We've all had our nightmare train journeys at some time or other, I imagine?
Probably my worst was spent on a train from Port Talbot Parkway to London that was boarded at Newport by a group of workmates from Newport Docks who were evidently travelling to Reading to watch their favourite Association Football team (it was Millwall, would you believe?!)
Falling amongst would-be yobs on a train
These guys were being a bit overly 'butch', behaving as as you'd expect from football fans half their forty or so years of age ... swigging cans of lager, talking loudly and belching full volume.
They immediately terrorised by their very demeanour an elderly gentleman sitting across the aisle from me, whose bag they moved without so much as a 'by your leave' and around whom they sat.
The old gent was a bit confused BEFORE they got on. His confusion wasn't a situation they were improving.
Well, I'm afraid I stuck my nose in and suggested the old chap sat by me to give them more room and he seemed very happy with that ... or maybe it was sharing my bag of Werthers Originals that did the trick for him. He had obviously been a bright man and turned out to be Polish with a very sweet tooth.
Weathering a white-supremacist song-fest
The group of dockers that had joined us were over-doing the 'we're hard' act a fair bit more than was credible, and they arguably should have known better at their age. But the thing that really troubled me and has stuck with me ever since was one of their (clearly cherished) confidence-boosting songs:
'White boy, white boy - you're untouchable', they (almost) sang.
But, fair play, for a group of guys who didn't seem to know any more of the lyrics, they stuck tenaciously to the few words that they knew.
I gradually formed the conclusion that the rest of the words would have revealed their chant as a white supremacist ditty, but I didn't know either the words or the tune, hadn't heard it before and it certainly wasn't on any of my own Netflix playlists.
Why were they doing this?
They didn't seem to have great lives, were dying for a better life themselves and clearly felt threatened by the idea that 'immigrants' were putting their prospects at risk. But however we try to understand their behaviour that day, their ignorant, counter-factual, beyond-rational racism was slightly unnerving.
Untouchable they certainly were not, of course, and that's where their racially sensitive sentiments were coming from. It came from the fear that the privilege they felt they should enjoy was tenuous and slipping away.
But however I analyse it, the memory of that day and our encounter on that train has stuck with me for over a decade.
It was the song I found particularly memorable. They were white working class, fearful and vulnerable, and they so desperately wanted to be something special.
Oh they'd have LOVED to be 'untouchable'.
Oh they'd have LOVED to be 'untouchable'.
Human weakness and vulnerability can make you LONG for that.
Addressing our human ordinariness and vulnerability
This is PRECISELY what our verse for the day addresses:
"For I am convinced that
- neither death nor life,
- neither angels nor demons,
- neither the present nor the future,
- nor any powers,
- neither height nor depth,
- nor anything else in all creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God
that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 8:38-39
The Point
God, the most powerful Person in all Creation, pledges Himself in covenant love to protect and sustain His covenant people ... those who have turned from sin, trusted Christ and committed themselves to follow Him along the Way.
The Takeaway
That, now, THAT is what makes you untouchable.
Sadly, I didn't get the chance to explain this to my increasingly inebriated new friends on that train ...
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