Fifth Sunday of Lent 2021

 

‘The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.’

Jeremiah 31:31-34

 

‘Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, ‘The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’ The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, ‘An angel has spoken to him.’ Jesus answered, ‘This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.’ He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.’

John 12:20-33

Question: do you long for people to know God? to come into a relationship with Jesus?

Perhaps you do, but you just don’t know how that might happen. After all, most of our neighbours have better things to do with their Sunday mornings than to gather in this place. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe it has never crossed your mind that you should. After all, faith is a very personal thing; God might not be everyone’s thing, and even for those who do believe in a god or gods, Jesus might not be their cup of tea, or salvation. Or perhaps you yourself are still searching, longing for more of God, of Jesus, in your life? After all, the world we knew has been violently shaken of late, from Brexit to Coronavirus to BLM to the storming of the US Capitol, calling into question all manner of beliefs and assumptions about how we order our world.

In our Gospel reading we meet some Greeks, who had come to the Passover festival in Jerusalem. To the memorial of the triumph of the Jewish god over the gods of ancient Egypt. On the surface, nothing to do with Greeks. But here they were, spiritual seekers, for whom the values and answers to life’s big questions they were raised within no longer satisfied, no longer scratched where they itched. So here they are, in Jerusalem, quite likely somewhat overwhelmed by the crowds of pilgrims.

And somewhere in that crowd, they happen to meet Philip. They discover that they have something in common: he has a Greek name. Perhaps he has a Greek parent, or his parents admired Greek culture; we don’t know. But there is a connection, perhaps a pre-existing connection. And they ask him a question: ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ It seems strangely polite, very formal. Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to request…

That word ‘sir.’ The Greek is kyrie, Lord. Lord, we wish to see Jesus. Lord is the title by which Jesus himself is addressed. Lord, we wish to see Jesus. That word ‘see.’ The Greek word conveys the sense, we wish to experience for ourselves.

In other words, when they see Philip, they see Jesus…and want to experience Jesus for themselves.

When they see Philip, they see Jesus…and want to experience Jesus for themselves.

Question: what aspect of Jesus do people see in you; in me? and, how do we bring them to experience that for themselves?

Perhaps people see Jesus, when they see me, in how I walk into the unknown or scary future, unafraid. In how we carry ourselves in the light of that diagnosis, or unwelcome change in circumstance. Perhaps they see Jesus in my commitment to justice, for the most marginalised, ignored, silenced. Perhaps they see Jesus in the way I bring good news, not naïve optimism but encouragement, counter to the seeming addiction to bad news. Perhaps they see Jesus in my being a loving presence in their lives. Perhaps they see Jesus in the way I invest what I have learned in the lives of others.

For any one of us, they won’t see all there is to see of Jesus in us alone—that takes a community, a church. And some people will see nothing of Jesus in me, with which they connect, but might see something in you. Again, it takes a community: that is why Philip went to Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went to Jesus. But there will be someone, or some several people, who see something of Jesus in my life, and in your life, at the very time and place they themselves are going through some moment of crisis and opportunity.

And if we have any longing to see that happen, or if we want to grow that longing, whether for the very first time or because we knew it in the past but it has grown cold, if we long to see people move from seeing Jesus in us to experiencing Jesus for themselves, we do well to join with Jesus’ own prayer, ‘Father, glorify your name,’ Father, glorify your name in and through my life today, in and through my trials and sufferings.

Father, glorify your name, in whatever hour you have brought me to. That is a soul-troubling prayer: one that stirs us where our hearts have grown cold, towards God, towards our neighbour; where our minds have turned inward; where our strength has run dry. ‘Father, glorify your name’ is a prayer that will always be answered, ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.’

How do we bring those people into that personal experience of Jesus for themselves? First and fore-most by connecting them to other followers and friends of Jesus, both those we know personally and the stories of our sisters and brothers down the centuries and around the globe. Introducing friends to friends. We do not need to wait until we think we have all the answers to life’s questions, or have triumphed over our sufferings. God has chosen to glorify his name and draw people to Jesus through simple, trusting, faithfulness.

But don’t assume that personal experience of Jesus will look the same, for them, as it has done for you. Philip had three years of being one of Jesus’ disciples in Galilee and Judea that the Greeks who arrive days before his death, burial, and resurrection would never have. Theirs would be, instead, a man dying an unimaginable death, and a Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit poured out. Even Philip and Andrew’s relationship with Jesus would look entirely different to what they had known and loved, just days from then. As we emerge from the tomb of coronavirus lockdown, God’s intention is that everything is transformed, not superficially, not simply business-as-usual on-site but now also available on-line, but as fundamental a transformation as the grain that dies in order to bear much fruit.

