Peace be with you

During Lent our two Ripon churches had a Lent course using the Archbishop of York’s book on the forsaken ness of Jesus on the cross. I do like Stephen Cottrell’s writing and speaking. He often does a pause for thought on Radio 2. 

 

Here’s his take on Easter:

Easter offers something else, something new. What appeared to be defeat, begins afresh, a new creation. This is the story we celebrate today. 

A new beginning. And it tells us that however difficult life can get, and however hopeless the future seems, there is always hope because the God who raised Jesus to life can raise us as well. And in the darkness of poverty, hopelessness, despair, climate crisis and human conflict we see in Jesus, a new and better way, and the hope for a better future.

So, crack open those Easter eggs. Fill your lungs with Alleluias. Uncork the champagne. Turn the music up loud. Put on your dancing shoes. Celebrate. Today something hopeful begins.”

For the Archbishop, Easter breaks into the world, loudly, vibrantly and shakes things up. It’s a party and it’s to celebrate enthusiastically. For mourning has turned into dancing… 

But maybe, just maybe, Easter doesn’t just come like that. It can also come quietly, pastorally, with healing and with peace. Maybe Easter is also about restoring broken souls to health and putting us back together after a horrendous experience… maybe Easter comes when Jesus meets us as we are. 

 

Let’s remember where Jesus’ former followers are after the crucifixion. They are in a locked room in fear, fear of being found out they were part of Jesus’ failed revolution, fear that those who had attempted to silence Jesus by arresting him and putting him to death would now come after them, fear of the future having foolishly followed him and wondering what to do now, they are in a locked room in grief and bereavement, their bodies numb and their mental health shattered, grief about Jesus being so brutally destroyed by the world around them and grief that God did not intervene. When we go through a period of trauma we need time to just be. And sometimes we don’t need people, we push people away. I imagine the locked door might also have been a comfort, the world has gone away. I imagine they tried to support each other, I imagine there were lots of tears, I imagine they sat and wondered how it had all gone so wrong. 

 

What peace is there for tarnished lives,
when love is challenged, hate survives?

What peace for Peter who denied
his friend who hung, his friend who died?

What peace for those who slept away,
while Jesus sweated blood to pray?

What peace for Thomas full of doubt,
with questions hedging all about?

What peace for those who fled away,
when darkness covered brightest day?

What peace when we have let God down,
denied God’s call and made God frown?

Andrew Pratt’s hymn brings the trauma of that upper room alive. Imagine you are Peter in that room. Do you sit and dwell on your denying Jesus? Do you now wish you’d supported him? A few months earlier you’d been the rock on which he would build his church. What about those who couldn’t watch with him in the garden and fell asleep? Imagine you nodded off when he needed you. Do you now feel guilty? And what of Thomas? 

 

John 20: 19 – 31 is always the passage on Low Sunday. I’ve preached about Thomas so often. I’m just going to briefly mention him today. How do you feel if you are him? Full of doubts and questions. Remember his loyalty to Jesus. When the others panicked about going to Jerusalem and an inevitable clash with the authorities he said “let us also go with him that we might die with him.” Where was he when they locked the door? He wasn’t there. Did the others get fed up with his questions all the time? I love that bit in John where Jesus says “you know where I am going.” And he says “no I flipping don’t. I’ve no idea where you are going. How can I know the way?” Maybe with his honesty and his commitment it was all just too much and maybe he didn’t want to be with the others to grieve on his own.

What peace? 

Here’s something else to imagine and get our heads round today. How in shattered ness and bereavement and feeling rough physically and mentally and everything hurting and your world turned upside down with no hope and no future do you react when Jesus comes through the locked door and stands there among you? Shock? Are you hallucinating?

 I think you think “what is he going to say to us?” Remember you’ve let him down. He’s bound to have a go at you, tell you you are a waste of space, ask where were you. 

