these

 

John Chapter 20 ends like this:

‘Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.’

John 20.30, 31

That would be an enigmatic end. Except that John carries on immediately:

‘After these things Jesus showed himself again to his disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way...’

John 21.1

And as the story unfolds:

‘When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love [agapas] me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love [philō] you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.”’

John 21.15

[A note: agapas has to do with choice, with choosing to accept that which is best for the other, whether it is our preference or not; philō has to do with emotion, and we do not choose our emotional reactions, though we do have some degree of choice over how we will behave in response and we can train our responses.]

But these are written...After these things...do you love me more than these?

Jesus asks Peter if he will choose, again and again, to love Jesus more than the adventures they have shared together. And to live out that love in serving others, after Jesus returns to the Father.

And John asks his reader to do the same. To choose to love and so to trust in Jesus, beyond the stories recorded about him. Because the stories that are written down must come to an end, but there is more, so much more. Jesus is still performing signs that reveal the glory of God in the world today. John wants us to participate in that life, life to the full.

I love the stories of Jesus. But if you were to ask me which was my favourite, I might just have to reply: I am not sure it has happened yet.

The actual end of John gives us the enigmatic conclusion hinted at a Chapter earlier:

‘But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.’

John 21.25

 

Alleluia. Christ is risen.

 

‘Alleluia. Christ is risen.’
‘He is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.’

The Church professes that ‘For our sake he [Jesus] was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures’ (extract, the Nicene Creed). This I believe.

Sometime before dawn on the third day, Jesus rose from the dead, bringing to an end the old order of sin and death and ushering in the new order of love and life.

But I am moved by the gracious wisdom of the Church that says, ‘Do not attempt to take this truth in, in just a day: this truth must be met, again and again, over fifty days.’ The Season of Easter is ten days longer than Lent, ten days longer than Christmas and Epiphany combined, roughly twice as long as Advent. Fifty days.

In the gracious wisdom of the Church, Jesus does not even appear in person in the Gospel reading set for today, Luke 24.1-12. The women who return to the tomb to do the job of embalming Jesus’ corpse properly must trust in the evidence of the stone rolled away, the absence of a body, the testimony of two men (angels?) in dazzling clothes, and the words Jesus had said to prepare them for this day. And I love this, because is this not where we are, invited to trust on this evidence? Like the male apprentices, we must trust the witness of the women—or else reject their testimony as an idle tale.

Too often, the testimony of women is dismissed, their story silenced, by men and indeed by other women. Yet (and perhaps for this very reason) it is to women—to the very large group of his female apprentices—that God entrusts the good news of the mighty resurrection of his Son. For the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of the world, and the weakness of God is more powerful than the world’s idea of strength.

If you find the resurrection disturbing, you are not alone. Indeed, it is disturbing, disrupting. But this is our hope: that the one who, in his body, is fully God and fully human has taken upon himself our life and our death that we might be joined to him in his death and his life, and that through him and with him and in him all things shall be made new.

‘Alleluia. Christ is risen.’
‘He is risen indeed. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.’

 

God is dead

 

Holy Saturday.

To be dead is not to no longer exist. It is not even to no longer be conscious. To be dead is to dwell in the realm of the dead, a separate but connected dimension to the one we are familiar with. The Jews called this realm Sheol, the Greeks and Romans called it Hades. Every culture has its own name. Those who sincerely believe that death is the end of existence are a vanishingly small minority, even in the post-secular West.

God is dead.

How can God be dead!? God is dead because God wills it so. Because God is willing to experience being dead.

How can God return from the dead? Again, because God wills it so, and death cannot hold God against the divine free will.

Why is God dead? On one level, God is dead because human inhumanity put God to death. That is, we banished God, not into nonexistence but into exile into the realm of the dead, where we are not (yet) and so do not have to deal with God (for now).

But we were only able to kill God because God was willing to die. So, again, why is God dead?

Everything that exists, seen and unseen, exists because God created it. Willed it into being and saw that it was good. God is beyond creation, not so much that God is outside of the universe as that the universe exists within God, within the love of God. This is what is meant by the transcendence of God.

But that which exists within the love of God has freedom and has not always used that freedom to love as it is loved. And so God entered into creation, in Jesus, the full expression of God and of humanity. This is what is meant by the imminence of God. Jesus showed us what it is to love; but more than that, everywhere he went is transformed by his presence, by Love incarnate: is set free from unloving. Anywhere he did not go could not be so redeemed. And so, in Jesus, God descends to pass through the world, the realm of the living; and descends further still to pass through the realm of the dead; and ascends again to pass through the heavens, the realm of the gods.