That is where Jesus is heading, whether we come along or not. But there are Greeks wishing to see Jesus. Will you pray for them? Father, glorify your name.

 

Mothering Sunday 2021

Mothering Sunday 2021

Lectionary readings:

‘Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

‘The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. ‘This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,’ she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?’ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Yes.’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, ‘because’, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’

Exodus 2:1-10

 

‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.’

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

 

‘And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

Luke 2:33-35

 

This Sunday is both Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday. The day on which we remember, before God, our experience of motherhood and of the Church as our mother in God. And that inevitably requires of us, as a community, to do careful work, honouring one another in our multi-storied personal histories, forgiving one another where necessary. Today is a day for more than a bunch of daffodils, or any other token gestures.

 

Our Gospel reading highlights for us the reality that motherhood is costly, that what sons and daughters experience—even from the very outset—affects and may well wound mothers deeply. It should not surprise us when mothers respond in reaction to their deep wounds; nor should we ever take for granted the miracle of mothers loving from the place of healed and beautified wounds. It is costly, also, for mother church to witness our children leave, too often a sign opposed by us, revealing our inner thoughts to be out of step with the Spirit.

 

Our reading from Paul’s second extant letter to the church in Corinth speaks eloquently of affliction and suffering and consolation. These things, also, are pertinent to Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday. ‘Affliction,’ here, relates to that internal pressure that holds us where we feel trapped, without options or choices. That would relate to so much of our collective experience of motherhood, from standing by a child whose actions we cannot condone; to feeling tied to a mother who for whatever complex reasons was unable to care for us; from overwhelming guilt or shame at believing yourself to have been a bad mother, or perceived as such; to the deeply unsettling and often isolating lived experience of infertility. ‘Suffering’ relates to that which is done to us, for good or for ill, such as the complicated dance by which the child who was dependent on you becomes the adult on whose care you are increasingly dependent in old age. In such real-world afflictions and sufferings, the consolation and salvation of God is worked out, as God in Christ draws close by the Holy Spirit, encouraging us, rescuing us from ourselves. Consolation: God draws close alongside us, and draws us deeper into the transforming presence of love.

 

But I want to return to our reading from the Old Testament, because it tells for us a story, of motherhood. It is, of course, the story of the birth and infancy of Moses, born at a time of genocide. Moses’ people were living in Egypt, shepherds taken from the flock and conscripted into service as builders of an empire—and, inexplicably, the more they are oppressed, the more God blesses them. Still, they are treated increasingly harshly, to the point of a governing edict instructing the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, that they should kill Israelite boys as they were being born, and claim they were stillborn. At great personal risk, the midwives defied Pharaoh. Moses is born to Jochebed, who initially hides her son at home, and when that is no longer possible, waterproofs a basket and entrusts him to the Nile, and the watchful eye of his seven-year-old sister, Miriam. Makes for him a basket of reeds, and hides him among the reeds from which she made the basket: that is a pleasing detail. When he is discovered, by an Egyptian princess and her maid, Miriam offers to find a Hebrew wet nurse, and the Egyptian agrees. It is clear that this is women’s work: that Jochebed and Miriam and the daughter of Pharaoh all know exactly what it is that they are doing, for this boy-child with multiple mothers, one who was delivered of him through broken amniotic waters and another who drew him out of the water of the Nile and of the chaos of genocide that threatened to overwhelm life. There is a clear understanding in which the women are complicit, a pragmatic arrangement on the side of justice. But it is also true that human family arrangements are often complex, as complex a story as this one.

 

Question: what do you need to let go of, today, that you have kept inside for as long as you are able without the sound of crying and the furtive hiding giving you away? What do you need to turn over to God, to hold for you?

 

That longing, that fragile hope, which has grown within us, cannot be ignored, or abandoned, cannot just be pushed out to die. After all, it was given life by God. Even when our circumstances, our history and our present, have been overwhelming, God is at work, to raise up those who have fallen, to bring good out from evil. And yet, key to Moses’ survival was a container woven of papyrus reeds, woven of flexible strands, bound tightly together, in love, to form an ark on the waters.

