Maundy Thursday

 

In the Church calendar, we are in the days leading up to Easter. These are among the holiest—that is, set apart for a special purpose—days of the year (this is where we get our word ‘holiday,’ days set apart as special, different from everyday days). On Thursday evening, I will be speaking about Jesus with his apprentices on the night of his betrayal and arrest. You can read the text, from John’s biography of Jesus, below. My attention is caught by these words: ‘One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean.’

I don’t know how often you have a bath, and for what purpose. I have a bath about twice a year, not to wash my body—I do that in the shower, and also have a basin in my bedroom—but as an act of self care, running the bath as deep and as hot as possible, and soaking in it.

In the Instructions of Moses, we find that there are certain states of being that cause a person to be ritually impure, and that their restoration to the wider community requires a ritual bath.

Being ritually impure has nothing to do with moral wrongdoing. It is, rather, a codified way of engaging with the reality of death. Certain states of being are, psychologically, rehearsals for death, including ejaculation and menstruation—not because these things are ‘dirty,’ or even shameful, but because in both instances, the person loses mastery of their bodily life-fluids. Contact with a corpse, and being a corpse, also result in ritual impurity. Ritual washing marks the restoration of purity, symbolising the limit to which death cuts us off from life.

Dying made a person ritually impure; but the community handled the corpse in such ways as to make the person ritually pure again, ready to meet their Maker. In Jewish tradition to this day, this begins with gently washing the body, removing anything that is not a natural part, such as jewellery or nail varnish, while saying certain prayers and psalms and other passages of Scripture (holy writing). Then the body is fully washed, either by submerging it in a mikvah (ritual bath) or by pouring a large amount of water (the equivalent of 48 pints) over the corpse. Finally, the body is dressed in linen, ready to return to the earth from which it came.

We should not assume that contemporary Jewish tradition is the same as first-century Common Era Judaism; but neither are they unrelated.

When Jesus says that Peter has had a bath—in fact, not washed himself but that he has been washed—he is referring to the washing of a body after death. Though this is not described, in relation to Jesus’ blood-streaked corpse, in the Gospels, it is implied. This practice is mentioned by the church historian Luke in his Acts of the Apostles, where he notes that the deceased Dorcas is washed by the women of her community, and also that Paul and Silas have their bloodied backs washed by the jailer in Philippi immediately before he himself is baptised.

Jesus is saying that his apprentices have been joined with him in his death. They have been washed, made ritually pure again, in preparation to stand before God—symbolising the real but temporary separation from God that death demands. Having been full-body washed, all that remains needful is to have their feet washed. In Genesis, God visits Abraham in human form (that is, in a form Abraham can see, and relate to) and Abraham welcomes God by washing his feet. An act of welcome and hospitality. The tradition later arose that Abraham welcomes the dead into Paradise (and Jesus tells a parable, or micro story that gets under the skin, where Abraham does exactly this). So, Peter is already made ready to enter Paradise, and Jesus now takes the Abrahamic posture of welcoming him.

This is what we enact in baptism, the candidate dying with Christ (Jesus, the One sent by God to rescue his people), united with him in his death and in his mighty and glorious resurrection.

This, then, is the drama of both our baptism—a one-off, unrepeatable event—and the Thursday of Holy Week—to which we return annually—that we rehearse our physical death, that, when it comes, we might die in the confidence that this parting is temporary; that the community of faith, and the God whose faithfulness we look to, will take us in their hands and hold us with dignity and love. As we, in turn, are to do for our brother's and sisters.

By such love, confident in the face of death, we shall be known.

John 13.1-17, 31b-35

‘Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus answered, ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ Jesus said to him, ‘One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you.’ For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’

‘After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord-and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

‘When he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.” 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.’’

 

Holy Wednesday

 

Wednesday of Holy Week

Today, the Wednesday of Holy Week, is sometimes known as Spy Wednesday, recalling the contract between Jesus’ apprentice Judas and the chief priests, by which he becomes a double agent for them.

Money has been a recurring theme across the week—whether or not to pay the tax due to the emperor; whether to pour out fragrant ointment or sell it and give the money to the poor; and now thirty silver coins.

Thirty silver coins is the worth placed on a slave in the discussion of recompense in the Instructions of Moses:

‘If [an] ox gores a male or female slave, the owner shall pay to the slave-owner thirty shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned.’ Exodus 21.32

This transaction makes Jesus Judas’ slave, and the chief priests the owners of the ox that gored him to death—that is, responsible for the actions of the Roman auxiliaries who would torture and execute Jesus.

And Jesus is, indeed, Judas’ slave, for he comes not as master but as slave of all. Even of Judas, who will prove to be a wicked master, one who would trade his slave’s life for money. ‘Jesus, you are a worthless slave; worth more to me dead.’