God is dead so that Jesus may be the Lord of the living and the dead, the redeemer of every realm.

 

contemplation

 

Good Friday.

We spent an hour contemplating the wounds of Christ and placed our own drop of blood (red glass beads) on, or near, the cross in symbolic recognition that our wounds (the wounds we have inflicted and the wounds we have suffered and endured) are taken up in his, and transformed by Love.

 

there is a green hill

 

Good Friday.

There are two hills in my parish on which a large cross is processed and erected every Good Friday.

The hills are formed of (what is locally known as) Magnesian Limestone. They date from the Permian Period, some 275 million years ago, a period that saw three or four massive extinctions concluding with the one known as the Great Dying. Of course, the continents and seas were different then, to how our world looks now.

I understand this cognitively; but when I climb the Tunstall Hills today I do not understand myself to have any part in their distant past, or distant future, only in their present.

Between 3.00 p.m. on Good Friday and sometime before dawn on the following Sunday, we who confess dependence in God proclaim that, in Jesus, God is dead.

Not that God has experienced death and so is able to identify with our experience of death. We confess that God is dead.

God will not stay dead, for death simply is not strong enough to hold God captive. Nonetheless we proclaim not that God died once upon a time, some two thousand years ago, but that God is dead.

We confess this because faith is not a cognitive belief, such as my understanding of the hill from where I can stand at the foot of a cross and look down on St Nicholas church; faith is experiential. As we walk through the Triduum of the evening of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and the early hours of Easter Sunday, we are drawn into those events.

And, being drawn into them, they shape us in particular ways, in union with God, in and with and through Jesus.

Do not rush through these hours. Do not rush to proclaim, He is risen!

Do not push away the God who would draw us into his death, for there is no other way to be drawn into his Life.

 

Good Friday

 

Good Friday.

The ground behind the vicarage rises steeply, such that I can stand at my kitchen window and look out on the hedge that demarcates the boundary between our family home and the church above and beyond. The hedge is made of many things, but mostly Pyracantha shot through with bramble, sharp as hell, an encircling crown of thorns. The longer I am willing to stand and watch, the more I see. Robins, wrens, sparrows, blue tits, blackbirds, all in their turn darting in and out. The crown of thorns is a haven, protection from marauding local cats, a nesting place to nurture young, a living thing of beauty.

The wounds of Christ are the place where power is made perfect in weakness. For there is no greater weakness than a man tortured and subjected to public execution. And there is no greater power than the ability of Love to draw to those wounds every wound that has ever been inflicted, every wound that has ever been suffered, and to cleanse them such that what is inflicted is forgiven and what is endured is beautified.

Such is the mercy of God, to endure the worst that we inflict and to be one with us in what we suffer, that we might be one with God in the glory of Life.

The more we can bear to watch, to hold our gaze and not turn away, the more we will notice. Such wonder! What mystery!

 

the company of Christ's pilgrim people

 

Jesus said, ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

John 13.34, 35

It should not come as a surprise to hear that I have an interest in films that explore the life of faith. One of my favourites is The Way (2010), written, directed and produced by Emilio Estevez and starring his real-life father, Martin Sheen.

Sheen plays Tom Avery, who, despite a successful career as an ophthalmologist, does not see eye-to-eye with his son Daniel (played by Estevez). Daniel travels to Europe to walk the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St James, much to his father’s disapproval. Tragically, Daniel is caught in a storm crossing the Pyrenees on his first day walking and is later found dead. Tom flies to the south of France, to bring his son’s body home. But something causes him to change his mind. Instead, he has Daniel cremated and sets out to walk the Camino carrying his son, scattering his ashes along the way.

Along the way, Tom falls in with other pilgrims, each one walking the Camino for their own personal reasons. Joost, from the Netherlands, is hoping that his wife will fall in love with him again. Sarah, from Canada, is trying to escape an abusive husband. Jack is a writer from Ireland, who has writer’s block. At first, Tom resents their intrusions into his deeply personal endeavour. But over time, a transformation takes place. Through a series of misadventures, they become unlikely friends.

When you were baptised (if you have been baptized) you passed through the parted sea with the Israelites, over three thousand years before you were born. If, like me, you were baptised as a baby, you were carried over in your mother’s arms.