 

We are yet to know what the long-term impact of the past twelve months will be, on our communities, on the lives of our neighbours, their children, and grandchildren. But we know enough to know that the local church must be an ark, within which we can entrust them, and their hopes and dreams, to God’s care. We must attend to making that ark waterproof, through careful Safeguarding principles and practices. But, fundamentally, we must weave our lives together, as a tight-knit, hopeful, loving, adopted family of God. Where we have failed to do that, we must repent and believe, must learn again to be God’s people. It is interesting to note that this is often done best mediated by a shared activity, that occupies the hands and opens up room to talk. A craft-based approach, the passing on of skills, may be key to rebuilding robust community beyond the pandemic.

 

But there is a stage even before basket-making, and that is cutting and gathering-up reeds. If we are to weave a community together, it starts with prayer, as an act of noticing with God. Each school, each class, a reed bed; each teacher and each child, a reed, at least in our imagination, whether we know them by name or not. Each home, each shop, each public park, each nursing home, each hospital, a reed bed. In this way, we increase our capacity, to receive God’s love and to enfold others into that care; for if we cannot prayerfully imagine any given part of the community gathered in, we will not see them gathered in. In this way, we learn where the reeds grow, that are ready for harvesting, that are good for basket-making. It is an observable brain phenomenon that for many of us, our imagination has shrunk in lockdown, and our prayers with it. Let us encourage one another to flex our prayers again.

 

On Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday, we bring out our baskets, perhaps attend to any necessary repairs, give thanks for the good things that they have cradled over the years. And we look to the future, with unshaken hope, to new baskets, to more people discovering what it is to be consoled by the God of all consolation, in which we share, together. May the Spirit of God birth something new in us today. Amen.

 

Third Sunday of Lent 2021

 

Third Sunday of Lent 2021

 

‘For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’

1 Corinthians 1:18-25

 

‘The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

John 2:13-22

 

 

In our Gospel reading today, we find Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. The temple Jesus knew was not so much a building as a complex made up of successive spaces, a journey into God’s presence. The outermost space was known as the Court of the Gentiles, a space open to anyone. A place for enquirers to draw near, to pray to the god they had heard of but had not been raised to know. But at pain of death, gentiles were not permitted beyond a partition wall. Only Jews could enter the middle court, or Court of the Women, a large space that was home for various activities, including: the temple treasury; storerooms for essential supplies; provision for the fulfilling of vows made to God; provision for lepers—usually excluded from society—to draw near to God; the public reading of scripture; and activities relating to certain festivals. Beyond again was the Court of Israel, a space open to Jewish males and itself part of the Court of the Priests, where the round of ritual sacrifices was made. At the heart of the Court of the Priests was the Sanctuary building, itself a succession of spaces from vestibule to Holy place to the Holy of Holies, a space where only the High Priest could go, and then only once a year.

These successive spaces were not, exactly, mandated by scripture, so much as a cultural interpretation and application of the instructions found in scripture for approaching God. We have our own architecture: our narthex and our baptistry; our nave and our chancel, the chancel itself sub-divided by the altar rail; our sacristy and our Lady Chapel. We have our own flow through spaces, public and private, from birth to death, from earth to heaven and back again, sent out into the world to proclaim the good news afresh in every generation. Each space has its place and its purpose, and we note the disruption of the pandemic: most of the chairs have been cleared out from the nave, their temporary home blocking-off the baptistry; the Lady Chapel, a space so meaningful to so many of us, has been out-of-bounds for a year now. These spaces work for us, and we have had to find ways to ‘make do,’ such as my relocation from the high altar to the chancel step…

And in our reading this morning, Jesus is in the Court of the Gentiles, a space provided for the outsiders to pray. But this space has become a permanent market, where goods and services are exchanged. Here you could enquire as to what animal you needed for a particular offering, and then buy the animal, certified unblemished, addressing all of the risk of bringing your sacrifice with you. But first, you needed to exchange your money. The universal Roman currency was not acceptable to the temple authorities, due to its low silver content. But the Romans did not permit the Jews to mint their own coins; so, the temple authorities had secured an arrangement by which they could use Tyrian coins, which had a high silver content, but which bore the image of the Canaanite god Baal, or Beelzebub. I guess you choose which hill you are prepared to die on, and which compromise you are prepared to live with. Money changers, animal wranglers; in this market you could also buy tours of the temple complex (various levels of access), and souvenirs to enable you to take the encounter with God home with you—with proceeds going towards running costs. None of these things are bad things. Indeed, the system worked acceptably well enough for those for whom it worked; but it did so at a cost. And the largest cost was borne by outsiders who wanted to come and take part, by those who were not part of the congregation of Israel, who were forced to fit in where they could, and be grateful.