Now that he is alive, what would Jesus think of his friend Peter, who denied that he knew Jesus – not just one time, but three times – after Jesus was arrested? And what about the other disciples – Jesus’ closest friends who had been travelling with him for three years? How could they face Jesus after he had cared for and invested in them for so long, and yet the minute he was arrested, they bailed on him: they fled and left him to fend for himself in his most excruciating moments as he was spat on, ridiculed, and beaten, nailed to a cross, and hung from it until he took his final breath? Would Jesus be so infuriated with them that he would give up on them? Would he deny, betray, and even condemn them because they had denied and betrayed him? Would they no longer have a place in the Kingdom of God?

My friends, there’s none of that. 

Today I want you to quietly celebrate where Easter begins. The first words of the risen Jesus are these “peace be with you.” Peace. Peace for tarnished lives where love is challenged, hate survives. 

Peace for those who deny God’s call and make God frown, peace not blame for the denier, the doubter, those who flee to save face and not get involved. Peace. 

I dare to suggest to you this is where the Church begins. It begins with forgiveness and a new call, it begins with healing, it begins with Jesus just meeting us, and it begins with a gentle quiet breathing into us of the Holy Spirit. Yes the Holy Spirit comes exuberantly at Pentecost but first those shattered and demoralised disciples are given strength to pick themselves up and find the confidence to unlock the door and go out into the world, a world that hasn’t changed, but they have. Easter is a pastoral act, it’s intimate and restorative. Jesus isn’t interested in the past, but the future. He doesn’t give up on us. He quietly and gently encourages us to start again. He doesn’t ridicule our trauma and our brokenness, he starts his work in us dealing with those things. Peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit. 

Even behind locked doors, Jesus shows up. And yet, he does not appear to them in the way they had expected and feared. Jesus doesn’t show up angry, bitter, and judgmental. He doesn’t order them to give him answers to why they denied, betrayed, or even hid from him. He doesn’t demand that they ask him for forgiveness. 

Instead, he just shows up, holds out his wrists so that they can touch the holes where he had been nailed to the cross and points to his side so they can see the gash where he had been stabbed with a spear, and he says: “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

 

You see, instead of coming with vengeance and wrath – as the disciples had feared – Jesus just shows up to them – in the midst of their fears and failures – and immediately and freely offers them the peace, love, and grace of God – before they even have the chance to open their mouths to explain their actions or to ask him for forgiveness. Jesus just shows up to them in that small room  where they were hiding from and avoiding him – because Jesus wanted them to know that no matter what, they are claimed as God’s beloved children and are cherished and loved by God unconditionally.

 

You see, even in our times of fear, doubts, and questioning – and even when we choose to deny, flee, and hide behind closed and locked doors – Jesus has and will show up. And when he does, he claims us as God’s beloved children – no matter our failures or actions against him – and he offers us his peace and grace before we can even ask for forgiveness or even acknowledge our wrongs.

 

And even if we, like Thomas, miss the first or second or third time Jesus shows up and even if we shut our eyes, turn the other way, Jesus will keep on lovingly and patiently returning to us over and over and over again until we are ready to open our eyes to see him, reach out our hands to touch him, and accept the peace, forgiveness, and unconditional love he offers us.  

 

For: “not even death nor life, not even angels nor demons, not even the present nor the future, nor anything we have done or will do – can separate us from the love of God.”

After the peace, after the Spirit,  John gives us what I think must be one of the greatest understatements in scripture, he writes: ‘then they were glad when they saw the Lord’. I think the rejoicing happens because in saying ‘peace be with you’ Jesus is saying ‘I forgive you, you thought you were no longer my friends but you are still my friends and I say peace be with you’.

Then he does something else astonishing, he says ‘I send you’. He hasn’t thrown his old team out. He recommissions them. Isn’t that amazing?

I understand the Archbishop’s call to an Easter party. But I also need Easter to come pastorally. As I said in my letter for the notices this week at Allhallowgate, we need to let Jesus Easter in us. Maybe Easter should be a verb!  Sometimes we can be like the disciples in that room. 