When you were baptised, you died with Christ and rose again with him; participating in events two thousand years before you were born. When you were baptised, you became a member of the company of Christ’s pilgrim people. You may have wandered very far from Christ in the intervening years. I have baptised forty children at St Nicholas’ and few of the parents have continued to bring them up in the faith; but Christ is faithful, even when our parents are not, even when we are not.

The invitation is deeply personal, but it is not private. In baptism, we begin a lifelong pilgrimage in the company of others. Some, we will journey many miles together, over many years; others, we will come across from time to time; still others, we won’t meet, but they, like us, have walked or will walk the Way.

We walk the Way with others, and they are, at times, and often to begin with, deeply annoying. As are we to them. For we all carry our own pain. We are all broken. Joost. Sarah. Jack. Tom. You. Me. But the mandate we have been given (the mandate that gives Maundy Thursday its name) is to love one another. To love one another, even those parts that are unlovely.

For this to happen requires no more or less than that we walk the Way. That we follow the example of Jesus, who showed us what love looks like. But walking the Way is more than imitation, essential though that is. Through the act of walking in the Way, we are empowered to love by the Holy Spirit. This is not a matter of what we do, but of what is done to us as we respond. Over time, we become more like Jesus.

And this is key: it takes time; indeed, it takes a lifetime. If we are not there yet (and we are not) it is because we are not there, yet. But we are on the Way.

 

Holy Week

 

The shadow of the cross falls across the whole of Holy Week.

At the start of the week, Jesus visits the temple, and there, with the words of the prophet Jeremiah on his lips, he clears the space, upturning tables, driving out animals, sending the daily mechanisms of the sacrificial system into exile. Jeremiah had called the people in his own day to repentance, accusing them of trusting in the temple itself rather than in living rightly before God, pleading with them, could they not see? Had the house that bore God’s name not been turned into a den of thieves in their eyes—as in Jeremiah’s eyes, as in God’s eyes—a people who acted with shameful impunity?

In these days, Jesus will claim the temple as symbol of his own body, that would be torn down and rebuilt in three days—by which he was speaking of his resurrection—and also predict that the temple buildings themselves would be thrown down—the Romans would accomplish this in 70 AD/CE. And in the temple, Jesus enacts the consequence of misplaced confidence.

On the Monday of Holy Week, the cross is the instrument by which the temple will be destroyed.

The next day, Jesus returned and seeing a fig tree, looked for fruit. But it bore him none, and he cursed the tree, an action that puzzled his apprentices.

Three things to note, two concerning biblical imagination and one concerning botany: curses are temporary restrictions, in contrast to blessings; trees symbolise a person or people; and a fig is a kind of inverted flower that is pollinated by a fig wasp that dies in the process—and which also hosts parasitoid wasps that do not pollinate.

The fig tree represents the nation of Israel. They have not proved fruitful. But if a fig tree bears no fruit, it is pollinators that are missing. The (parasitoid) leaders of the nation have not been willing to lay down their lives for the common good. In contrast, Jesus will die for the people, but not before he has pollinated the fig tree. From the cross, he will cry, ‘Father, forgive,’ and cancel the curse, transforming it into blessing.

On the Tuesday of Holy Week, the cross is the fig tree, the curse that will become a blessing through the actions of the fig wasp. It is also the pole on which Moses hung a bronze serpent, that anyone who had been bitten by a poisonous serpent might gaze upon it and be healed, foreshadowing the seed of Eve who would crush the serpent’s head and have his heel bitten.

Throughout this week, Jesus is staying with his friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, in Bethany, just outside Jerusalem. At some point in the week, they host a dinner in his honour. At that dinner, Mary of Bethany takes a rare and expensive perfume and anoints Jesus with it in preparing for his burial. One of Jesus’ apprentices, Judas Iscariot, the one who would betray him, took offence. He blurts out that the perfume could have been sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor. He did so, not because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, helping himself from the common purse that was his to steward. No one would notice, if he were to take ten percent for himself. It is Jesus’ defence of Mary that appears to seal Judas’ decision, and he gets his ten percent cut elsewhere, betraying Jesus’ whereabouts to those who sought to arrest him privately, away from the crowds, for thirty silver coins.

On the Wednesday of Holy Week, the cross is the common purse, reading the thoughts of our hearts and inviting us to share in the common good, to love our neighbour as ourselves.