In the other Gospel accounts, Jesus disrupts this space at the very end of his ministry; but in John’s Gospel, he does so at the very outset. His first public act is to disrupt the status quo. He ‘causes a scene,’ behaving in such a way that demands the social contract of Acceptable Behaviour in a Given Setting be restored: I can almost see the veins throbbing in the necks of those looking on, apoplectic. And I wonder, how would Jesus kick off, make a scene, in this place? What ways of doing things, that work for us, make it hard for those who are beyond the congregation to draw near to God, in this place? What, for that matter, distracts us from hearing Jesus speak, and responding with faithful obedience?

The past year has been extremely disruptive to our patterns of worship. It might even feel like we have been driven out, that all the familiar tables, the patterns and structures that help us approach God with confidence, have been tipped over. Coming back into this space, and finding it not the familiar space we long for, may be less than comforting. And yet, in all this, Jesus comes to us with both invitation and challenge. The invitation is no less than to see his body raised up in God’s new beginning, the resurrection life of the Church. The challenge is that we will need to let go of our preconceptions, and die to a past that was beautiful in its time. Now is not a moment to restore things just as they were, but to recognise Jesus in our midst—the one in whom the partition wall between Jew and Gentile, between insiders and outsiders, has been torn down. Now is the time to take up our cross and die to self, to embrace the foolishness and the weakness of God—stumbling-block though that is to those of us who are ‘the new Israel.’

Perhaps, with the best will in the world, we overcomplicate it all. Perhaps we just need to throw the doors open, and invite everyone we meet to come in; not offering answers to life’s unanswerable questions, but room within the mystery of divine love.

 

Second Sunday of Lent 2021

 

Second Sunday of Lent 2021

 

‘For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void. For the law brings wrath; but where there is no law, neither is there violation.

‘For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham (for he is the father of all of us, as it is written, ‘I have made you the father of many nations’)—in the presence of the God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist. Hoping against hope, he believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations’, according to what was said, ‘So numerous shall your descendants be.’ He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him’, were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.’

Romans 4:13-25

 

‘Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’

‘He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’

Mark 8:31-38

 

Notes:

 

For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?

Material wealth? Political power? Environmental crisis?

kosmos: the whole created order.

Emphasis on balance, harmony. Our world is currently out of balance: coronavirus outbreak, perhaps being brought back into balance; human impact on environment?

psuché: life breath, which comes from God; also, the seat of the heart and mind, or what holds our constituent parts together, in an ordered whole.

To put it another way, what benefit is it to receive a re-ordered world, if you yourself remain dis-ordered?

Which is also to say that your life being ordered is not dependent on the world around you being in order, but on God’s promise, and on aligning our lives to that promise.

This is not to say that Christians do not, or should not, experience dis-ordering; but that we are invited to repent and believe: to return to, and stay close to, the one from whom our life breath comes.

What practices help you to draw near to God? Lent is an opportunity to take them up again, or to try a new thing. Some traditional Lenten practices, such as solitude and fasting from the hospitality of communal eating, have in fact been our extended pattern since Lent last year; and it will be good to bring them back into harmony with the shared disciplines. But, what is life-giving for you right now? What practices remind you of God’s promises?

Ignatian examen? Evangelical quiet time? Charismatic sung worship? Celtic appreciation of the world around us?

Peter, representing the Church, had his mind set on human things, not divine things. What good is the Church if it is not listening to Jesus? As we begin to re-gather, how will we ensure that we do that?

 

First Sunday of Lent 2021

 

First Sunday of Lent 2021

Lectionary reading: Mark 1:9-15

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, that time of year when we recall and enter-into the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness, immediately following his baptism and in preparation for being sent to proclaim the good news—the good news that we are also sent to proclaim. These days spent in preparation are, therefore, a pivotal episode in Jesus’ life. Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include them in their telling the good news. Matthew takes 184 words to do so [in the Greek]. Luke takes 203 words. Mark, whose account we are offered this year, takes only 30.

