The Bishop on the Roof...

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I was amused to hear the true story last October of a passerby who spotted a bunch of suspicious youths on the roof of a church in Norwich. You may know that a lot of lead has been stolen from church roofs, even in our local area, and so the passerby decided to contact Norfolk police to seek to get the bunch of nogooders up on the roof arrested.

However, it was a case of mistaken identity. The people on the roof weren’t dodgy teenagers, but the Bishop of Norwich, Graham Usher, who was there on church business with the vicar of the church inspecting the new solar panels that the church had installed, to seek to bring their carbon footprint to net zero.

Bishop Graham tweeted that he was rather flattered to be mistaken for a youth, and was able to share the good news story of a church seeking to reduce their carbon footprint, like some of our local churches have done.

It made me think a bit about Easter. Jesus himself had many cases of mistaken identity. The authorities considered Jesus to be a criminal who needed arresting, and in fact executing, for crimes he never committed.

Jesus never did anything wrong. He hadn’t stolen, or trespassed, or committed a crime or fraud. He was a man of integrity who was really being arrested because the religious authorities at the time didn’t like him preaching about how he was equal with God, and because he drew more crowds than they did.

Jesus was innocently targeted, but he hadn’t done anything wrong. But rather than his crucifixion being one great tragedy and error, actually it was God’s plan all along for Jesus to be executed.

He was dying your death. He was taking our punishment for the things we have done wrong. Jesus died in our place. There’s a song often sung at Easter…“There is a green hill far away…. There was no other good enough to pay the price of sin, he only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in”. That’s why Jesus died, and why he rose 3 days later- to let us into heaven to be with him.

So watch out that you don’t fall into a case of mistaken identity, realise who Jesus is, and why not come and celebrate that at one of the churches over Easter. Have a great day. Thanks so much for listening.

Charlie Newcombe 31MAR25.

Photo from the Bishop of Norwich's X feed here.