On Thursday, Jesus instructs two of his apprentices to prepare the Passover meal they will eat together in the rooftop guest (upper) room of the home of a secret ally. This meal is known to us as the Last Supper. With a large group of his apprentices and friends, Jesus commemorated the night on which their ancestors had fled from Egypt. They had been instructed to make unleavened bread, for there would not be time to let the dough rise. This was to be their last supper under the oppressive reign of death embodied by the pharaoh. Each year as they joined themselves to the past, they hoped that they, too, would eat a last supper under Roman rule. Perhaps this would be the year. Certainly, there were many who hoped that Jesus would lead an uprising and overthrow the Romans.

They ate bread; and they ate roast lamb, recalling how the god of death—the jackal Anubis—had been unleashed to roam across the land, to carry off each firstborn male, whether human or animal; but was tricked at the door to each Hebrew home by the blood of a lamb smeared on the doorposts and lintel. Only the children of the oppressor—the sons of death—died; and so, death symbolically destroyed itself.

On the Thursday of Holy Week, the cross is the doorposts and lintel of the house of Israel, the outsmarting of death through the wisdom of God.

The shadow of the cross falls across the whole of Holy Week.

Palm Sunday 2025

 

While the Russian army bombards Ukrainian citizens, and the Israeli army bombards the last remaining operational hospital in Gaza, Jesus picks his way down the Mount of Olives riding a young donkey.

The animal is not used to being ridden. It needs the presence of its mother alongside to reassure it in the sea of people. As if it were not hard enough, the crowd are throwing down their cloaks on the ground before them, making the descent treacherous.

When some object, concerned that the hopes of the crowd for freedom and self-determination might get out of hand, Jesus upholds their right to hope and dream, but simultaneously reframes their expectations, slowing things down, refusing to be the populist touchstone. Taking the path of humility, through groves of olive trees.

Note that the olive tree is a symbol of peace; that the oil they produce is an instrument of healing; and that whenever we come across trees in the Bible, they stand symbolically for people.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Those who share the DNA of their heavenly Father, the one who moves to establish reconciliation and the restoration of conditions necessary for all to flourish in harmony. Russian, Ukrainian. Israeli, Palestinian.

It seems unlikely. As foolish as a man picking his way down a hillside on a young donkey. Yet, this is how peace descends. This is the only way. Divine folly. Not for the faint hearted. You cannot strong-arm your way to peace.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Lord, have mercy.

 

handle with care

 

John12.1-8 and Philippians 3.4b-14.

Today marks the start of Passiontide, the final two weeks leading up to Easter. The word Passion derives from the Greek paschō, which means ‘to be done to’ (in contrast to poiō, ‘to do’). Throughout the Gospels to this point, Jesus has been at work (while, as John puts it, it is still day). He is the active agent in the story, calling men and women to apprentice to him, healing the sick, driving out demons, raising the dead, asking probing questions, teaching, telling stories. But there comes a point in the Gospels (it is towards the end of the story they tell, but they give as much attention to these several days as they have given to the previous several years) where Jesus shifts from being the one who does to the one who is done to by others. Hence, the Passion of Christ, or Passiontide.

At this point, Jesus is handed over to or given into the hands of others. Some will bind him and beat him, flog him and nail him to an execution scaffold. Mary of Bethany will take his feet in her hands, pour perfume over them, and wipe his feet with her hair. There is no escaping the intimacy of this tender act.

Today, I will both take Jesus in my hands and hand Jesus over to others, into their hands.

And the question that hangs over us is, what will you do with this Jesus? How will you handle him?

The first century church planter Paul wrote to the apprentices of Jesus in Philippi saying that he considered every privilege he had in life, every opening and introduction, every opportunity and power at his disposal, to be something not to be held onto at all costs but rather something to be let go of, to consider loss (he uses the word for the waste product of our food that passes through our body and into the toilet system) when compared to the surpassing value of knowing Jesus.

This morning, I will take Jesus in my hands.

To be honest, I would get more from going for a run with my friends this morning than I will from going to church. But prioritising being with other Christians—people with whom I frankly have very little in common except for Jesus—and being where I can in a tangible sense in the world receive Jesus into my hands (as opposed to having a diffuse spiritual experience, which I could have pretty much anywhere) is not about what I get from it. It is about self-denial, about letting go of what benefits me, so as to be empty-handed as therefore able to receive the one thing that surpasses all others.

 

guard

 

The biographer John recounts that, days before Jesus is executed, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Martha and Lazarus, anointed his feet with perfume (John 12.1-8).

