19th February, 2006

LOOK WHO’S DROPPED IN!

I suspect that when I come to finishing my time in Paris – even if it were to be in a hundred years time – I will still be reporting ‘not a lot of progress being made in the learning of French’. I’m coming to the conclusion that the ‘grey matter’, as Hercule Poirot referred to it, is getting past absorbing much. But it’s not entirely dead! I do pick up the odd word here and there – usually because it has a high public profile. One such word is the French word ‘queue’. This, you might be surprised to learn, is an instance of “faux ami” (as they say, if you’ve got it, flaunt it!). You would expect it to mean the same as in English – ‘queue’ or, as our American friends say, ‘line’ – but clearly it means ‘scrum’, ‘mad scramble’, or ‘use-your-elbows time’.

It was with thoughts such as these that I consoled myself last Saturday after France beat Ireland at rugby. Clearly Ireland were the more skilful side, but between their instinctive generosity of spirit in allowing the French to waltz in for a try every now and then, and the French team’s experience from birth of mowing down all before them in the scrum – I hear they practice during rush-hour on the Metro – it was only to be expected that the peace-loving Irish would succumb. (And that’s about as objective as I get!)

To return to the matter in hand, I don’t know how you manage it in stores, but I always approach the ‘caisse’ with a degree of trepidation. I never know whether the queue is supposed to go straight out from the checkout, or sideways along the desk. Whichever one I decide on, someone else comes along and does the opposite, with the result that it takes my most glowering look, generally ignored, to convey that I’m not happy with people jumping the queue. Very few people I know are.

But queue-jumping isn’t a recent invention! Our Gospel today gives an outstanding example of a highly ingenious development of the art. You can just imagine the friends of the paralysed man approaching the house where Jesus was, and seeing the massive crowds around. “We’re not going to wait behind that lot – we’ll be here all day!” But there’s no thought of going home, and coming back at a quieter time.

Admittedly, stripping the roof off a neighbours house is a bit extreme, but such was the determination of the four men to bring their friend to Jesus, not later, not tomorrow, but now, that it probably seemed almost the natural thing to do – worry about the consequences later. (I wonder, did they ever come back to fix the roof?) But the story isn’t about the paralysed man, or his friends, but Jesus, and His capacity to out-surprise us all. The people may have been surprised to see a stretcher coming down out of the roof, but they were ‘astounded’ when Jesus not only healed his paralysis, but released him from the paralysing effect of his sins. He can have an astounding effect in our lives too, if we let Him.

I wonder were the Irish team ‘paralytic’ last Saturday?