Jesus, You’re Fired

Pete:     Now it’s my fault all this has happened.

Rose:    This is my fault.

Pete:     No, love. I’m your dad. It’s my job for it to be my fault.

Doctor Who S1 E8, ‘Father’s Day’, (2005)

Thanks to Ajmint on Wikipedia for this picture of Lord Sugar’s face.

If you’ve been making any effort to follow this year’s series of The Apprentice, it should come as no great news that the two candidates in the final were Joseph Valente – whom I was pleased to see doing so well if only because he grew up in the same city as me, and I tend to feel favourably towards anything that might increase Peterborough’s profile¹ – and Vana Koutsomitis, on whom I am going to focus in what follows.

Leaving aside Vana’s ultimate business plan for a dating app designed to match people according to their actions in scientifically-devised games and brainteasers, cast your minds, if you will, back to the buying task in Week Three.² There was, if you remember, a great and cringingly amusing palaver over the purchase of an expensive boat; the brief specified the size of dinghy required, but not its quality, and, while one team sourced their offering in a toy shop for ten pounds, the other spent two hundred and fifty on an impressively seaworthy-looking vessel. This same latter team also bought the wrong cheese – a quarter when the brief specified a whole. Unsurprisingly, they ended up losing the task.

Since both the boat and the cheese were actually bought by other members of her team, Project Manager Vana would surely have made things easiest for herself by offloading the blame in the direction of her subordinates Elle and Natalie, which is why it struck me that she didn’t. Instead, regarding the boat: “I take a hundred per cent responsibility.” Then, again, concerning the cheese: “That’s my fault, Lord Sugar.”

“That’s your fault,” echoed Lord Sugar.

“Yes,” confirmed Vana.

“Right, so the boat is your fault for telling her to buy it,” summarised Lord Sugar, “and you’ve got – the cheese is your fault.”

Later, discussing whom to fire with his aides, Lord Sugar mused, “Vana, everything I asked her – ‘Ah, yeah, that’s my fault, and oh yeah, that’s my fault also’ – well, it’s a complete and utter shambles as far as I’m concerned.” And although Vana of course survived the final boardroom that week, she was given a piece of advice before she returned to the house: “Vana, I think you’ve got to make sure that you look after number one in future, and stop telling me how you take the responsibility, if you’re going to survive any longer here.”

Considering that admissions of responsibility are usually so rare in the boardroom, having to be painfully extracted from candidates desperate to excuse themselves of all culpability, it was a refreshing change – and beyond that, something about the taking of blame clicked for me.

As soon as Vana declared that she took responsibility for the boat and for the cheese, any other apportioning of blame on those subjects became irrelevant. Elle may have actually bought the ludicrously expensive boat, and Natalie may have actually bought the incorrectly-sized cheese, but that was no longer the point. They were automatically bypassed as potential culprits for the failure of the task. There was no more blame left to be dealt out, because Vana had voluntarily taken it all upon herself. Elle and Natalie were completely absolved.

 

I wonder how ludicrously expensive these boats were.

Be sure to note, also, that it was indeed voluntary. I feel sure that, had she wished, Vana could have made a good case that she was not ultimately to blame for the mistakes that cost her team the task; indeed, Lord Sugar suggested as much when he advised her not to be so quick to declare herself at fault. It was Vana’s own decision – to her colleagues’ benefit and her own detriment – to compel Lord Sugar to treat her as culpable, regardless of whether he would otherwise have considered her so. For him to have blamed her for the failure of the task would consequently have been entirely fair and justified. There is here a slight spoiling of the analogy I have in mind, since he chose to fire Jenny rather than Vana, but the point was still made by his warning: continuing to take responsibility for every mistake made in her team would have been a sure-fire route to ending up fired.

At this point I probably ought to introduce the aforementioned analogy, though I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve already twigged.³

I always had trouble squaring the fact that God is perfectly fair and just with the doctrine of substitutionary atonement – that is, the idea that Jesus paid for and so erased (atoned for, one might say, hence ‘atonement’) the wrongdoing of others by dying in their place as a substitute (hence ‘substitutionary’).⁴ It just doesn’t seem fair for someone who never did anything wrong to be punished instead of a bunch of people who do wrong endlessly (hint: I mean us). If God really is just, why would he be satisfied for the axe to fall on the innocent while the guilty are left untouched? And the answer is, because Jesus voluntarily took all the blame, so that there was none left to be apportioned elsewhere. He made the choice to set himself up as culpable for everything wrong with the world and so caused his Father to treat him as such. I take a hundred per cent responsibility. That’s my fault, Lord God.