What peace is there? Well, hear this: Do you feel afraid? Jesus says ‘peace be with you’ Do you feel you’ve let God down? Jesus says ‘peace be with you’

Do you hear God calling you? Jesus says ‘I am sending you’ Do you feel empty or inadequate? Jesus says ‘receive the Holy Spirit.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer could have preached a far better sermon than me today. In a letter in 1940 he wrote this: remember there was little peace going on around him. “We know that God has not abandoned the earth, but has reconquered it, has given it a new future, a new promise. The same earth that God created bore God’s Son and his cross, and on this earth the resurrected appeared to his disciples, and to this earth Christ will return on the last day. Whoever affirms Christ’s resurrection in faith can no longer flee the world, but neither can they fall prey to the world, for in the midst of the old they have recognised God’s new creation.”

 

What peace is there for tarnished lives,
when love is challenged, hate survives?
Remember in that Upper Room,
Christ came and offered peace.

Alleluia! Amen.

Easter Sunday: Living Resurrection

Jonas Jonassen tells the story of a typesetter setting the text of chapter upon chapter of the Bible reprinting it after there was a misprint in a huge batch of them. When he came to the very last chapter – the Book of Revelation – he just lost it. He’d had a bad experience of life and the Church. How could Jesus ever want to come back to Earth? Here where Evil had once and for all conquered Good, so what was the point of anything? And the Bible… It was just a joke! 

So it came about that the typesetter made a little addition to the very last verse in the very last chapter in the bible that was just about to be printed. Thus the bible’s last two verses plus the typesetter’s extra verse were printed as: 
“He who testifies to these things says, Surely I am coming quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus ! The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. And they all lived happily ever after.”

 

For many people Easter is a happily after ever tale. It’s fluffy bunnies and spring sunshine and chocolate and froth. Do we all live happily ever after? The world is no different today is was yesterday - there’s still death and war and injustice about. But maybe as I said a moment ago - we have been changed. Maybe we’ve had our eyes opened. Maybe an angel sits on our tomb and says “ do not be afraid.” Maybe our guards and those who want to control us or destroy us won’t have the last word. 

Maybe we are told what the message of the Church is post Easter. Maybe we cling to Jesus feet and hear him tell us “ do not be afraid” and maybe people we meet need to hear that through us, because so many people this very day are living in fear that paralyses them. Easter encounter is the start of a deep relationship Jesus offers to everyone. Life may still be hard and rubbish things may still happen to us but hear this - nothing can separate us from the love of God - nothing. The power of death hasn’t the power we thought it had. The Church is commissioned today anew to preach and share new life even where people struggle. Jesus doesn’t take the pain away, he walks with us in the pain. Friends, look out for resurrection hope around you. It can come suddenly. Don’t miss it. On Friday night I went to bed and I woke up in the morning suddenly. I usually have Velvet my black cat jump on me about 7.30 demanding breakfast. I woke about 9 in a mad panic. I thought yesterday was Easter Sunday and I’d missed the dawn service at Dallowgill I was meant to be leading three hours earlier! It was a huge relief my brain worked out it was Saturday!  

What strikes me about Matthew’s account of the resurrection is the use of a simple two letter word. Go.  Matthew uses it three times: The Angel tells the Marys to go quickly and the women hurried  away from the tomb,  afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell the disciples – definitely not what would be expected of Jewish women.

 

Matthew tells us Jesus is ahead of us. Maybe there’s a lesson for us. Maybe the Church has to run to catch up with what Jesus in his risen power is up to. Maybe he is working his purpose out not where we expect him to be. Maybe what matters to us today won’t matter tomorrow. Maybe ahead of us are new ideas, plans and possibilities. Maybe Jesus is calling to us – come on, I’m over here, come and see me. 

 

We have a task to live Easter. We need to let Jesus Easter in us. At Trevor’s funeral as I sat in the choir stalls, a man behind me asked me how I knew Trevor. “I used to be the minister of the chapel in the village before Sarah came” I said. “What are you doing now?” he asked, “have you retired?” Well I guess I’ll sit down in about 11 years time I think but we never retire as Christians! All of you today are entrusted with the good news of Jesus Christ, to share it and live it and build your church because of it. Just see where Jesus is calling you to be. Live Easter and we will ooze with vitality and excitement and joy. 

The stone has been rolled away from the tomb. The day dawns with a new light. The earth quakes in celebration and joy. Christ is risen and in him so have you and I.