And here, again, Judas is right; for Jesus is better to him dead than alive—having absorbed and neutralised he sting of death; having descended into hell, broken its doors from the inside, and returned victorious, never to die again. For Judas will deeply regret his betrayal, and take his own life; but Jesus will go looking for his lost sheep, even through the darkest valley, the shade-realm of the Dead, and—surely—bring his torn-limb-from-limb lamb back on his shoulders.

 

Matthew 26.14-16

‘Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, ‘What will you give me if I betray him to you?’ They paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him.’

 

Holy Tuesday

 

Tuesday of Holy Week

Holy Week continues, as we walk the way of the cross with Jesus. Yesterday, I reflected on Jesus’ handling of money, of the difference between the coins that bear the image of the emperor and the human beings who bear the image of God.

On this day, Jesus’ biographer Matthew tells us of a woman anointing Jesus’ head with a very costly ointment. From his perspective, she was preparing his body for burial. From her perspective, it is perhaps more likely that she was acting as a prophet, symbolically anointing a king. Both are true: he is the king who comes to lay down his life.

But the disciples—Jesus’ apprentices—were angry at the waste of money, which they would have given to the poor. Elsewhere we read that Judas was the keeper of the purse, and helped himself from it; but Matthew does not mention this, and, rather, records that all the disciples were angry at the woman. In effect, they were saying, how we would choose to act is more important than how the woman has acted. In effect, they are saying, we are of more value than she is.

What monetary value do we place on a human life? Certainly, the world works not on the basis of everyone having what they need, to life a good life, but on the idea that I am worth more than some and less than others. Wealth breeds wealth, and with it, worldly value.

The woman does not play the game. She relinquishes her stake in it. In this, she does not only prepare Jesus for his burial, but united herself to him, to his death, and to whatever may come after.

Matthew 26.6-13

‘Now while Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very costly ointment, and she poured it on his head as he sat at the table. But when the disciples saw it, they were angry and said, ‘Why this waste? For this ointment could have been sold for a large sum, and the money given to the poor.’ But Jesus, aware of this, said to them, ‘Why do you trouble the woman? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.’’

 

Holy Monday

 

On what we call the Monday of Holy Week, the biographer Matthew tells us that Jesus spent the day in the temple in Jerusalem, teaching, and being confronted by different factions from among the religious leaders of the people.

One such encounter focused on taxation. Noone liked the Romans, but some wanted to see them driven out, while others owed their position of power and authority to Roman patronage. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as the saying goes. So however Jesus answered the question, he was likely to spring the trap and alienate people.

I have in my hand a coin bearing the image of a woman. She is dead now, but for most of my life, she was Queen. Over the course of her reign, five images were made to represent her on coins, from youth to old age: this coin happens to bear the fourth of the five, the coin being made the year before the final image.

I cannot tell how many hands this coin has passed through, from person to person, some of whom might have known each other, others who will never have met before or since. But this coin can be exchanged for something else, anywhere in the United Kingdom—even now, after the woman is dead. It has no currency in the USA, or France, or other places: there, we must enter into a negotiation, establish an exchange rate, what it is worth.

Most people pay little interest in the coins in their pocket; they are more interest in the things the coin can be exchanged for. But for some, coins have a value in and of themselves, are collectable, have a story to tell.

Jesus replied, give to the emperor the things that belong to the emperor, and to God what belongs to God. The implication being that human beings bear God’s image. Not the image of one woman, at different stages of life, but countless faces, male and female, young and old. Not just within one realm, but all across the world. Not simply exchangeable for something more valuable, but of inherent value.

What might it mean to give such images (back) to God? It might look like prayer, bringing people before God, asking God to bless them. People we know well, people whose paths have crossed our path today, people we have never met and in all probability never will.

How might we hold other people in our hand, behold them? Whose image might we see reflected there—the devil? some sub-human creature? or, the God who longs to be One with us?

Matthew 22.15-22

‘Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, ‘Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?’ But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, ‘Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.’ And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, ‘Whose head is this, and whose title?’ They answered, ‘The emperor’s.’ Then he said to them, ‘Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.’

 

Palm Sunday

 

Today is Palm Sunday, the day we remember Jesus arriving at Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover, days before he will be put to death. He comes as one of a crowd of pilgrims. Passover, one of the three great festivals of the year, could be observed at home, in any place, but to do so in Jerusalem was special. Jesus comes with others from Galilee, in the north, and those who have joined them on their way. Many in the crowd have seen the things that Jesus has done—the way his interpretation of the Instructions given by Moses captured the attention; the way he healed the sick, brought deliverance to the demonised, restored the marginalised to full participation in the community—and wanted to see what he would do next.