Picture the scene in the boardroom. You sit opposite God, who has the authority not just to kick you out of a reality TV show and a chance to win a few quid, but to decide the ultimate and everlasting destiny of your entire being. The task with which you were charged was simple enough – love God, and love other people⁵ – but you have failed it dismally. Time and time again you have put yourself and your own concerns first, in direct contradiction of the brief. Your actions have abused and corrupted the resources you were given to work with, and they have fallen apart. Knowing yourself to be without excuse, you await the final verdict. Someone has to be fired today, and you don’t fancy your chances.⁶

But that’s not the whole story. Jesus – who would have every right to be sitting in judgement opposite you right now, on his Father’s right-hand side (which I suppose, in this analogy, makes him the equivalent of Baroness Karren Brady) – is on your side of the table. He came with you on this task. He joined Team Humanity. He was assigned jobs and faced pressures and had abuse shouted at him by colleagues, just like everybody else. What’s more, he really got stuck in, he worked hard, he looked out for the other team members, he made all the right decisions, and you can’t think of any aspect of his performance that you’d fault. When it comes to loving God and loving other people, Jesus is clearly some kind of pro. So, when God asks whom he should blame for the failure of the task, you’re fully expecting Jesus to point the finger in your direction; he’d have every right to. Yet he doesn’t. Instead, he declares that he takes a hundred per cent responsibility.

It’s permissible; he’s a member of your team, after all. And suddenly it becomes irrelevant who made what wrong decision, because there’s no blame left to be apportioned; Jesus has voluntarily taken it all. You can no longer be held responsible for any mistakes. You are absolved.

And then come the words no-one was expecting to hear. More shocking than any event in Apprentice history – triple firing, immunity, pre-final-boardroom firing, candidate resignation, the lot – they leave you wide-eyed and gasping: “Jesus, you’re fired.” They are undeniably just; Jesus willingly claimed responsibility for everything that went wrong, and so it was right for his Father to treat him as responsible. But beyond that, what just happened wasn’t only fair, but also utterly, magnificently, astonishingly merciful: there was no reason why Jesus shouldn’t have blamed you for everything, yet he chose not to blame you for anything. And, as he leaves the boardroom, you can’t shake the feeling that Father and Son together planned this all some time ago.

Helpful as I find the boardroom metaphor, it does rather minimise and sanitise everything. What we’re really talking about here is nothing as bland and replaceable and earthbound as money, as fame, as the short-lived successes of this lifetime. What Jesus did in our place – what he chose to do in our place – was go through hell. And the reward we get in consequence is of infinitely more value than a quarter of a million pounds; we get a new life, an unseverable personal relationship with our Creator, and the promise of eternity with him in a new creation free of the flaws and problems that mar the current one.⁷ It’s mind-boggling. I can feel my mind start to boggle when my train of thought even passes near the idea, and I’m well aware I stand not the smallest chance of actually comprehending it in its whole glorious enormity. That’s why I bother with these daft analogies: none works perfectly, but they can help make tiny corners of God’s splendour a little more graspable.

It was our mistakes that caused the failure, but Jesus loves us with a love so pure and relentless that he willingly joined Team Humanity and took the blame, and consequent punishment, himself. And that, if you ask me, makes him a Project Manager worth having – by which I mean that I am proud to call him my Lord. Alan Sugar can keep his investment; I have treasure in heaven.

Footnotes

¹ Peterborough’s other alumni of note, as mentioned in this charming ode by Howard Read (as in Big Howard and Little Howard, as in CBBC’s Little Howard’s Big Question, if that means anything to you), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SX_fN4gyff4, include Peter Boizot (co-founder of Pizza Express) and Aston Merrygold from JLS. You’ll gather it’s not an especially crowded hall of fame.

² Unfortunately, it’s no longer on iPlayer, but you can always re-watch the episode preview if you’d like a reminder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud-rq5rqz78&list=PL5A4nPQbUF8AAAKvzjcEvncns1okut-xE&index=24.