Thirty words. Not even one word per day! Mark distils Jesus’ wilderness experience to its very essence. Even so, he records something that neither Matthew nor Luke note: that Jesus was with the wild beasts. And here, Mark uses a diminutive form of the word for beasts, and in particular, though not exclusively, venomous creatures: these are small and likely venomous. Desert snakes and scorpions, for example.

Let me step back, and ask, what was Jesus doing in the wilderness, those forty days? In Mark’s account, he is ‘done to’ by others: the Spirit drove him; Satan tempted him; the angels waited on him, or, ministered to him. It is left to Matthew and Luke to give us a clue as to how Jesus passed those days: meditating on scripture [possibly the scrolls of the Essene community at Qumran]. Three times, they record Jesus declaring, ‘It is written…’ Two of those times, he is citing Deuteronomy chapter 8, which references ‘the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions’ and the other time he cites Psalm 91, which, to the poisonous snakes, adds the lion and its young for good measure (in the words immediately following on from Jesus’ quote). In other words, the wild beasts are Mark’s shorthand for Jesus’ confrontation with Satan, signposts that Matthew and Luke follow.

Why would Jesus be in the wilderness, reading and meditating on this particular passage from Deuteronomy? Well, it is a passage in which Moses is preparing the people to enter into all that the Lord their God has planned for them, without those very blessings becoming a snare. And Moses’ words get to the very heart of our annual Lenten discipline. I’m not going to read them out now, but they are well worth getting to know. And so, my first invitation to you this morning, as we step into Lent together, is this:

Read Deuteronomy chapter 8 every day for the next week.

Read it slowly, prayerfully. You might want to keep a journal, of anything in particular that strikes you as you read, to track, and map, the journey the Lord your God leads you on. You do not need to share those thoughts with anyone else, other than God in prayer; but, trust me, it will help you to observe a holy Lent, to your benefit.

My second invitation to you is this: to take a stone with you.

On Monday, I painted ash crosses on little stones; they have not been handled since. Take one with you as you go, and let it be a reminder of the wilderness: of God’s faithfulness and provision. If you are getting out a bit more these days, carry it with you in your coat pocket. If you are still, for the most part, staying at home, place it on your hearth, or your windowsill, or somewhere where you will see it, regularly. Hold it in your hand: feel its weight, its roughness and smoothness; trace the cross with your finger; call to mind God’s blessings, in good times and bad, and how they have smoothed—and are smoothing—your own rough edges. Keep the stone throughout Lent; and then, on Easter Sunday, when the stone that covered the entrance to the tomb is found to be rolled away, throw it aside, in your garden, or the park, or at the beach.

These two invitations are to you all. I have a third, perhaps not for everyone, perhaps for someone here. The little creatures are often the ones people have phobias about. Did it ever cross your mind that Jesus may have been afraid of spiders? After all, he was fully human. Mark tells us that Jesus was with the creepy crawlies, and angels came to his aid, gave him the strength to face those human fears, pressing deep into God’s loving, parental, training for living life to the full. It may be that this Lent, the Holy Spirit wants to set you free from some phobia that has held you captive. If that resonates with you, I would be glad to pray with you.

A text to read, a stone to hold, and, potentially, a fear to overcome. That will do, for now. Lent is rigorously life-giving, not burdensome. May God give us the grace to say ‘Yes!’ to life. And may our lives, so shaped by God, hold that life out to those around us. Amen.

 

Appendix 1: Mark 1:9-15

‘In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

‘And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

‘Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

 

Appendix 2: Deuteronomy 8:1-20 (with the words Jesus cites in italics for emphasis)

‘This entire commandment that I command you today you must diligently observe, so that you may live and increase, and go in and occupy the land that the Lord promised on oath to your ancestors. Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, in order to humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commandments. He humbled you by letting you hunger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. The clothes on your back did not wear out and your feet did not swell these forty years. Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you. Therefore keep the commandments of the Lord your God, by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with flowing streams, with springs and underground waters welling up in valleys and hills, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose hills you may mine copper. You shall eat your fill and bless the Lord your God for the good land that he has given you.

‘Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.’ But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today. If you do forget the Lord your God and follow other gods to serve and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the Lord is destroying before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.’

 

The Transfiguration 2021

 

‘Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!’ Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

‘As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.’

Mark 9:2-9

If I may be honest, I have been finding recent weeks hard going. I know that I am not alone in this. There may be light at the end of the tunnel, but in the meantime, to press that analogy, the railway carriage is claustrophobic. I am not taking in the mountain air. I cannot even watch the mountains drawing ever nearer through the window: only the ghost of the carriage reflected back at me. How do I meet with God, in this airless box?