Today reminds us that the light of resurrection always prevails. Darkness cannot overcome the light. Regardless of who you are, the light prevails. Regardless of what you have done or left undone, the light prevails. Regardless of your doubts or beliefs, the light prevails. Regardless of your life’s circumstances, the light prevails. I can’t tell you how it happens but I know it does. The light of resurrection always wins. Everything about today says we can trust that.

That changes everything about how we live. We now live everyday as Easter. Christ’s resurrection is not a one day celebration. It is a way of life. It means every cross flowers with new life, every tomb becomes a womb of new birth, and every darkness has been overcome by light.

I made a commitment to write a blog every day from Ash Wednesday to Easter Day. This is the last blog. I’ve done it! I hope you’ve found my daily thoughts helpful. I can do no better than end with Nadia Bolz-Weber and part of a sermon called Resurrection is messy. 

“Being an Easter people — a people of resurrection — is not to be cleansed from all harm, and it is not to have all the bad things that we have done or that have happened to us erased. Resurrection is not about rewriting our past or forgetting what happened. I wish that’s how it worked but it just isn’t. Because (as many preachers before me have said) resurrection is not reversal.

The things that happened to Jesus’ body — the state sanctioned violence, the flogging, the crucifixion — remained even after he defeated death and rose from the grave. He still bore the marks of that pain, but the pain was not what defined him.

And if you think about it, his resurrection tracks with the messiness of the rest of the ministry.  Jesus  went about the countryside turning water to wine, eating with all the wrong people, casting out demons, angering the religious establishment. He touched the unclean and used spit and dirt to heal the blind and said crazy things like “the first shall be last and the last shall be first”, and “sell all you have and give it to the poor and pray for those who persecute you”. (Or as we like to say here, pray for those who prosecute you).

And the thing that really cooked people’s noodles wasn’t the question “is Jesus like God” it was “what if God is like Jesus”.  What if God is not who we thought?  What if the most reliable way to know God is not through religion, not through a reward and punishment program, but through a person. What if the most reliable way to know God is to look at how God chose to reveal God’s self in Jesus, even in Jesus’ wounds.  

Because that changes everything.  If what we see in Jesus is God’s own self revealed, then what we are dealing with here is a God who is very different than how I would be if I were God. In Jesus we see a God who would rather die than be in the sin accounting business anymore.  A God who does not lift a finger to condemn those who crucified him, but went to the depths of Hell rather than be separated even from his betrayers. A God unafraid to get his hands dirty for the ones he loves. This is the God who raised Jesus from the grave — still wounded and who chose a woman with a past to tell everyone else about it.

I guess what I am saying is don’t believe the paintings of the resurrection — where Jesus is all cleaned up and shiny, like nothing bad really happened.

If you think that’s what resurrection looks like, if you think it looks like perfection and therefore it is out of reach, if you think the only sign of God bringing new life is the absence of pain or failure and therefore you haven’t experienced it, you might be wrong. 

That’s the point.

Our scars and our sorrow will always be part of our story but they will never be the conclusion of our story. Which means that even when you feel trapped in your pain, trapped in your past, trapped in your own story like it is itself a tomb, know this — that there is no stone that God cannot roll away.”

 

Holy Saturday: Resurrection in the dark…

I’ve been to Holy Saturday worship. Something has happened in the darkness. In the darkness of the tomb, something wonderful, something hardly believable, something earth-shattering, has happened. Jesus is no longer there; he has been raised and is on his way to Galilee.

While so much of our focus is on the light, let us not forget where Easter begins.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes in Learning to Walk in the Dark, “As many years as I have been listening to Easter sermons, I have never heard anyone talk about that part. Resurrection is always announced with Easter lilies, the sound of trumpets, bright streaming light. But it did not happen that way. If it happened in a cave, it happened in complete silence, in absolute darkness, with the smell of damp stone and dug earth in the air.... new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.”

As Christians, we are prone to talking about dark versus light— more specifically, to see the light as a conqueror of the dark. But to pit the two against each other is to miss the ways God is present and working in both.