With Jerusalem in sight, Jesus stops, and instructs his apprentices to bring him a donkey and her foal, a colt not yet used to carrying burden. He will ride the rest of the way, down the Mount of Olives. And the crowd interpret this as fulfilling Scripture, the words of the prophet Zechariah:

‘Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your king is coming to you,
humble, and mounted on a donkey,
and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’
(Zechariah 9.9)

The prophecy being referenced continues:

‘He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim
and the warhorse from Jerusalem;
and the battle-bow shall be cut off,
and he shall command peace to the nations;
his dominion shall be from sea to sea,
and from the River to the ends of the earth.’
(Zechariah 9.10)

Prophecy is not a foretelling of future events. Prophecy is a poetic form, that holds out a combination of what is and what could be, and invites us to step into the story. A prophetic word about an individual, for example, may combine what the seer sees in them, and how that might play out. To fulfil prophecy is to allow our character to be shaped by it, in some way or other. But to overly-interpret prophecy makes a fool of us. We see this over and again in the ancient Greek tragedies; and in modern stories such as Voldemort’s obsession with Harry Potter and, hence, failure to recognise the danger Neville Longbottom poses him. We see it in the folly of the current US administration seeing the Revelation—a work concerned with events at the end of the first century CE—as licence to wage war today.

The crowd sees Jesus as coming to liberate Jerusalem from the Roman Empire, from an external threat of warhorse and battle-bow. But there is a far older prophecy at play here.

Long ago, at the very end of Genesis—the first of the five books of Instruction of Moses—the patriarch Jacob spoke words over his twelve sons. Words that both gave description to the character, and the actions that flowed from that character, and also held out a future possibility, one that might shape their descendants.

Of Judah, Jacob says:

‘Judah, your brothers shall praise you;
your hand shall be on the neck of your
enemies;
your father’s sons shall bow down before you.
Judah is a lion’s whelp;
from the prey, my son, you have gone up.
He crouches down, he stretches out like a lion,
like a lioness—who dares rouse him up?
The sceptre shall not depart from Judah,
nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet,
until tribute comes to him;
and the obedience of the peoples is his.
Binding his foal to the vine
and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine,
he washes his garments in wine
and his robe in the blood of grapes;
his eyes are darker than wine,
and his teeth whiter than milk.’
(Genesis 49.8-12)

Binding his foal to the vine and his donkey’s colt to the choice vine, he washes his garments in wine and his robe in the blood of grapes.

On the night of his arrest and mockery of a trial before the Sanhedrin (the religious leaders of the people) Jesus will describe himself as the true vine, an image of the people of Israel. And here, picking his way down the hill on a colt accompanied by its mother, Jesus binds the foal to the choice vine, as he comes, knowing that his garments will be soaked in his own blood.

But immediately before speaking words over Judah, Jacob had spoken these words over his brothers Simeon and Levi:

‘Simeon and Levi are brothers;
weapons of violence are their swords.
May I never come into their council;
may I not be joined to their company—
for in their anger they killed men,
and at their whim they hamstrung oxen.
Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce,
and their wrath, for it is cruel!
I will divide them in Jacob,
and scatter them in Israel.’
(Genesis 49.5-7)

The priestly caste—those in whose presence Jesus will be tried, whose council will condemn him to death—saw themselves as the descendants of Levi. A tribe so violent against their own kin (when Moses was gone for over forty days and nights and the people made for themselves a golden calf as a sign of the presence of the gods among them, the Levites went through the camp putting thousands to the sword) that they were not allotted their own territory where they might live in concentration, but had to live scattered in small towns across the territories governed by the other tribes.

For good reason Jacob declared, ‘May I never come into their council; may I not be joined to their company—for in their anger they killed men.’

The warhorse and the battle-bow Jesus comes to remove is not the mighty of Rome but the violence at the heart of his own people. And he will do so, not by leading a violent uprising—for violence can never rid us of violence—but by absorbing the very worst that the violence can muster, and cursing it—utterly neutralising it—as he lives into the story in a particular way, holding together humility and authority, laying down his life and being raised up to a kingly rule that will never end.

This, too, is prophecy; is a story to be stepped into. A story that shapes those who respond, laying our tribute before him.

This is where we find ourselves again this Palm Sunday, caught up in the reconciliation of all that has been estranged, that is accomplished in and coming into being through Jesus.

May we, therefore, renounce all violence against our sisters and brothers, against those who live around about us, not least all violence done in the name of God, who stands opposed to any such claim.

