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Easter Message

4/19/2022

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  Today the whole Church proclaims: “Christ is Risen!”  The traditional reply to this is: “He is Risen indeed, Alleluia!”
   But let’s go back a moment to the gospel reading from John.  At the centre of this story is a Jesus-shaped hole.  All that the disciples first knew is that he was not there: there was no sign of his body and the stone had been rolled away from the tomb.  There was an empty space except for the linen cloths which lay on the ground.
   Despite all this emptiness and absence, we are told that the disciple who first went into the tomb “saw and he believed.”  Something about that scene must have triggered his memory, otherwise all he would have seen would have been that empty space. 
   How we see things often depends on our state of mind.  In the darkness and emptiness of a tomb, the disciple saw the beginning of a story of faith brought to its fulfilment.  It might seem to us a strange way to announce that Jesus was alive.  Perhaps we might think that if we had been Jesus, one of our first actions might have been to creep up on the chief priest and frighten him out of his wits.  Or maybe we might go up to the disciples who deserted him and say: “I told you so!”
   This is not the way Jesus chose.  His disciples begin to see him once again, but in the least expected ways.  “Seeing” is a word that rings through all the resurrection stories.  But ever since then we have been asked to believe without the evidence of our own eyes.  Believing in these distant events can be difficult.  Believing in the difference it has made can be hard too, whether we look at the world, or the church, or at our own lives.
   Where there should be faith, there can sometimes be an empty space, rather like the scene that confronted those first disciples.  On Good Friday, I was listening to a meditation on the radio, where a priest was describing the experience of her son taking his own life.  She spoke of the emptiness, the “gone-ness” that she felt when she saw his familiar possessions in the house.  He was not there and there would always be a space.  But she also spoke about how she had been able to connect with some of his friends and to offer them something of the care and support that she could no longer give to her son.  Nothing could replace him and the scars would remain, but there was life once again.
   In every word of forgiveness, in every good action that is done in someone’s memory, we see a sign that points us towards the resurrection.  Good Friday is still a reality, but Easter did not happen despite Good Friday – it happens because of it.  Through the Cross comes life.  As Christians, our faith calls us to do what St Paul encourages us to do in the letter to the Colossians: to seek the things that are above, even as we live our lives in this world.
   As we look at our world we can see plenty of empty spaces and absences.  We see the terrible losses people are still suffering in Ukraine.  Perhaps we are reminded of our own losses too.  There is no easy way to explain these things away.  But in the darkness and emptiness, people of faith and of goodwill are reminding us that Christ is risen.  They do this not by just saying the words, but by living lives of forgiveness, of compassion and of hope.
   As we look at the empty spaces in our own lives, we have a choice.  We either focus on the loss and on the ending, or we see the signs of a new beginning.  Sadness and loss will always be a part of human life, but what we see makes all the difference.  The hope that arises in our hearts is the fruit of the Resurrection of Our Lord.  Jesus is inviting us to choose life.  When that light of Christ enters our lives then the world looks different and we ourselves are changed.
   Christ is risen because love is stronger than death.  The powers of darkness have done their worst, but the love of God has overcome them all.  In the risen life of Jesus, we too are raised to life.  We can look to the time when all tears shall be wiped away and when everything that is good and beautiful in the lives we live shall be brought to perfection.  Jesus lives, and we live in him, now and for ever.

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Holy Week

4/13/2022

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We begin Holy Week on a note of celebration with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem.  Despite being acclaimed as a king, Jesus makes sure that he doesn’t play up to the people’s expectations of power.  He enters the city on a donkey to fulfil the words of the prophets, but also to make a mockery of earthly power.
   We see how the celebrations begin to turn darker as we hear the words of the Passion according to St Luke.  The crowds become fickle and the cheers turn to jeers.  The religious authorities become determined to do away with him because he is prepared to speak truth to power.  In the end the Roman authorities, fearing a rebellion, send him to be crucified.
   Throughout this week we witness how the one who is Lord and God is subjected to the worst that the world can throw at him.  Yet, in the words of the prophet Isaiah, we also see how he met that rejection and abuse with gentleness and refused to play the same game.  He trusted only in God.
   On Maundy Thursday we come to see how Jesus gave the example of sacrificial love and of servanthood.  We also see how he came to be denied and rejected by those who were closest to him.  Then on Good Friday we journey with him to the Cross and to his words of mercy: “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
   There is a time of waiting and of preparation, before we commemorate that first Easter, when the disciples first became aware that the life that seemed to have been destroyed was still with them.  Hope would rise again and love would triumph.
   We live in a world where there is much violence and where the voices of good people often seem to be drowned out by hatred.  We live in a fickle world, where commitment is often laid aside for convenience or for personal gain.  Holy Week reminds us that despite the worst of our human nature, God’s love will overcome that darkness within us and around us.
   We are invited to walk the way of the cross with Jesus – the path that leads to eternal life.  In the meantime, let’s learn how to serve our King.  In the words of St Andrew of Crete, we are invited to lay ourselves, instead of palms, at the feet of Jesus.  In serving him we love both God and one another - and love is stronger than death
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Lent 5 News and Musings