³ I’m not the first person to draw a spiritual analogy with The Apprentice, nor to suggest the concept of Jesus getting fired, but Justin Brierley was, I think, approaching the issue from rather a different angle when he wrote this article: https://www.premierchristianity.com/Blog/Five-reasons-Lord-Sugar-would-fire-Jesus. It’s well worth a read.

⁴ As expressed in passages like Isaiah 53 (especially verse 5) and 1 Peter 2:22-25. Look them up in context; I dare you. Here’s the Isaiah to get you started: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=isaiah+53&version=ESVUK.

⁵ Often called ‘The Great Commandment’, this, according to Jesus, is the most important commandment, on which everything else depends, as recorded in Matthew 22:34-40 and Mark 12:28-31. And if you fancy checking that I’m not just making up any old reference, or taking the verses wildly out of context, here’s the Matthew chapter to start you off: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+22&version=ESVUK.

⁶ “It’s the boardroom part of the episode, / a blue and grey overload; / everyone’s in business mode, / thinking, “Oh no, who’s going to go home today?” as Brett Domino so eloquently describes it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=skdrDNb8Wto. Do also check out the Alan Sugar song and the Nick and Karren song; there’s a whole range of other hilarious musical parodies to be found on the same channel as well.

⁷ Try 1 Peter 1:3-5, for instance: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Peter+1&version=ESVUK.

O Come, O Come, Explanation of Those Lyrics

“It’s always winter, but never Christmas.

It seems this curse just can’t be lifted,

Yet, in the midst of all this ice and snow,

Our hearts stay warm ’cause they are filled with hope.”

Relient K, ‘In Like a Lion (Always Winter)’, Let it Snow Baby … Let it Reindeer (2007)

Odd, isn’t it – I feel as if I spent the better part of this term just gone restraining myself from being excited about Christmas, because it was always too early. Now Christmas is almost upon us, and I don’t feel as if I’ll have spent enough time being excited before it’s too late. I haven’t even sung ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ at any church services yet, which is a real shame, because it’s a beautiful hymn¹ – although the theological language is rather dense and difficult, which is why I thought it might be worthwhile this week to have a go at dissecting the lyrics to some extent, specifically focussing on the titles given to Jesus, to whom the song is addressed.²

I forget the exact occasion upon which I was first told that the season of Advent, as it exists in the Church of England’s calendar, is designed not just as a period of preparation before Christmas, the celebration of Jesus’ first coming, but also as a time to focus on his future second coming. Still, the notion had a significant impact on me, and I think the brilliance of ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ is that it works on both levels: it expresses both the former yearning of God’s people for the initial coming of God’s Chosen One, at which point a rescue from the captivity of our own selfish, rebellious natures was put in place for all who will believe in Jesus; and our current yearning for his return, at which point that rescue will be brought to fulfilment by the final destruction of all wrongdoing and rebellion against God. 

Advent wreaths as I know them have four red candles to represent the Patriarchs, Prophets, John the Baptist, and Mary, and a white one in the middle for Christ. However, a small amount of research has enlightened me that there are all sorts of advent-wreath traditions, some of which include purple candles and/or four-candle wreaths, so I must really refrain from criticism of content in thanking Gualberto107 at freedigitalphotos.net for the image above.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.


We start with a fairly straightforward stanza, though it’s worth drawing some attention to the term ‘Emmanuel’. The Hebrew term is עִמָּנוּ אֵל (Immānū El), meaning ‘God with us’, which pops up significantly in the book of Isaiah: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” A famous verse, though it comes in a far less familiar context, namely that the kings of Syria and of Israel (that is, the bigger, northern section of Israel, after it split into two kingdoms) have come to wage war on Judah (that is, the smaller, southern section of Israel – yes, I know it’s confusing!) and, although they haven’t been able to actually attack yet, King Ahaz of Judah is shaking in his shoes. So Isaiah, acting as God’s mouthpiece, goes to meet Ahaz and tells him not to be afraid of the attackers, who will not succeed. Ahaz is then told to ask for a sign from God, but he refuses, so God proposes his own sign.³


And then. And then we get a description of the destruction that God would bring on his people through the king of Assyria. Now, it’s not unwarranted destruction: the books of Kings and Chronicles are very clear that Ahaz was Very, Very Bad, even to the extent of burning his own son as a sacrifice to foreign deities. Moreover, it was Ahaz himself who got in touch with the king of Assyria, declared himself subject to him, and gave him treasures from the Temple as a bribe to become his ally.⁴ Still, it seems a little jarring; if the Immanuel promise is associated with punishment and destruction, why does ‘O Come, O Come, Emmanuel’ use the term to beg for rescue? Key here is the fact that God’s rescue and God’s judgement are completely tied up together. You can’t have one without the other.⁵ This verse of the song is a plea for rescue by means of punishment: captivity necessarily implies a captor who must be removed for the captivity to be ended.