We tend to think of darkness only as periods of despair, hopelessness, or confusion—times when God feels far away or at best unknowable. In darkness, we hit our shins on the coffee table; in the darkness, we don’t know what might jump out to get us.

But there is also goodness in darkness. It is the condition necessary for restorative slumber. In the dark and quiet, we can rest and replenish. In the dark and quiet of the earth, bulbs wait quietly for warmer temperatures. In the dark and quiet, seeds germinate before pushing green shoots up above the soil, ready for the sun.

 

This was tonight the first service of Easter for us and we met, before the lilies, the brunches, and the flowered crosses of the morning, we began quietly, in near darkness.

God works marvellous wonders amidst darkness. As the familiar words of Psalm 139 remind us, “Darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike. For you yourself created my inmost parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”

God creates in the darkness—in the soil, in the womb, in the cave.

Though periods of grief, hopelessness, and confusion might seem like the moments God is the farthest away, if we observe closely, we can see signs that God is quietly present, sowing seeds, working wonders, and inviting us into growth and new life.

 

Alleluia! The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia! 

 

 

Good Friday: Surveying

So Good Friday is here. We’ve been to three services today, two I led and one I received. At each, we sang When I survey the wondrous cross, perhaps the most well known passion tide hymn. A tomb has been put outside Allhallowgate, a cross has been erected on the market ground, a cross was processed to and behind in the cathedral this afternoon. 

We’ve made the cross less brutal but on this day we need to remember in Jesus’ time it was the most brutal and barbaric way to get rid of someone. That Jesus went to a cross to bear the sins of the world and to identify with the outcast and unwanted of the world is why we call this day Good. Today we acknowledge where we are and where God is. I called it “anyhow love” this morning. Despite what we do to him, he loves us anyhow. 

I was really glad to lead the ecumenical service on the market ground in Ripon today. A large number of us gathered. I wonder what people who surveyed the cross and us by it, made of it all. We then later went and joined the Good Friday liturgy at the cathedral. It was a wee bit high church for me today. But I did join three processions. One to stand in front of the cross in silence, one to receive communion and one behind the cross as we followed it into St Wilfrid’s crypt, where worship has been offered since 972,  leaving it there and going back into the nave, going out into the world. 

At Allhallowgate this morning some of them put a tomb outside. We ended our service round it remembering Jesus is now laid in the darkness and silence and we are all called to rest and wait. 

The drama of Good Friday is done. I’m exhausted but doing the whole story is always very moving. It’s been a holy time. 

Here’s a fun postscript! The former Bishop of Barking has been doing all the talks in the cathedral this week. We sat in the back row for worship this afternoon and overheard someone say “is anyone here from Skipton? The Bishop needs a lift home.” We had planned to go and get some time out in the countryside after the service so I turned to Lis and said we could take him. This message was passed on to the stunned Dean and clergy that the Methodist minister was scooping up the Bishop! I’ve never had a Bishop in my car before…!!! Even if he is a retired one he’s still a Bishop! 

Oh then we went to survey some highland cattle! 

The Thursday of Holy Week: Serving

Tonight it’s been good to share Maundy Thursday Communion at Harrogate Road church and to help people think about the last supper and Jesus washing feet. Maundy Thursday is all about servanthood, being there for others, a body broken and blood spilt, feet soothed with warm water by one who surprises us by stooping down to us. It’s been good to share an hour and a half of the watch in the cathedral up to midnight as we remember Jesus in the garden and the folly of those who he has just served: “could you not watch with me one hour?” 

I think the Archbishop of York sums up today for us brilliantly: 

And for those who know the story, but don't know the story, when, after supper, and knowing his end is near, and that God has put all things into his hands, and possessed by a special sense of divine commission and authority, Jesus rises from the table, you might assume – as my esteemed, predecessor, William Temple, put it – that he will ‘order a throne to be (put in place) that he may receive the homage of his subjects.’  

But if you know the story, and know the meaning and depth of the story, then you know that it was not for such a purpose, and never could be, for Jesus is among us, as one who serves, and in him we learn that this, self-emptying, and ever giving service is the very nature of God; not God, becoming a servant for a season, but a revelation of the very heart of God, that God is love, and those who live in God, live in love. And so it is, that taking a towel and a basin of water, Jesus washes his disciples feet.