Lord, have mercy.
Christ, have mercy.
Lord, have mercy.

what Lazarus does for Jesus

 

Today marks the start of Passiontide, the two-week run-in to Easter. In this context, passion refers to things that are done to us (Greek: paschō) as opposed to things we do by our own agency (Greek: poiō). Through much of the Gospels we see Jesus doing things—as he describes it, doing (only) what he sees the Father doing. But as we reach the climax of the story, as time slows down (with as much ink dedicated to days as has been dedicated to years of ministry) there is a shift from things Jesus does to things done to him by others. Some of these are loving things; some are hateful, or treacherous, or tragic; and some are deeply mystical.

The Gospel passage set for this Sunday is a long chunk (technical term) from John chapter 11. Here we encounter friends of Jesus, the siblings Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Luke also writes about the sisters in his Gospel (Luke chapter 10).

They are a fascinating family. They appear to live together, and Martha appears to run their home. Culturally, it would seem unusual that neither sister is married, and that Lazarus is not responsible for his unmarried sisters, in the absence of parents. Martha and Mary are both highly articulate, but Lazarus is silent whenever he is mentioned. (Some scholars believe that Lazarus is the ‘beloved disciple’ at the Last Supper—unnamed but traditionally identified as the disciple and later gospel-writer John—in which case he speaks three words, asking a simple question.) These observations lead some scholars to believe that Lazarus has some form of disability, and perhaps learning disability; that he may be unable to speak, or be situationally mute (that is, can speak, but doesn’t, whether by choice or defence mechanism).

Luke’s account of the sisters is almost universally misinterpreted. They appear in the context of Jesus sending out seventy plus disciples, or apprentices, ahead of him, to every village where he intended to go, sent to find persons of peace whose homes might become the hub of a community of disciples—what we would call a local church congregation. Martha is presented as a deacon, as the local minister to the proto-church in her village. Mary is presented as one who sat at Jesus’ feet, which is code for a disciple: which is to say, she is one of the seventy plus Jesus has sent out ahead of him. Martha tells Jesus that there is more work to be done ministering to her village than she can attend to alone, and asks Jesus to find Mary and send her back home to work alongside Martha. Jesus declines, affirming the different vocations—deacon, evangelist—of both sisters. This is a far cry from Martha being in the kitchen and complaining about Mary not helping prepare food.

In John’s Gospel, we meet the siblings again, this time including their brother Lazarus. Jesus has recently been in Jerusalem, but has withdrawn down into the rift valley that is the lowest point on the surface of the earth, crossing over the river Jordan, getting away from enemies who had attempted to stone him. Lazarus falls ill, and the sisters send word to Jesus, most likely through the network he had established across the countryside.

Jesus does not come to the sisters until after Lazarus has died. Their brother’s death turns the sisters’ lives on their heads. Martha, who had ministered in the context of her own home and village, now leaves her village behind to find Jesus on his way. Mary, who had been travelling ahead of Jesus to village after village, is unable to leave the family home. The vocation of each has flipped. Martha has become Mary, and Mary has become Martha. Such is often the way in the wake of death.

Both sisters know that Jesus could have healed Lazarus (could have acted to do so: poiō) but they still trust him. They present to him their faith and hope and need of consolation, a mess of co-existing emotions, feelings and thoughts. Jesus does not respond by doing, but by being moved with compassion, a visceral experience, something, in a sense, done to us (paschō). Jesus is not in mastery of this response, which wracks him like a wild animal. And that raw compassion enables Martha to return home, empowers Mary to leave home, and brings Lazarus back from the dead.

But there is another gem in this passage. Jesus asks the community that has come from Jerusalem to be with—to surround, with love—Martha and Mary in their grief, where Lazarus had been laid, and they take him to the tomb. This echoes what John records in chapter 1 of his Gospel, two disciples of John the Baptiser who were following Jesus: he turns and asks them ‘What are you looking for?’ and when they ask, ‘Where are you staying?’ responds, ‘Come and see.’ (Interestingly, this takes place at the same place where Jesus will first hear news that his friend Lazarus is sick.) Now Jesus asks to see where Lazarus is staying, and invited to come and see. And so the disabled man—the dead man—Lazarus becomes the one who shows Jesus what it is to dwell in a tomb—and to rise from the dead.

Lazarus does for Jesus what Jesus cannot do for himself, but needs to know. Paschō.

We are created to be inter-dependent. And agency matters, what we choose to do with our lives, with our bodies, matters. But we do not have unlimited freedom. Our actions are constrained by the existence of others—not only by what they do, their actions, but by the place they occupy in the world, in the grace of God. The good news is that poiō is only half the story: the other side is paschō. In entrusting ourselves to others, to how they might respond to us—for good or ill—and trusting God to work through all of this, the kingdom of heaven can break into this world through us.

 

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.

 

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.