immigrants

 

Abraham was seventy-five when he set out on a great adventure with God. He had already seen seventy-five winters. (So have I; but then, we squeeze more than one winter into each year around here.)

God invites Abram to get away — to distance himself — from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house, exchanging these securities — the soil and the people who have formed him — for uncertainty, and for his descendants to become a foreign (goy, or gentile) people wherever they reside.

Like Jews and Muslims, Christians trace their faith heritage back to Abraham. And while there are voices today claiming that Britain must reclaim its Christian heritage, there is no such thing as a Christian geo-political nation, or national people group. Land and neighbour and family matter to Christians, but don’t define us. We are foreigners in the midst of whatever nation we live in; foreigners positioned there to bless this ‘other’ soil and people we live among.

The word used to describe Abram’s father’s house can also be translated ‘palace’ or ‘dungeon,’ and when we seek to elevate the historic palace of Christianity in this nation — its beautiful buildings and music; its position of privilege in the corridors of power — it becomes, for us, a dungeon.

God speaks to Abram about both blessings and curses. Blessings are expansive, words — and actions — of life-giving affirmation. Curses are temporary constraints applied to those whose actions towards others steal life, make their world smaller. Being under a curse — for example, spending time in prison — is intended, in part, to create space to change minds and amend ways, ultimately opening the door to blessing that outstrips the curse.

If anyone is truly concerned that we, as a national society, have lost our sense of identity, confidence, and direction on account of forsaking the Church, the best advice I can offer is that you commit yourself to being found among the local church community that gathers week by week in your neighbourhood; that you submit yourself to learning, alongside neighbours of various origins, the Way of Jesus. That you might move from being under a curse to being blessed, and a means by which others are blessed too. You are not yet too old.

But if you are simply looking to co-opt Christianity as a weapon against other faiths, you won’t find support here.

Genesis 12.1-4

‘Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.’

 

hungry

 

I wonder what you are hungry for?

God made us with bodies, and with appetites. Those bodies, and appetites, are good. Our appetites are designed to keep us close to God, as the one in whom all our hunger is met. But we can also seek to fulfil our hungers elsewhere, in false consolation. The invitation of Lent is an invitation to sit with our hunger long enough to name it, and to allow it to draw us back to God.

While we all experience all kinds of appetite, we each have a core, habitual hunger. It might be a hunger for justice, that, whenever you see injustice in the world, leaves you with a physical ache, or longing, for justice. It might be a hunger for order, or originality; for success, or knowledge; for security, or peace; a hunger to be helpful, or comforted.

Each of these can draw us back to God, the source of justice, harmony, diversity, creativity, wisdom, fidelity, contentment, support, joy.

But we must wrestle with the temptation to settle for false consolation. To be drawn away from God into vengeance, control, supremacy, drivenness, despair, legalism, misery, resentment, cynicism. These things can all feel good in the moment — self-indulgent — but they leave a bitter aftertaste.

We are so schooled to be ashamed of our hunger, as if it revealed some failure, that we hide our hungers even from ourselves. When emotions threaten us, we displace the feeling (we feel sad, find that uncomfortable, and reach for a doughnut). The reality is, we might hide so well that we can’t even identify our own deepest, core hunger — a hunger that most probably is shaped by childhood experiences (such as needing to compete for parental love) but which also reveals something profound about who God made us to be, the way in which, our hunger being met in God, we might contribute to the healing of the world (for example, extending justice, rather than perpetuating injustice).

The invitation of Lent is an invitation to sit with our hunger long enough to name it, and to allow it to draw us back to God.

I wonder what you are hungry for?

Matthew 4.1-11

‘Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’ But he answered, ‘It is written, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”’

‘Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, “He will command his angels concerning you”, and “On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”’ Jesus said to him, ‘Again it is written, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”’

‘Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.”’

‘Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him.’

 

Ash Wednesday 2026

 

‘So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’

2 Corinthians 5.20-21

 

God is Light and Life and Love. Sin is darkness and death and fear. In the person of Jesus, God took the sin of the world into God’s very being, where it was captured and utterly dissolved, rendering it powerless.

At our Ash Wednesday service, I spoke on John 8.1-11. Here we see a group of men who are so committed to discrediting Jesus that they misuse the Law cynically and partially, while ignoring the processes it sets out to protect people, not caring whose lives are destroyed as collateral damage.

They invite Jesus into an argument — that will never change anyone’s mind — and, choosing to hold silence instead, Jesus declines to attend. This is real wisdom for us in our digital age where we are bombarded with invitations to outrage. But there is more than that going on here.

Twice in this account, John tells us that Jesus bent down and straightened up. And this is what he did, physically. But everything John writes in his Gospel — his account of the life of Jesus, and why it is good news — is a sign. And the words he uses for ‘bent down’ and ‘straightened up’ can also be translated ‘bowed down’ and ‘lifted himself up.’ Twice, Jesus bows down; and twice, he lifts himself up.

What is going on here? This is Jesus, taking on sin — bowed down under its weight — and, that sin dissolved, lifting himself up again, triumphant.

The first time, he is taking upon himself, into his very being, the sin of the men who are standing around him. Their envy, their fear, their hatred, their hypocrisy, their bearing false witness against the woman and against Jesus and against Moses, their hard-heartedness. Taking all this into himself that it might be dissolved. That they might be freed to walk away from it all, to live a life reconciled to God and neighbour, characterised by love. This, Jesus does for them. It is in no way dependent on what they choose to do next.

The second time he bows down and rises up again is to take on, and dissolve, the sin of the woman. A life caught up in wrongs committed against her, and wrongs committed by her; a life story we might only speculate over, though speculation is of no help to us: better that we simply recognise our common humanity reflected back in her eyes. Once more, Jesus bows down under the weight of what sin has wrought in the world; and, once more, rises up triumphant over it, freeing the woman before him to walk into a life reconciled with God and neighbour. When he tells her to go, and son no more, he is not setting her up for future failure, but indicating that such a life is possible, such is the work he has done on our behalf.

This is not to say that sin has no consequences, which we must live with. What we see here in John 8 points us to the cross, where the sin of the world coagulates and is dissolved en masse, though Jesus’ body still bears the scars. Our bodies, too, bear the scars, keep the score; but can, nonetheless, know freedom.

Jesus says, let whoever is without sin be the first to throw a stone — and does not throw a stone, himself. He cannot, for he is not without sin. Jesus reveals to us the God who takes upon himself, takes into himself, sin — this making himself ineligible to cast stones — that we might experience restoration. This is the length God goes to heal every soul. Every soul.

At the end of the day, all our lives turn to ash — sometimes, very publicly. And yet, that is not the end of the story. We came from ash to begin with, and, just as God gave life to us, so God restores life to us.

This Lent, may you know that freedom.

 

John 8.1-11

‘Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him and he sat down and began to teach them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery; and making her stand before all of them, they said to him, ‘Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?’ They said this to test him, so that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, ‘Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.’ And once again he bent down and wrote on the ground. When they heard it, they went away, one by one, beginning with the elders; and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus straightened up and said to her, ‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’ She said, ‘No one, sir.’ And Jesus said, ‘Neither do I condemn you. Go your way, and from now on do not sin again.’’