10 mins
Lenten reflections
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Sunday March 7
John 2: 13-22
The Rev Stuart Love, Glasgow: Clincarthill
WHEN I was younger, it was trendy for Christians to wear “WWJD?” bracelets. The point of these was to remind us to act in a Christ-like way: to be forgiving or loving. Of course, we took great delight in reminding one another that it was also valid to say that, to act like Jesus, we could make whips out of cords, overturn tables, and drive people off!
This is a remarkable moment in the life of Jesus, as He reacts to the misuse and abuse of the Temple. I think, from the outset, it is worth noting that while Jesus’ actions are powerful and disruptive, they are not violent. He does cast out those who were using the space in the Temple inappropriately, but there is nothing in the Gospel account to suggest that Jesus caused any injury.
Why was Jesus so incensed by the misuse of the Temple?
The Temple was meant to be the place where people could connect with God through worship. Yet, instead of worshipping God, commerce had intruded, and people were focussing on the exchange of money and goods. I am sure we can understand this: how often do we allow our desires for wealth or material things to obscure our relationship with God?
I also wonder how Jesus would react if He walked into one of our Church buildings today? I am certain that He would not see the kind of buying and selling He saw in the Temple. But I wonder if He would be pleased, or distressed, by what He sees?
Jesus’ actions are questioned by the religious authorities of the day: the very people who really should have known better, who failed in their responsibility to maintain the focus on God in the Temple. In response to their questions, Jesus gives a cryptic answer, about destroying and rebuilding the Temple in three days.
John hints that the disciples later piece together what Jesus meant. They came to understand that Jesus, through His death and resurrection, became the new way that we can connect with God. We no longer needed a specific place to meet with God, like the Temple. By putting our faith in Jesus, we can have constant and unfettered access to God in Heaven, through Him. What a wonderful thought that is! To know that God is always accessible because of Jesus and our faith in Him.
By using the image of tearing down and rebuilding the Temple, Jesus was promising that God was doing something new, something better. In the Church of today, we are holding on to the same hope: God will do something new and something better.
Recently, it has been difficult to hold on to that hope, particularly as we have struggled through the restrictions made necessary by a global pandemic. Yet, as Jesus demonstrates, before there can be resurrection, there first needs to be death. That is difficult and painful, but necessary.
We are, however, assured that God will be with us during the difficult times, while also promising that if we persevere, there is better to come. Let us, therefore, look forward in hope for the new, better things God will do!
Sunday March 14
John 3: 14-21
The Rev Anikó Schütz Bradwell, Humbie l/w
Yester, Bolton and Saltoun
DO you know the kind of conversations that sometimes happen late at night, when you’ve been sitting together for hours, maybe with a glass of wine, chatting about this and that, before finally touching on the real issues, the questions deep inside us? I imagine the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, from which this passage is taken, a bit like that. Nicodemus comes to Jesus secretly at night, as being seen with this perceived trouble-maker, at least for a man in his position, could be risky.
Nevertheless, Nicodemus was intrigued by this teacher who was making such an impact on the people.
And so he hears what Jesus has to tell him: that through God’s love for the world, and our experience of this love, our lives can be shaped. He tells him that he has not come into the world to condemn, but to offer an alternative, a different way of living. It is through knowing God, through learning from Jesus, through choosing to follow his teaching and example, that we can gain new life. It needs a decision from us, though: a decision that we want to live in God. Jesus says here that his coming into the world brought a judgement. The Greek word used here is krisis – a crisis that asks us to make a decision about which path we want to choose, to make a decision about whether we want to follow Jesus’ teaching and example in the way we live our life, or not. Now, life is rarely, if ever, simple. And so it is that we don’t make such a decision just once, perhaps inspired by a particularly powerful encounter with God in prayer, in the beauty of God’s creation, in the love we experience, but instead we need to make this decision again and again. If we decide that we want to live in God, live as followers of Christ, then this decision needs to shape who we are, needs to shape how we relate to one another, needs to shape all our choices, every day anew.
This past year has been so difficult for so many of us, with the fear of us or loved ones getting ill, with missing family and friends, with feelings of isolation and disconnection, with economic worries for many of us, with juggling new ways of working with childcare and homeschooling.
And yet – we have seen the light of God’s love shine through it all, in so many ways: in the nurture shown by carers, doctors, nurses; in the thoughtful hands-on help in so many communities, with a greater awareness that we need to look out and care for one another, in the sacrifices we make to protect each other. Aside from the pandemic and the response we’ve experienced, we also see a greater awareness of the desperate need for decisive steps to protect our environment, God’s creation given to us to steward. We’ve heard and listened to an outcry for greater racial justice, and are taking measures to learn more, and act better.
We are more aware of the need to listen to voices with different experiences, and learn from them – rather than rely on our preconceptions.