The biographer Luke recounts a similar event, involving an unnamed woman, in the home of Simon the Leper, at an earlier point in his account (Luke 7.36-50). It is worth noting that the writers of the Gospels were not primarily concerned with strict chronological order but shaped their narratives to distinct purposes.

Following on immediately from this account, Luke records a number of women who travelled with Jesus, among them Mary Magdalene (Luke 8.1-3).

Church history has often conflated these three women: Mary of Bethany, the unnamed woman, and Mary Magdalene.

Pope Gregory I also claimed that this Mary was a repentant prostitute, though without any such claim in any of the Gospels. Luke tells us that the unnamed woman was seen as a sinner, and that Jesus had driven off seven demons that had afflicted Mary Magdalene. Pope Gregory seems to have decided that the only reason why a demonised woman would be considered a sinner and possess an expensive jar of perfume (or the kind of ointment with which you would prepare a body for burial) would be that she was a prostitute. That seems to be a stretch at best; and more consequentially a way to tarnish women.

But perhaps the association of Mary Magdalene and Mary of Bethany is not an erroneous conflation. If Magdala is understood to be a place (and there are possible candidates, but none with a clear association with the Apostle to the apostles) then this is a problem. But Magdalene might be a nickname (such as Simon the Leper). Magdalene may mean watch tower.

Some have postulated that Mary of Bethany was known as Mary Magdalene, or Mary the Tower, because she was unusually tall for a woman. But there is another, to my mind more interesting, possibility.

Almost every mention of Mary Magdalene is found in the accounts of the crucifixion and resurrection (Luke 8 is the exception, and as already noted, may be a referring back into the narrative; that is, this was Mary Magdalene, but she was not necessarily known by that name at that time). In other words, after Mary had anointed Jesus ahead of his death.

When Judas criticises her actions, Jesus says that she has the role of watching over, or guarding, what remained of the perfume for the day of his burial (John 12.7).

And this, she does. She stands and watches at the crucifixion, alongside Mary the mother of Jesus, when the men had deserted him. She is there to note what is happening when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus hurriedly prepare his body for burial and secure him in a cave tomb. And she is there as one of the myrrh bearers who return, once the Sabbath is over, to do the job properly, with the remaining perfume that she has guarded for this purpose.

These are the actions of one who guards. Of a watch tower.

 

seeing God

 

Lectionary readings set for Holy Communion today: Exodus 32.7-14 and John 5.31-47.

How do we know what God is like?

From where I stand within the Christian traditions, my answer is that we know what God is like when we look at Jesus.

This matters when it comes to how we understand God when we read about God in the library of stories we call the Bible.

One time, when Jesus was debating with a group of people over, essentially, the question of what God is like, he said to them, ‘You have never heard God’s voice or seen God’s form.’ He also said, ‘You read your Bible, because you think that the answers are there, but you miss the point entirely.’

They didn’t see what God is like in the Bible. And they had never heard God’s voice or seen God’s form. Which is interesting, because human beings are created in the image of God. Everything that exists, human beings in a particular way, is the word of God, incarnate, because everything is spoken into being by God. Moreover, in his Gospel John claims that the one who was standing before them was the Word of God, incarnate in a unique non-derivative way, not the derivative sense that is true of you and me.

They did not hear or see God in their fellow human beings, not even in the one who is, fully, the human god.

Perhaps we don’t, either.

There was a time, long before the time of Jesus, just after God had brought the descendants of Israel up out of captivity in Egypt, and had called Moses up onto the mountain to meet with him face to face, when God told Moses to depart from his presence, for his people had corrupted themselves; Moses should get out of the way, that God’s wrath might burn against the people and consume them; and then begin again starting with Moses.

But Moses refuses to go away from the God who had called him up the mountain. Instead, he points out that this should not be God's reputation in the world, a reputation of perpetrating violence.

What is going on here? How do we understand the nature of God, what God is like?

Is God violent, poised at any moment to break out against us if we depart from the right path? Does God need to be taught mercy and compassion from humans? Is God a wild animal needing to be tamed?

Or is God the god of mercy and compassion, who calls his people to do likewise? Is this a test? Not in the way we apply tests today, to determine whether Moses is acceptable to God (pass) or not (fail), but in the way we used to apply tests: to determine how much Moses has understood, so far?

Moses passes the test. Not the test of acceptability, but the indicator of the extent to which he has understood what God is like, and therefore how the people of God should be in the world.