And this isn’t easy. Again, as Temple puts it, ‘We are ready, perhaps, to be humble before God; but we are (not so sure) that we want God to be humble in His dealings with us.’

Sometimes we think that we are not worthy at all. Or judge others either more worthy than us, or really not worthy at all. Or else we think that something this precious needs limits and conditions put around it. And sometimes, perhaps, because we have not worked out how to receive it, we just refuse it, or even scoff at its unseemly generosity.

Peter says, ‘Wash all of me, or none of me.’ Judas has his feet washed, and then goes out to betray Jesus to his enemies.

But Jesus persists. He loves to the end. Because this is what love does. He washes the disciples feet. Peter and Judas. And he says to them, I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.

And if you know the story, and know the meaning and depth of the story, and can also find yourself in the story, then, at this point, you may just recoil or wince for – and here I have to say we not you – we know our own betrayals all too well, our refusals, and the limits we place on love. And the many ways in which we don't love or serve each other.

And Jesus persists. He loves to the end. Because this is what love does. This is how people will know you are my disciples, says Jesus: not your good works, nor your fine words; not because you'll always get everything right, not because you always agree with one another, but by your love.

Our world needs the story and example of this love. It is the only way we will secure peace in Ukraine. It is the only way we will learn to live lightly on the Earth. It is the only way we will ensure the poorest in our land have the food and fuel and dignity, so often denied them by the inequalities of wealth and opportunity that we have learned to tolerate.

Our church needs the story and example of this love, for we are divided on various issues and sometimes tempted to conclude that we don't need each other. But love, the love that Jesus demonstrates by washing all our feet, shows us that this is not an option. We cannot choose our fellow disciples. We cannot even choose whether Jesus washes us or not, but we can wash each other's feet.

‘I am among you’, says Jesus, ‘as one who serves.’

So let me finish with a story. I first heard this story told by a Jesuit priest, but I think it comes from the folk tradition of Cherokee Indians. An old warrior tells his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. 

He says, my son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is evil, though it often dresses convincingly in the clothes of what is good, so self-confidently sure of itself that even its apparent goodness tramples over others. It can end up gaining its own perfect world, but losing its soul. But you know it is evil, because inside you there is anger, envy, jealousy, greed, arrogance, self-pity, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. 

The other wolf is good. Often misunderstood and overlooked, but always transparently itself. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. 

His grandson thought about the story for a minute and then asked his Grandfather: ‘Which wolf wins?’ The old warrior simply replied: ‘The one you feed.’

The Wednesday of Holy Week: Revolution

It was deeply moving tonight to do a Tenebrae service with eleven of my folk in the church at Boroughbridge. To read the passion narrative slowly is very powerful. These verses from Luke hit me as I read them: 

Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying, “We have found this man subverting our nation. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be Messiah, a king.”So Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” “You have said so,” Jesus replied. Then Pilate announced to the chief priests and the crowd, “I find no basis for a charge against this man.” But they insisted, “He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here.”

Subversion, stirring people up, coming here. Jesus had a radical agenda which clashed with the Jewish and Roman authorities. It was bound to. The Kingdom of God heralded will be explosive and exciting and challenging! I’ll explore the theology of the cross on Good Friday but just as a political preacher he was a threat and he needed to be dealt with. 

Later on, after the resurrection, the disciples provoke a similar reaction. In Acts we are told “these people who have turned the world upside down have come here too.” 

We’ve been asked if Christianity today were outlawed, would there be enough to convict us? Jesus put his body where his mouth was and wasn’t frightened to speak out and to confront a religiosity that was negative, controlling and narrow. We’ve known churches haven’t we where life is full of do nots or bitter moaning and unpleasantness. 

I guess as Holy Week progresses we have to ask the question of ourselves. Is our discipleship really Jesus focussed and courageous or it is just a comfort blanket we keep in a safe place? Discuss! 

