the land of ‘I-think-in-terms-of-IQ-all-of-us-here-are-geniuses’ (genuine quote) and of multiplicitous boat-based activities, it is definitely the celebratory season. And parties are brilliant. I personally always used to love the time in a party when it had got really quite late, and people had sort of dissipated a bit, and you ended up having these hilarious, strangely deep conversations with just one or two people for hours on end. To be fair I also loved ceilidh-dancing the other night with seventy-ish people – so I suppose my tastes are fairly broad. Anyway, I came across an incredible story about a party recently and it made me have thoughts, so I wanted to share it.

The story is from a guy called Tony Campolo – he’s really cool, he’s a sociology professor, but also a trained minister in the church, and he does loads of stuff telling people about Jesus but also loads of projects trying to improve education, or medicine, or small business in the poorest areas of the world. He’s an all round top lad really, and this is a true story from one of his visits to Hawaii. Here’s a sort of abridged version of the story – in first person like he tells it.

***

Anyone who’s done it knows that when you travel to Hawaii from the east coast, there’s a time difference that makes three o’clock in the morning feel like nine. It was for this reason that I found myself wandering up and down the streets of Honolulu at three-thirty in the morning, looking for somewhere I could eat. I found a little place that was still open – a greasy little diner, the sort where you don’t really want to touch the menus, or think too much about anything before you eat it. But it was all that was open. So I got a coffee and a donut and sat down, and resisted the urge to hold my breath. As I ate, the door of the diner suddenly swung open and, to my discomfort, in came eight or nine boisterous prostitutes. It was a small place and they sat down on either side of me, chatting loudly and crudely. I felt thoroughly out of place and I was just about to get up and get out when I overheard the woman beside me say, “Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m going to be thirty-nine.”

Her ‘friend’ responded in a nasty tone, “So what do you want from me? A birthday party? What do you want? Ya want me to get you a cake and sing ‘Happy Birthday’?”

“Come on!” said the woman next to me. “Why do you have to be so mean? I was just telling you, that’s all. Why do you have to put me down? I was just telling you it was my birthday, I don’t want anything from you. I mean, why should you give me a birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?”

When I heard that, I made a decision. I sat and waited until the women had left, then I called over the fat guy behind the counter and asked him, “Do they come here every night?” He said they did. “The one sitting next to me, does she come every night?” He said yes, that was Agnes, she came every night at 3:30. He asked why I wanted to know. “Because I heard her say that tomorrow is her birthday – what do you think about us throwing a birthday party for her – right here – tomorrow night?” A smile grew across this guy’s chubby face, and he called his wife out from the back room and told her my idea. She said that was a wonderful idea, that Agnes was one of those people who is really nice and kind, but nobody ever does anything kind for her. So we made plans. I said I’d come back at 2:30 the next morning with decorations and maybe a cake. Harry – the fat guy – said no, the birthday cake was his thing. He would make the cake.

At two thirty the next morning I was there, setting up paper decorations and putting up a sign I had made out of big pieces of cardboard that read, “Happy Birthday, Agnes!” It actually made the place look pretty good.

The man’s wife must have spread the word because by 3:15 that morning pretty much every prostitute in Honolulu was in that place. And me.

At 3:30 on the dot, the door of the diner swung open and in came Agnes and her friend – and we all shouted together, “Happy Birthday!”

Never have I seen a person so flabbergasted – so stunned – so shaken. Her mouth fell open. Her legs seemed to buckle a bit. Her friend grabbed her arm to steady her. As she was led to one of the stools along the counter we all sang “Happy Birthday” to her. As we came to the last line of the song, her eyes moistened. Then, when the birthday cake with all the candles on it was carried out, she lost it and just openly cried.

Harry mumbled at her to blow out the candles – “if you don’t blow out the candles, I’m gonna hafta blow out the candles for you!” – and eventually he did. Then he handed her the knife and said gently, “Cut the cake, Agnes. We all want some cake.”

Agnes looked down at the cake. Then without taking her eyes off it, she slowly and softly said, “Look, Harry, is it all right with you if I… I mean is it okay if I kind of… what I want to ask you is… is it okay if I keep the cake a little while? I mean is it all right if we don’t eat it right away?”

Harry shrugged and answered, “Sure! It’s okay. If you want to keep the cake, keep the cake. Take it home if you want to.”

“Can I?” she asked. Then looking at me she said, “I live just down the street a couple of doors. I want to take the cake home and show it to my mother, okay? I’ll be right back. Honest!”

She got off the stool, picked up the cake, and carrying it like it was the Holy Grail walked slowly to the door, and went out, to show it to her mother.