This is what we see in Jesus. Jesus is not the child who takes on the burden of responsibility for regulating the violent outbursts of his parent. Jesus reveals to the world what God is like: full of compassion and mercy; who tests his people so that they can see the extent to which they have understood this way of being in the world, and where they still have learning to do.

When we look at society, whether the one most immediately around us or in other parts of the global village, do we lament the fact that God is taking so long to get round to smiting those idiots...or do we cry out, Lord, have mercy?

Our honest response reveals what we truly believe about what God is like.

Moses passes the test, but then he goes down the mountain and acts out a violent rage against the very people he has understood to be under God’s mercy. It is possible to know something and to fail to live up to what we know. That in itself should cause us to fall back on the mercy and compassion of God. Otherwise, we will destroy one another.

That is why we must keep coming back to Jesus, in whom all are being saved from the violence that mars the likeness of God we are created to bear in the world.

 

vocation

 

The siblings Martha, Mary, and Lazarus might be my favourite family in the Bible. Part of their story comes up in the Gospel passage set for this coming Sunday. It is, among many other things, an account of vocation.

Martha’s vocation is to minister to others (to be a deacon) through acts of service and hospitality, that bring people together in an alchemy that transforms strangers into friends. She has been living out this vocation by hosting the community of apprentices to Jesus in her town for some time.

Mary’s vocation is to spread the aroma of Jesus, the one who would share in our death and come back for us, to lead us on the path of Life. And to bear witness to this. To watch over Jesus (and the myrrh that speaks of his dying) until that day (and beyond). She has been living out this vocation by travelling from place to place seeking out people of peace.

Lazarus, who may well have been disabled in various ways, and whose life at the very least invites us to re-evaluate how we view those who live with disability, has the vocation of being close to Jesus, of participating in his suffering and dying, and rising again to the seat of honour.

When Mary pours out myrrh to anoint Jesus’ feet, she is criticised by Judas. Jesus rebukes Judas, telling him to leave her alone. The word Jesus chose might mean to give a slave their freedom or to write a certificate of divorce. The point is that Mary does not owe Judas anything. And this is not the first time that Jesus has made this point. On an earlier occasion, when Martha had asked Jesus to find Mary out in the surrounding villages and tell her to return home to serve alongside her sister, Jesus effectively tells Martha to leave Mary alone, to let her go to live out her own vocation.

Judas also has a vocation, entrusted as he is with the common purse, to distribute resources as they are needed. Yet unlike Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, who live out their vocations, wrestling with questions and frustrations and challenges of many kinds, Judas chooses to exploit the life he has been given for personal gain, in power and wealth. It is a choice we have too.

Every person has a vocation, a particular call or indeed callings spoken over their life by God, an invitation to be in the world in a particular way, to experience life from a particular perspective, to shape the world as only we can, in interdependent cooperation with others. Some of those callings are life-long, some for a season of life. All are intended to be life-giving and life-affirming, to us and to those around us.

What is your vocation, or vocations?

What are you wrestling with as you seek to live that vocation out in the world?

What holds you back?

John 12.1-8

‘Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

 

hopeful

 

This Lent, I have been hosting a series of conversations around the theme of hope.

Today, I began by telling part of the story of Jacob, as a way into a wide-ranging conversation which I shall try to summarise below.

This is a story of sibling rivalry as old as the hills. Jacob and his twin brother Esau are not the kind of twins who are inseparable. Esau is their father’s favourite son; Jacob is their mother’s favourite. Esau is a “man’s man”; Jacob keeps his cards close to his chest and seeks to manipulate circumstances to his advantage. As their father approaches death – an old man with cataracts, a vulnerable adult in the language of our day, victim of financial abuse by his own wife and son – and seeks to put his affairs in order, Jacob presents himself before him with goat skin tied to his forearms, to pass as his hairy, earthy smelling brother. Isaac is confused but is persuaded to give his blessing: to confer on ‘Esau’ the bounty of the earth, the gift of bread and wine, and lordship over his brothers.

In this world – the world of the text, a very different world from our worldview, but perhaps it is the text that sees true and we who see false – blessings have an impact on reality, shape the world we live in and our experience of it. Blessings both release us into a potential future and tie us to the same.

Esau comes home and uncovers his brother’s deceit, and he is angry enough to kill. Jacob runs for his life. He keeps running – for Esau is an expert hunter, and if anyone can track and kill a man, it is him – until the sun has set, and then, exhausted physically and mentally, he takes a stone for a pillow and lies down to sleep.

