Last night in the Lent group in the vicarage at Bishop Monkton we talked about whether we make up a Jesus who doesn’t challenge us: a nice Jesus, a sweet Jesus, a therapist Jesus, an Easter Jesus but not a Good Friday Jesus.
In the book I’m using for two groups this year, God forsaken by Archbishop Stephen Cottrell he suggests we pick and choose, we take the bits of the story we can cope with and we hope the rest might go away.
Peter did that of course. A mention of a cross in Jesus programme had him rail against him and in the end he couldn’t cope with it and he denied he knew him.
Over the next couple of weeks we will celebrate we have a Jesus crucified and risen. We can’t leave the crucifixion out. Jesus suffers and calls us there too. I told the group last night my spiritual hero is Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He once said “when Christ bids a man, he bids him come and die.”
I’ve had a flipping awful day work wise. But not every day can be good. There is hard graft and there are difficult people! Sometimes we want the rainbow without the rain and we want the joy in life without the despair. That can’t be. You can’t leave out of the Godhead the bits you don’t like.
I wonder whether our spirituality is like those boxes of chocolates we used to get. We savour the orange creams, we would rather the bountys weren’t there.
What do you think?
No comments:
Post a Comment