The gospel reading for this Sunday is truly astonishing. It takes the seemingly ordinary, and reveals something extraordinary, as we shall see. And that might be exactly what is needed, today.

Our passage is set in a time when nothing has happened for six days. ‘Six days’ echoes the six ‘days,’ or epochs, of creation; and so, six days is more than the inside of a week: these days, in which nothing creative is recorded, sprawl on and on, outside of time. These days could just as well describe the insubstantial days I have ghost-walked through since last Sunday. And six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John.

In recent days, various combinations of our household have gone out for a walk around the block. But this phrase Mark chooses, took with him, is more than a record of who came along. It is the same word Matthew uses when he recounts an angel telling Joseph do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. It means to actively, intentionally, join another person or persons to yourself. In this action, Jesus brings Peter and James and John into covenant relationship with himself, to the effect that from here-on in you can read ‘Jesus and Peter and James and John’ as ‘Jesus-Peter-James-John,’ or ‘Jesus = Jesus + Peter + James + John.’ An ordinary little phrase, took with him, that transforms all their identities.

Next, Jesus led them up a high mountain. Again, the phrase ‘led them up’ means more than simply that they were out for a ramble with Jesus out in front. These words are used to describe offering something up a sacrifice, and also to bring something through a sequence of stages to a consummation or goal. In other words, Jesus joins his friends to himself as one common identity—later described as the Body of Christ—and presents that new being to his heavenly Father, in order that it might reach its ultimate purpose.

And this is revealed in what happens next. Jesus was transfigured before them. Now, unlike ‘took with’ or ‘led them up,’ ‘transfigured’ is not exactly an everyday word to us. And yet, it describes something absolutely familiar. It is the same word from which we get ‘metamorphosis,’ where something changes form in keeping with its inner reality. It describes the process by which a caterpillar becomes a butterfly; or an acorn, an oak tree. Acorns don’t look anything like oak trees; but they are one in substance. We can confidently say that acorns don’t become butterflies. We can also observe that oak trees produce new acorns, and so the lifecycle carries on.

When Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, what we are seeing is the Church, embryonic in Peter and James and John, as it will be in maturity, once the Son of Man (a communal term Jesus borrows from the prophet Daniel to refer to himself as representative of his followers) had risen from the dead. We are beholding the acorn and seeing the oak tree. We are observing the caterpillar and imagining the butterfly on the other side of the traumatic death-and-rebirth of the cocoon tomb. And there to witness this vision are Elijah and Moses, both of whom had solid credentials in witnessing God pass by them on a mountaintop, neither of whom had directly seen that divine glory revealed in this life.

Despite being terrified, the three friends grasp the significance of this fairly well. In suggesting that they build three tabernacles, for Jesus and Moses and Elijah—no mention of themselves—they have understood that they are now one with Jesus. But—nod to Moses and Elijah—the mountain itself, with its clefts and caves and cloud covering, is the place of meeting with God on the mountain; the tabernacle is the place of meeting with God in the valley. Go down, Moses, Elijah. Go down, Jesus-plus. Go down, press on to death and the tomb, trusting in love that is stronger than death and in the new life that springs from that love.

And what of us, in our confinement, acorn buried in the hard winter ground awaiting the spring? What about us in the shabby reality of our present circumstances, a Church that is so far from all that God would have us be, her clothes stained by scandals and injustices so ingrained that no launderer on earth could bleach them clean?

Even here, Jesus takes the initiative; comes and takes us to himself, not to a place but into the closest imaginable lifelong relationship; lifts us up, presenting us before the Father, into their shared delight; and brings us through to maturity, not back to how things once were but to where they are heading, to an altogether greater glory. That is where we are going, together. To be honest, some days I identify more with Elijah, with Moses, with seeing only in my minds eye what others will experience in their bones. And yet, Jesus. And yet, Jesus.

Perhaps we might make three dwellings after all, not on the mountaintop but in the valley of the shadow of death; and learn to embrace the now-and-not-yet—the kingdom at hand, breaking-in, and the kingdom yet-to-come—as Jesus brings us through the sequence of stages that end in the consummation we long for? Before we get to Eastertide, we must journey through Lent. May God grant us a vision of that glory, to strengthen us to endure these days.

 

Candlemas (2021)

Watch our service for Candlemas here.