***

I love that story. I love it because it suddenly makes you realise just how beautiful it is for someone to know our name, and celebrate us. Birthday parties are amazing ideas – we just celebrate together the sheer fact of someone else’s existence. And we celebrate it because we really care about them; they matter to us; to us they are worth celebrating.

The other day I was listening to somebody talk about the bit where Jesus told three stories back to back, all really similar (it’s Luke 15). The first is about a shepherd who loses a sheep, and he leaves the other ninety-nine sheep to go after this lost one, and when he finds it he picks it up and carries it home, and then tells everyone to come to his house and celebrate that night, because he has found his lost sheep. Then the next is about an old woman who has only got 10 coins left to live on, and she loses one of them. And so she turns the house upside down looking for this coin, all day just searching for it, until eventually she finds it. And she’s so overjoyed at finding this coin that she declares a feast that night and invites everyone around to celebrate her lost coin, which has been found! And the last one is the most famous – the story of the ‘prodigal son’. A father loses his son – he takes his inheritance and runs away from home. Eventually the son has wasted all his money and he’s going to starve, and he decides –dirty and broke – to come back home and beg for work as a servant. And when he comes his dad is waiting for him, he sees him and he goes running out to him – picks him up and kisses him, dresses him up in all his finest clothes and throws a feast for the whole village to celebrate the return of his son.

And Jesus says as he tells these stories, again and again, “In the same way, I tell you, there is rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents.” That means that the stories are about God and us: God is the shepherd, the old woman, the father, and we are the sheep, the coin, the son. And when you think about them like that, these stories are incredible. In each one of them the person really, really, cares about the thing that is lost. The shepherd will take ridiculous risks to go after this lost sheep because it means so much to him. He knows that sheep by name. He’s watched it grow up since it was a lamb. He loves it. And he carries it home, close to his heart. Jesus is saying that God really, really, cares about us. Each one of us personally, not just us put together. He cares passionately about you. About me. About everyone you ever meet. He knows you, he’s watched you grow up from your mother’s womb, he knows your name and he loves you with a fierce love. You personally. And so if we come home – if we ‘repent’, which just means to turn away from our selfishness, our rebellion, our independence, and come home to our Father asking him to forgive us and take us back, if we do that, he throws a feast. He declares a spectacular party in heaven.

Now this is completely impossible for us to imagine really – but its fun to try. What’s it like? A hundred thousand angels invited to dance and feast and celebrate. Beauty and movement and laughter and joy. And at the top table, at the head of the feast, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit sit, celebrating together. And then imagine – lets imagine that above their heads is a banner, a huge banner with a name written on it – the name of the person in whose honour they are feasting, the name of the person whose return they are celebrating. I genuinely had tears in my eyes when the guy said this, because I’d never thought of it like this before. If you’ve repented, if you’ve heard Jesus calling you and come home, then there was a night, when there was a feast in heaven, and above the top table, where the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit sat, there was a banner with your name on it. Your name. Imagine it.

I don’t know about you but that thought is strange and beautiful to me. Because the assumption of our age is that the universe is fundamentally impersonal. That ultimately, s**t happens and the world doesn’t care, so we just have to laugh in its face as much as we can. We live and we die and all we can do is improvise something in the meantime that will sustain the sensation of meaning. We pitch tents on the sinking sand of the universe and call them ‘personalities’.  But I really believe – even though sometimes I forget – that the world is better than that. That to be human is not to be in denial. That behind and beneath and beyond all things is the beat of a heart that loves personally. The arms of a shepherd who carries us home close to his chest; the face of a father who knows our name, and whose pulse races when he hears it. The truth is so much better than we think it is.

And I know it sounds like it, but I promise you that this is not just wishful thinking: not least because in a lot of ways even though it’s better it is harder. Love is by its very nature inconvenient. But much more so it’s not wishful thinking because I came to believe it not out of wanting it to be true but because I was convinced by the evidence. I am convinced, along with many others, that the only explanation for events of which we can be certain is that Jesus of Nazareth came back from the dead. A guy called Frank Morison set out to write a book explaining the true events that led to the obvious misunderstanding of the early Christians’ that Jesus had been resurrected. He looked into the history, the evidence, all the different explanations for what happened. The book he wrote is called Who Moved the Stone and its thesis is this: there is no other explanation. Morison argues that Jesus must have been resurrected and explains that he has become a Christian. If anyone wants to read the book just drop me a message and I will very happily buy it for you as a gift for summer reading. Because I am sure that the world is better than we think. That there is a God, and he loves you intensely. That he is the source of everything we truly need and he longs to give it to us. I think that something in us knows that right at the bottom of it, life is meaningful, and it is personal. And I honestly think that we’re right.

If you don't have me on facebook but do want the book = or suggestions of other books about the evidence for Jesus - you are more than welcome to email me, mikehood1994@gmail.com . Cheers!