O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny.
From depths of hell thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave.


All right, what exactly is this Rod of Jesse business? The original Latin version of the hymn is useful here; the word translated as ‘rod’ is ‘uirgula’, a diminutive form of ‘uirga’, which, while it can refer to a rod, stick, or wand, is more strictly used of a twig or shoot of a plant. ⁶ Once we know this, the reference being made, again to Isaiah, becomes more obvious: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit,” reads Isaiah 11:1. Jesse was the father of King David, so what’s being talked about here is someone who will be born into that family. What sort of someone? A pretty amazing one, by the sound of it: “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him … his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord … with righteousness he shall judge the poor … with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.”⁷ Again we see rescue and punishment tied up together; Satan, hell, and the grave are the enemies who will be punished, thereby rescuing God’s people from their power.


O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer
Our spirits by thine advent here.
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight. 

Dayspring in Vietnam, apparently. Nice work, God.

‘Dayspring’? Apparently, it was a perfectly good word for ‘dawn’ or ‘daybreak’ when the King James Version of the Bible was published.⁸ It’s used in Luke 1:77: “…the dayspring from on high hath visited us.” This is part of the song sung by Zechariah, John the Baptist’s dad, once he recovered his powers of speech; he had been struck dumb as a result of his scepticism about a message from God predicting John’s birth (Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth were both pretty old and they had no other children). It’s a beautiful song all about salvation and there’s plenty of interesting stuff to be done with it, but I’ll just pick out, on the dayspring front, what I think is a distinct echo of Isaiah 9. “…the sunrise (dayspring) shall visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,” says the passage in Luke.⁹ “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined,” says Isaiah 9:2.¹⁰ ‘Advent’ in the stanza above just means ‘coming’ or ‘arrival’ (from Latin ‘ad-uenio’, meaning ‘come to’), so the gist is that Jesus’ arrival represents darkness-dispelling light; and this idea is tied up, in Luke, with salvation and forgiveness and mercy, and in Isaiah, with rejoicing and prosperity and peace.


O come, Thou Key of David, come
And open wide our heavenly home.
Make safe the way that leads on high
And close the path to misery.


The idea of the key of David is mentioned twice in the Bible. First, in Isaiah, God declares that he will replace Shebna, the current guy-in-charge-of-the-royal-household, with someone else called Eliakim son of Hilkiah, “and I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David. He shall open, and none shall shut; he shall shut, and none shall open.”¹¹ So, in short, the idea is of someone appointed by God to a role of authority in the household of his chosen king, someone whose actions (specifically opening and shutting) consequently cannot be undone by anyone else. Jesus then picks up on this idea in his address to the church in Philadelphia in Revelation: “The words of the holy one, the true one, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, who shuts and no one opens.”¹² Jesus casts himself in the same role, one appointed by God to a role of authority in the household of his chosen king – of course, Jesus himself is the chosen king as well, but then he’s awfully good at multi-roling. (Not quite so good at multi-roling as to actually be, rather than hold, the key of David, as the song seems to imply, but we’ll call that metonymy, or something of that ilk, and move on.) What Jesus opens none can shut, and he has opened the way to salvation; what he shuts none can open, and he has shut off the power of death and wrongdoing. He can do this because he is divinely appointed to the role; that’s the source of his authority.


O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who, to thy tribes, on Sinai’s height,
In ancient times didst give the Law
In cloud and majesty and awe.