God comes to him in a dream. In his subconscious – the God-given means by which, our over-stimulated conscious mind stilled, we make sense of what we have experienced.

In his dream, Jacob stands in front of a ziggurat that reaches into the sky, with messengers from God ascending and descending its steps. And God is standing next to Jacob, visible out of the corner of his eye. The very edge of the subconscious.

God does not rebuke him for his deceit (what? where is the justice in that, God!?) but takes Isaac’s blessing as the reality with which they must all work now. And God promises that no matter where Jacob goes, God will go with him, eventually bringing him back; and that through him and his descendants many others will be blessed.

In other words, God does not annul the blessing Isaac conferred but holds Jacob accountable to fulfil it: ‘you may have thought you were getting all the blessings flowing to you, but in fact blessing will flow through you to many others.’ With privilege comes responsibility (ah, so this is what justice looks like, in this instance, and assuming that God will hold us to account).

Here is the thing. We are not given this story because Jacob is a person of especial interest. We are given this story because it speaks to what it is to be human, and to what it is to be God. Of what we, and God, are like.

If we are entirely honest with ourselves (as our conscious mind sometimes refuses to be) we are all frightened of something, are all running from something. And God is the god who stands next to us – as Emily Dickinson put it – to Tell All The Truth, But Tell It Slant. Saying, ‘I know of what you are afraid, from what you are running; and though I cannot stop you from running, know that I will run alongside you, and, when you are ready, will bring you back to where you need to be. Moreover, I will bless you. Know that I am not an old man with cataracts in the sky, from whom you can trick – manipulate – a blessing. I bless you because I love all my children, and give to each what it is they need, including agency and dignity. I will bless you, and others will be blessed through you. I will do this at times despite and at times even through your bad choices.’

And that, I think, is grounds for hope.

God stands beside us. But will we notice? We are so distracted that we do not give ourselves the space we need, to let our subconscious unfurl. We can be switching between three screens at once, each a portal into a virtual world, each a barrier to the unseen world that is more solid than the one our conscious mind can see. We are assaulted: worry over this! be outraged by that! And yet. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. God stands beside us, truth-telling, slant.

Slow down. No, slower than that.

 

passion

 

John 12.1-8

‘Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?’ (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

This coming Sunday marks the start of Passiontide, the final two weeks leading up to Easter. The word Passion derives from the Greek paschō, which means ‘to be done to’ (in contrast to poiō, ‘to do’). Throughout the Gospels to this point, Jesus has been at work (while, as John puts it, it is still day). He is the active agent in the story, calling men and women to apprentice to him, healing the sick, driving out demons, raising the dead, asking probing questions, teaching, telling stories. But there comes a point in the Gospels (it is towards the end of the story they tell, but they give as much attention to these several days as they have given to the previous several years) where Jesus shifts from being the one who does to the one who is done to by others. Hence, the Passion of Christ, or Passiontide.

Over these days, he will be handed over to his enemies, falsely accused, mocked, shamed, tortured, executed. All these are examples of treating another person badly. But before all this, John (at least) gives us an instance of his being done to, or treated, well. At a dinner held in his honour, where he will be served by others, Mary takes his feet into her hands and anoints them with perfume.

Jesus is staying in Bethany, with his dear friends, the siblings Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. This is his base when he visits nearby Jerusalem.

They are an unusual family unit in their culture. It is Martha, rather than Lazarus, who is the head of the family, and neither sister is married. This, taken with the observation that, unlike Martha and Mary, who are both highly articulate, Lazarus is silent in the Gospels, has led some scholars to believe that Lazarus may have had some form of learning disability that prevented him from living independently, and, after the death of their parents, left his sisters to care for him. This dependent, moreover in a culture that saw disability as evidence of sin, left the sisters an unattractive prospect to any potential husband. Indeed, they are sinful women by association.

But these sisters are, in any case, feisty women. We meet them at a point in Jesus’ ministry where he has sent out seventy(-two) apprentices to go ahead of him into every town he was travelling through. When he arrives at the place where Martha is the host of the community of apprentices (she is a deacon, which, in my own cultural context, is a clergy role) she is overwhelmed by the task, and asks him if he does not care that her sister, Mary, has left her behind to be one of those apprentices (those who sat at Jesus’ feet) who had gone out travelling the countryside? When he comes across her on his travels, could Jesus tell her to go home and help her sister with the ministry there? Jesus responds that Mary has followed her own vocation (evangelist) and that he would not ask her to take up Martha’s vocation (deacon) in its place.