The Tuesday of Holy Week: Plotting

I have a discipline in Holy Week to attend or lead acts of worship every day from Palm Sunday to Easter Day. That can be knackering but it’s an amazing thing to do the whole of the drama properly. Between tomorrow and Easter evening I’ve seven services to lead but before that it’s been good the last two evenings to share in sung compline in the cathedral. Compline is a beautiful service - a lovely end to the day. I love this picture. The cathedral was very peaceful tonight. I’m not sure about covering over statues though. I’m not that high!! 

Psalm 31 was sung tonight. Jesus in this week long ago faced slander and people conspiring against him, plotting, people devising to take away his life. He was caught up in the middle of a conspiracy to get rid of him. He was caught up in the middle of a situation he couldn’t control: the anger and paranoia and violence of a crowd who decided he wasn’t what they wanted and worse, was blasphemous for claiming to be God. 

“I have heard the slander of many: fear was on every side: while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life.”

If you’ve ever been the victim of slander, people making up stories about you, people plotting behind your back, that’s horrendous. I once had a church where conversations would stop when I came round the corner! I knew they were talking about me. They used to write me nasty letters and deliver them to the manse in the dark so not to be seen! In the world today we must remember the innocent victim of mob devising. I always say to people fed up with me “don’t say it behind my back, say it to me.” I can’t abide whispers in corridors!! 

Jesus has a horrendous time as he gets nearer a cross. He struggles but like the Psalmist, whose poems and prayers he knew, he never kicks the notion of God out. God might be absent and seen in Kirkby but he is also ahead of us devising our good. There’s a huge word in the Psalm that follows the statement of reality and almost defeat. The word is “but” “ “But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my God.My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me.”

It’s important in Holy Week to create some space,  and ask what we really make of Jesus. Will we reject him, or will we claim him as king? He will be with us. Always. 

Sinners in derision crowned Him 

Mocking thus the Saviour’s claim;

Saints and angels crowd around Him,

 Own His title, praise His name:
Crown Him! Crown Him!

 Crown Him! Crown Him!
Spread abroad the Victor’s fame.

 

The Monday of Holy Week: Defining God

An e mail subject jumped out at me this morning. 

“Ian, how do you define God?”

How long have you got?! The e mail was from Sacristy Press trying to sell me a theology book about the early councils of the Church and their debates about faith. It’s a vital question for all of us in Holy Week. 

Some of us met with Sarah our probationer presbyter for her worship development group. We told her she has to be herself leading worship and what she shares of God will be her unique understanding of his love and grace in Jesus, told from her own personal experience. I remember a sermon growing up where you knew the preacher was just reading something. My friend turned to me and said “that sounds very much like William Barclay’s commentary!” There was nothing wrong with using Barclay but don’t pretend you are him! 

How will we define God this week? Well I think we begin with love. Jesus shows us how far in love God is prepared to go. He says despite what you might do I love you anyhow. Anyhow love says destroy me, ignore me, betray me, I love you anyhow. Put me on a cross. I forgive you. Perhaps we define God as a God of new beginnings and grace. Perhaps we define God as a God of surprises. I went to a meditation tonight and I didn’t understand a word of it! The preacher might as well have been defining mud! But compline was lovely and maybe God was and is summed up in the words of this hymn we sung:

We sing the praise of Him who died,
Of Him who died upon the Cross;
The sinner’s hope let men deride,
For this we count the world but loss.

Inscribed upon the Cross we see
In shining letters, God is love!
He bears our sins upon the tree,
He brings us mercy from above.

The Cross: it takes our guilt away;
It holds the fainting spirit up;
It cheers with hope the gloomy day,
And sweetens every bitter cup.

The balm of life, the cure of woe,
The measure and the pledge of love,
The sinner’s refuge here below,
The angels’ theme in heav’n above.

How do you define God? Let me know! 

The first day of Holy Week: Palm Sunday

I’ve been thinking today with three congregations about the Holy Week story being a theological and political drama with complex plot lines and characters deeply involved in events and reacting to them in different ways. 

Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday heralded as king by some who watched. Remember Jerusalem was a boiling pot of expectation for the Jews gathering as every year for Passover. God would intervene one year and a Messiah would come to liberate God’s people like they were liberated from Egypt generations before. A book I read last week suggests there was another procession entering the city that on the opposite side to Jesus: a procession with Pontius Pilate in it, the Roman governor, a procession of might and power, whose entry into the city would remind people at a time of heightened tension who was in charge and what would happen to troublemakers. 

The question for us in Holy Week is which leader, which agenda, will I follow. Do I follow the Prince of Peace, heralding the coming of the Kingdom of God, or do I meekly toe the line and pretend I am following human greed and a narrow way happily? Do I stand up for Jesus, or am I scared that will bring me trouble? 

Tonight I tried an interactive bible study in my evening service. Twenty of us tried to understand what each character in the drama was thinking, and where Jesus fitted into their ideas. Each made a choice: follow or flee, celebrate or crucify, support or suppress. What choice will we make this week? 

Before my evening service I went to most of a performance of Olivet to Calvary in the cathedral. The hymn Just as I am is part of Maunder’s work. We are invited to follow, just as we are, this week. There are other processions, other causes, which might try and lure us into supporting them. It’s hard. But to join Jesus is to find life. So will we follow this week, or have we other plans or are our church diaries too full? 

We have a choice and our response matters. 

Would I have answered when you called,
“Come, follow, follow me!”?
Would I at once have left behind
both work and family?
Or would the old, familiar round
have held me by its claim
and kept the spark within my heart
from bursting into flame?

True and humble king,

hailed by the crowd as Messiah:

grant us the faith to know you and love you,

that we may be found beside you

on the way of the cross,

which is the path of glory.

The thirty ninth day of Lent: Journeying

So I arrive at the last blog post before Holy Week begins and I’m writing this just leaving Kings Cross station on my way back northwards after journeying south to Frimley in Surrey to celebrate my Aunt and Uncle’s Diamond Wedding. 

We’ve been reflecting today on life’s journey. It was fun to look through their wedding album from 1963 and to see my Mum and Dad amongst the throng as well as my Grandma and Grandad. It’s been good to see my cousins Graham and Mandy again and to meet Graham’s wife to be Pippa. We will gather again in August as Graham and Pippa have their wedding. When we meet as family, we naturally think about our journey through life so far. 

Any journey brings good and bad experiences. Today I’ve been on a train for the first time since 2019. I’ve hit London for the first time since 2019. The amount of people in the crowds coming at you was a shock. I got a taxi to Waterloo and another from there tonight to avoid the underground and too many people. On any journey, particularly when we don’t know where we are, we need help. I arrived in Frimley at lunchtime and it was very funny my uncle had asked both my cousins there to pick me up forgetting he’d asked the other one so Mandy saw me first and I got in her car. Then we saw Graham in another space looking bemused why I’d walked past his car! I guess two lifts are better than one. 

A journey also involves trust. My late mother wouldn’t get on a train because she wouldn’t trust the train was going where it said on the front of it it was going to. I trust this train will arrive in Harrogate about 9.30. I trust that my car will still be in the station car park. 

Tomorrow we embark on a spiritual journey. A journey where Jesus reminds us of love like our family love when that works, a journey where Jesus goes through good - popularity - and bad - rejection, a journey on which we are called to trust and stay the course wherever that leads. 

From tomorrow my blogs will focus on the raw Holy Week journey. Thank you for staying with me these last thirty nine days. Let’s see what this year’s remembrance of the passion journey brings us and how we might help each other do it faithfully and openly noting what it does to us now.

For Uncle Peter and Auntie Janet, today marks sixty years of companionship, tenderness and trust sharing life’s journey. It was worth getting out of bed at 6am this morning with only three hours sleep to be with them. As Holy Week opens we pray our journey even through the hard bits might bring us as today has brought me, joy and life…

Oh and as I haven’t been on a train in ages and I got a good deal to do this first class, I got a plug this morning to get three services for tomorrow written (by the time we got to Stevenage!) and now some dinner is coming. Sometimes a journey has to have some treats on it. Really! 

(Picture of that London but from my library not today. I did see the Houses of Parliament from Waterloo Bridge but I was in a taxi - all £20.20 of it.)