The reference in this last verse is perhaps the most obvious. Exodus 19 describes how God appeared on Mount Sinai in a thick and awe-inspiring cloud, and the following chapters detail the laws which he subsequently gave his people.¹³ I think the main point of this verse as part of the whole song is as a reminder that the New Testament Jesus isn’t some completely different person to the God who gave the Law to Israel at its very origin as a nation; they are one and the same God. Noteworthy also is the context in which the Law was given, immediately following the rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt. A precedent is asserted here: God has rescued his people before and will do so again.


Honestly, I have barely scratched the surface when it comes to the interpretation of each of the titles above, and I really hope that you, O Lovely Reader, might feel prompted to do a bit more reading for yourself, and see what further links and themes and ideas God helps you discern. And finally, if you find waiting for Christmas as tricky as I do, try waiting for Jesus’ second coming instead. It’s never too early to start actively anticipating the second coming, and some day soon it’s going to be too late – so get excited now, and stay excited! Jesus, unlike Christmas, is everything he’s cracked up to be and more – just check out the passages mentioned above – and his reign, rather than petering out into an uninspiring Boxing Day and a dark and dismal January, will last forever.


Footnotes


¹ My absolute favourite versions that I’ve so far come across are those by The Piano Guys, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO7ySn-Swwc, and David Wesley, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eT7VrD9L7Ng.


² I reckon the version of the lyrics I’ve used is the best known; for reference, it’s number 493 in the Complete Mission Praise, though for some reason they’ve moved the fifth verse into second place. There are other translations about, and additional verses; the Oremus hymnal lists a few: http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/o/o084.html.


³ Check out the story for yourself: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%207&version=ESVUK. The term ‘Immanuel’ also pops up a couple of times in the next chapter, so that’s worth a look too.


⁴ See 2 Kings 16 – https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2%20Kings+16&version=ESVUK – and 2 Chronicles 28 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Chronicles+28&version=ESVUK. Aren’t I nice to tell you these things?
 
⁵ This is apparent through so much of the Bible that I hardly know where to point you. Still, off the top of my head (not meaning, just to be clear, that I can pluck the exact references from some kind of labyrinthine Biblical memory, but rather that I remember the rough concepts and have tracked down the specific passages through a combination of flicking through my paper Bible and sticking relevant terms into the Bible Gateway search engine), try Exodus 7:14-15:21; Ezekiel 34; and Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43. Here’s the absolutely gorgeous Ezekiel chapter to get you started: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Ezekiel+34&version=ESVUK.


⁶ The Hymns and Carols of Christmas website offers an image of the Latin text as in a hymnal called Cantiones Sacrae (‘Holy Songs’) published in 1878, which, you will notice, lists the verses in the order I have used above: http://www.hymnsandcarolsofchristmas.com/Hymns_and_Carols/NonEnglish/veni_veni_emanuel.htm. I’m really not sure why Mission Praise felt the alternative order necessary, but safe to say this is one of those hymns that’s been around for such a long time that there’s no real consensus on its precise canonical form. If you’re wondering why I wrote ‘uirgula’ rather than ‘virgula’, it’s worth knowing that our modern ‘u’ and ‘v’ come from the same original Latin character, and the distinction of ‘u’ as a vowel and ‘v’ as a consonant was only made later. Essentially, I’m being an intellectual snob; even Lewis and Short concede to begin the word with a ‘v’: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=virgula&la=la.


⁷ Whole chapter, anyone? That ellipsis isn’t just for effect; I did, in my quotation, miss bits out that are worth reading: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+11&version=ESVUK.


⁸ According to dictionary.com, the word developed at some point during the latter half of the thirteenth century, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dayspring?s=t; the KJV hit the shelves in 1611.


⁹ Have the whole chapter – from the English Standard Version, though, https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+1&version=ESVUK. The KJV is a beautifully accurate translation, but all those ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s and ‘hath’s and ‘dost’s can prove muddling to the modern mind, not to mention cause you to spit all over the pages if you happen to want to read the text aloud.


¹⁰ Whole chapter, voilà: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah%209&version=ESVUK. Equally, if you still have Chapter 7 open from earlier, you could just click forwards a couple of pages.


¹¹ Still checking the footnotes for links to the whole chapter? Your dedication impresses me. Of course, it’s all well worth reading – infinitely more so than my ramblings! https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaiah+22&version=ESVUK.


¹² You know the drill: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=revelation+3&version=ESVUK.


¹³ Last one, I promise: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=exodus+19&version=ESVUK.