4/3/2022

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​Forthcoming Events
Services
​Thursday 7th April 9.30am, Stations of the Cross followed by Said Mass at 10.00am.
Sunday 10th April Palm Sunday will be a joint Benefice service at St Peters commencing at 10.30am.

Coffee Morning

As usual from 10.00am on Tuesday, every-one welcome.

Sermon for Lent 5 
  Two women were brought in to stand before a young king.  They were prostitutes and they shared a house. Both had given birth and the son of one of them had died.  Now they were both trying to claim the living son as their own.  This was in the days before DNA testing, so there was no conclusive proof as to who was really the mother.  It was one person’s word against the other’s, but the king had to make a judgement on this. 
   Bring a sword, he said, and cut the boy in two.  Each woman could have half of him.  The immediate reaction of the two women told him the truth.  One of them agreed with the verdict whilst the other begged that the boy might live, even if the other woman was allowed to keep him.  There was no doubt as to who was the true mother.
   You may well by now have realised that the king was Solomon.  The story is told in the first book of the Kings.  This was just one example of the ways by which King Solomon earned a reputation for wisdom. Those who first heard the account of the woman caught in adultery may well have been reminded of this passage about Solomon.  Although the circumstances were different, Jesus, like Solomon, found himself on the horns of a dilemma and it wasn’t immediately obvious how he would resolve it.
   The Jewish religious leaders tried hard to catch Jesus out and here they were trying to set him up once again.  Having caught a woman out in an adulterous affair, they wanted to know whether Jesus would uphold the law of Moses.  These men were unlikely to stone the woman because the Jews were forbidden under Roman law from applying the death penalty.  Only the Roman authorities could do that, which was why the Te mple authorities would have to appeal to Rome to put Jesus himself to death.  It seemed that Jesus had to choose either to condemn the woman and to fall foul of Roman law, or otherwise to declare her forgiven and to be seen not to observe the Mosaic law.  Either way he would be trapped.
   So Jesus takes a different approach.  If the woman had been caught out in adultery, it seems fair to say that the men who brought her in had been caught in the act of hypocrisy.  The challenge that Jesus gives them seems to cut through their judgemental and self-righteous attitudes: “If there is one of you who has not sinned, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.”  One by one, beginning with the eldest, they walk away.
   We see a striking contrast between the condemnation offered by the religious elite and the compassion and mercy of Jesus: “Has no one condemned you?  Neither do I condemn you – go away and don’t sin any more.”  Jesus knows that sin is real and that it can have destructive effects in our lives.  He does not condone sin or try to minimise it, but he meets the sinner with God’s redeeming love.  The woman is set free from her accusers and from the burden of guilt and is able to go away and begin a new life.
   The words of Jesus hold up a mirror to us too.  This is not a message of condemnation for the ways in which we have stumbled or lost our way.  It is a reminder that when we point a finger at other people, we have three fingers pointing back at us.  It is so much more tempting to project our own darkness onto other people than it is to recognise it in ourselves and to bring it before God so that he can shine his light and warmth into it.  Pride is the obstacle that prevents us from seeing ourselves as less than perfect and in need of forgiveness.  Let’s remind ourselves that our attitudes and our words as well as our actions have consequences for ourselves and for others.  We don’t have to pick up stones to throw, because our words can be damaging enough.
   Jesus shows us a better way, in which we leave behind our human judgements and instead look to Jesus as the source of forgiveness and new life.  The woman in the gospel expected to be condemned but instead of this she encounters forgiveness and grace.  Lent, especially Passiontide, is a wonderful opportunity to seek these gifts for ourselves in the sacrament of reconciliation.  It is never easy facing up to our own sinfulness, but the freedom that lies on the other side of this is far greater than our own wounded pride.  No one has the right to judge another person when they themselves are in need of forgiveness.  God gives us the channels of grace in which we find freedom from the tendency to judge and to be condemned ourselves.  How wonderful to hear those words of Jesus echoing through our own lives:
“Neither do I condemn you.  Go and sin no more.”

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