Tony & the Whack-a-Mole

Philip said,

'Lord, show us the Father

and that will be enough for us.'

Jesus answered,

'Have I been with you this long?

Anyone who has seen me

has seen the Father'

------

Tony is from Middlesbrough.

You can hear it

in the accent.

Kindly. Friendly.

Geordie-ish—

but not quite.

He’s been around church

for a while now.

Not the tidy kind of belonging—

not the polished testimony version.

More the kind

where you drift in

near the end for the cuppa

and a custard cream, &

stay close to the door.

Tony carries things.

The kind of story

people summarise

in three words on a form:

multiple

complex

needs.

He doesn’t like the labels.

But he knows—

better than anyone—

he has been

battered

and bruised

by the storms of life

almost since he was born.

His is a life

with more knocks

than most.

Hostels.

Benefits letters.

Rooms that smell of damp.

Nights when sleep refuses to land.

A body that stays alert

even when the room is quiet.

Because when you grow up

in places where safety

is unreliable,

your nerves learn early

to keep watch.

Your imagination

starts rehearsing

disappointment.

One afternoon

Tony said it out loud

to the vicar.

“I see God

with his face turned away.”

Not angry.

Not shouting.

Just… turned.

Like someone

who owns the place

but doesn’t live here.

Like a landlord

who promised

to deal with the rats

in the kitchen

but never turned up.

Phone calls made.

Messages left.

Nothing.

Tony learned something

about authority that year:

sometimes the people

who say they’ll help

don’t.

Another time

he told a story

about the seaside.

A support worker

took him down the coast.

They went into one of those

old arcades—

the sort that smell

of chips and salt air.

There was that game

with the plastic moles.

Whack-a-mole.

You hit one problem

and another pops up.

Debt.

Bang.

Housing letters.

Bang.

Old memories.

Bang.

Anxiety

rising from nowhere.

Bang.

Tony laughed telling it.

But then he said,

“Life’s like that, innit.”

Always something

popping up.

Always another hit

coming.

And sometimes

he wonders

if God’s like that too.

God with a stick.

Watching the holes.

Waiting for the next mistake

to pop its head up.

Bang.

Suffering.

Bang.

Another lesson.

Bang.

Another reminder

to keep your head down.

Life on the margins

changes a person.

When systems grind you down

long enough

you stop expecting help.

You stop expecting

anyone to stay.

And when deeper needs

go unmet for years,

people find ways to cope.

Numbing.

Escaping.

Anything

to quiet the ache.

It isn’t weakness.

It’s survival.

So when Tony imagines God

he sometimes imagines distance.

A turned face.

An absent presence.

A landlord

with better things to do.

A God

with a stick.

But Jesus keeps undoing

that picture.

Touching the untouchable.

Eating with people

everyone else crosses the street to avoid.

Looking directly

into the eyes

of those the world

has already written off.

Never once

turning his face away.

When Philip says

'Show us the Father',

Jesus replies,

'You’re looking at him.'

If you want to know

what God is like,

look at Jesus.

Look at the one

who moves toward the sick

instead of away.

The one

who stands beside the shamed.

The one

who forgives

while the nails

are still being driven in.

The cross is not

God hiding behind Jesus.

It is God

showing us his face.

Someone once put it simply—

an Archbishop, I think—

God is Christlike.

And in him

there is no

unchristlikeness

at all.

Tony listens.

Some days

the old pictures stay stubborn.

The absent landlord.

The turned face.

The God who never came

when the rats arrived.

The God

with the stick.

But sometimes—

in the quiet moment

after the bread is broken,

when the room grows still,

Tony holds the bread

in his rough hands

and looks at it

for longer than usual.

And a small thought

begins to push its way

through years of distance:

What if

the one

I thought never turned up

has been here

all along.

Looking at me

not with anger

but with kindness.

Rev'd Jon Swales