Whenever we encounter any such question, any challenge, we might stop for a moment and ask ourselves what Jesus might do in the same situation. Over the past year, we have seen many examples of people acting in ways that correspond to the life and teaching of Jesus, and offering more love, and a different way of living, to the world. There’s still lots to be done: intentions need to become actions. If we continue to ask ourselves how we might live by the example God offers us in Jesus, we might be on a good way.
Sunday March 21
John 12: 20-33
The Very Rev Dr Derek Browning, Edinburgh:
Morningside
NOWHERE in the Bible are we given a physical description of Jesus. We have His words that only reveal a fragment of what must have been going on in Jesus’ mind and heart. What of the soul of Jesus? What of that spiritual part of Jesus, the part that was His very essence, that illuminated and motivated and connected all that Jesus was? The soul of Jesus – the wisdom and insight and compassion. The soul of Jesus – the open channel, that living connection, part of the divine DNA, that knitted Him to the Creator and the Inspirer.
This passage in John’s Gospel follows the raising of Lazarus, the anointing at Bethany, and the events of Palm Sunday.
It forms a bridge between Jesus’ public ministry and the beginning of Jesus’ focusing His teaching on His disciples.
Crowds swirled around Jesus. Events are confusing almost as if to show in the turmoil of their action the turmoil in Jesus’ soul. He did not have a moment’s peace.
This isolated figure in the midst of a vortex of human activity, His soul turning and turning. Knowing what lay ahead, and needing to focus on that, Jesus articulates Himself out of the confusion and trouble, and into focus.
“Now is My soul troubled”, He begins.
Jesus had been troubled before: at the tomb of Lazarus where He was deeply moved, and troubled. He will be troubled again, at the point in the Last Supper when He recognised Judas would betray Him. In these moments of death, and brokenness, resurrection is barely to be glimpsed on a far horizon. But it is here we see the heart, and mind, and soul of Christ at work.
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This troubled soul of Jesus, echoing Genesis: out of the chaos – creation; out of the formlessness – shape, even that of a cross; out of the restlessness – stillness; out of the darkness – light. And now, out of the death – life. John does not describe Gethsemane in his gospel, but here is its echo.
Rising out of the seething crowds we are confronted by and comforted with the purpose of the life of Christ: to save God’s world. Jesus recognises this is the very hour, the very moment, when that purpose approaches conclusion. In the grain of sacrifice comes the harvest of salvation.
As at Jesus’ baptism, God speaks in confirmation. With salvation comes glory.
With glory comes transformation. With transformation comes hope. With hope comes life.
Jesus, even when troubled, points beyond life, and death, to resurrection. No cheap grace, no easy path, no tidy resolution. It is in this moment of anguish, recognising what it would mean to be forsaken, that the comfort of God’s voice comes to reassure.
After each dark night always the new dawn.
If we are facing trouble in our personal lives, or in the life of our community, or country, or world, then Jesus, in our time of trouble, stands with us. He points us beyond trouble to the new dawn.
Sunday March 28 (Palm Sunday)
Mark 11:1-11
The Rev Roddy Hamilton, Bearsden:
New Kirkpatrick
DID anyone know?
Did anyone know what this was about? A small, rag-tag crowd joining in the ‘Hosannas!’ without knowing what any of it meant, following someone who tempted a future that seemed to speak of renewal and freedom.
They were daring to believe in something they did not understand.
It was a triumph for faith.
Perhaps.
There was no great crowd, not according to Mark.
It was the same group of people who had gathered round Jesus on the way, and in the centre of them rode a silent saviour, the Word now lost for words.
Others tell the story differently.
Others expose a subtle kingdom found in dramatic parable, of heaven conspiring against empire and the clever divine donkey-rider facing those who would soon kill him.
Not Mark.
This was a crowd who found on their lips the word: “Hosanna.” If you say it in the aisles of churches, it feels celebratory, joyous and victorious.
It feels like a word that belongs to a Saviour who has already won; a word to use when you know this ends in resurrection.
Not here.
Here is a clash of endings: Cry ‘Hosanna’ and you are pleading, yes pleading, ‘Save Us!’ It is not a happy word.
It is a cry from a tortured soul, torn by the experience of injustice.
But here this rag-tag crowd focusses their aspirations on someone who will pull them through, who will simply turn the tables on the oppressors.
It is a recognition of Messiah.
And Jesus fails to live up to that.
Jesus’ triumphal entry fails that small crowd.
There are fewer things, surely, that could make a crowd more angry than having lifted up a hero, a saviour, a messiah, who says nothing, and turns out will refuse to save you at least the way you wanted.
And can you hear the word hosanna sound more and more like ‘Crucify’, a word shaped by disappointment, regret, and anger? It is a word we can understand when we do not understand anything else, and when we are on this side of that word: when we find ‘hosanna’ slipping away and ‘crucify’ more comfortable, then we are in that place where redemption, grace, God, faithfully holds us when we have let go our faith in God.
Indeed, a triumph of faith.
This article appears in the March 2021 Issue of Life and Work
If you would like to view other issues of Life and Work, you can see the full archive
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