More recently, Lazarus had fallen ill and died. Jesus had not responded immediately to the sisters’ request that he comes and heal their brother. Instead, he arrived when Lazarus had been dead for some days, and, having spoken with both sisters one-to-one, and wept with compassion for his friend, raised him to life again. This, and the resulting reputational impact, sealed Jesus’ own fate. Within short order, he, too, would be dead.

But not yet. And first there is time for his friends to hold a dinner in his honour. And as he reclines at the table, Mary takes pure nard and anoints his feet with it. This, Jesus interprets as preparing his body for burial. It is the act of a friend who knows that time is running out to do anything for the person she loves. When the time comes, and Jesus’ corpse is removed from the execution scaffold, two men will hastily prepare his body for burial (one of them, Nicodemus, is probably autistic – an expert in his field; struggles with non-literal language; prefers low-stimulus environments; misunderstands social cues – and will bring ridiculously too much embalming oils and spices) and when the women turn up after the Sabbath is over to do the job properly, they will discover the body has gone.

Mary takes pure nard (perhaps this was her inheritance; perhaps she had already used some of it when they prepared Lazarus for burial) and anoints Jesus’ feet and wipes them with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

She, who has walked behind a Jesus and apprenticed to him and so also walked ahead of him now approaches closer than before and fulfils her apprenticeship. In this act she is indistinguishable from Jesus, who at another meal in the coming days will wash his apprentices’ feet. The apprentice has become like the Master, has become a master, ready to call apprentices of her own, who will learn to live the life God desires for us, in the Way of Jesus.

This is an act of consolation, that draws Mary closer to Jesus. And this same act is for Judas a desolation, pushing him further away.

It is also the act of an evangelist, spreading the beautiful aroma of Jesus for all, however they choose to respond.

To apprentice to Jesus is often to be misunderstood. Even, at times, by fellow apprentices. But it is to choose to pour out our lives in love for him, in ways that others benefit from too. It is a craft, an extravagance, for love’s own sake.

And whatever else it may involve it is not possible without meal tables.

 

The Cross

 

The Cross:

a place to explore second chances, finding peace, what we do with our worries, leaving behind any we choose to bring to God …

and to learn about the crucifixion – and why the story does not end there.

 

Luke 23.32-43

Two others also, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him. When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, ‘He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!’ The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, ‘If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!’ There was also an inscription over him, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, ‘Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’ But the other rebuked him, saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

 

Have you ever had an answer to prayer?

Have you fulfilled your potential?

Where do you go to find peace?

 

Questions taken from https://table-talk.org/friends/

 

Is there something heavy you have been carrying (for example, anxiety about a situation in your life) that you would like to leave with God?

Take a nail from one of the bowls. Hold it in your hand. Think about the thing that you want to leave behind with God, and ask for the grace (that is, a gift from God) to do so.

Then hammer the nail into the cross, and when you are ready, walk away.

 

The Big Chair

 

The Big Chair:

a space to explore big issues such as who has power to change the world; to think about what we would ask God or what we would do if we were God for one day …

and to learn about Jesus on trial before Pilate and Herod.

 

Luke 23.1-12

Then the assembly rose as a body and brought Jesus before Pilate. They began to accuse him, saying, ‘We found this man perverting our nation, forbidding us to pay taxes to the emperor, and saying that he himself is the Messiah, a king.’ Then Pilate asked him, ‘Are you the king of the Jews?’ He answered, ‘You say so.’ Then Pilate said to the chief priests and the crowds, ‘I find no basis for an accusation against this man.’ But they were insistent and said, ‘He stirs up the people by teaching throughout all Judea, from Galilee where he began even to this place.’

When Pilate heard this, he asked whether the man was a Galilean. And when he learned that he was under Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate. That same day Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.

 

What questions would you ask God if you had the chance?

Why do you think today’s world is in such a mess?

Does it really matter who is in power?

What is the most significant world issue?

 

Questions taken from https://table-talk.org/friends/

 

This is a space to pray for the world.

You might want to pray about a Big Issue, such as war or climate change, or something closer to home, such as praying for your school or for a friend or family member.

Take a glass bead in your hand and use it to represent your prayer. Place it on the steps, to symbolise presenting your request before God. If you pray for a global situation, you might want to place your glass bead on the map instead.