Morning Prayer - Tuesday after Easter

Luke 24:1-12 (Click here for text)

The confusion continues. Everyone is looking for Jesus in the wrong place! Of course  it makes perfect sense to expect Jesus to conform to normal human standards - i.e. if he's dead to stay dead. The women, desperate to express their love and grief, have continued about their plans - why should they do any different? Peter, doesn't believe their tale and characteristically rushes over to see for himself and sees the grave linen but no body! He is confused - why shouldn't he be?

From the perspective of the angels, their confusion is ungrounded. Why? Because Jesus had told them very clearly what it is that would happen and what they were to expect. Despite the disciples fascination and even service to Jesus they clearly had not believed him. A couple of weeks ago my daughter was to visit us on holiday and needed to travel by train. We told here to book the ticket early because it would be a lot cheaper. She didn't, was charges excessively for her ticket and on arrival claimed that she didn't know. She had been told but had not had that personal experience that cements the expectation as part of her understanding.

This is the process of faith. Once we have come to terms with the fact that the tomb is empty, we then need to start believing what Jesus actually says! Jesus promises to be with us all until the end, he promises the Holy Spirit within us, He promises that we will continues to do the things he has started. When do we start believing in what He says? What does it take? Jesus seems to express his own frustration with this too when he says to Thomas,  “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Christian life really starts when we believe what Jesus actually says! It is then that the power of the resurrection becomes real for us.

Morning Prayer - Monday of Easter Week

Mark 16:1-8 (Click here for text)

I always find Easter Eve a strange time. Having immersed myself in the passion on the Friday and been amazed again at what Jesus went through and how He manages to forgive and retain his hope in humanity, I feel a bit lost on the Saturday. Of course preparations for Sunday kick in and occupy time, it is spiritually an in between place.

In Mark's Gospel we have the only hint at what the disciples were up to. The women, here, had clearly observed the Sabbath following the placing of Jesus' body in the tomb and as soon as they were able they had bought some spices on the Saturday evening to honour Jesus in death at first light. Where were the men? The women must have felt unable to ask them for help in moving the stone - maybe the men were avoiding the soldiers and had heard that a guard had been placed on the temporary tomb. So their main focus is honouring Jesus in death as they no doubt have a horrible night wracked with grief and worry.

So it is in a complete state that they arrive at the first Easter morning. Not with anticipation of Easter Eggs and a more upbeat service than usual under girded by the joy of knowing that Jesus succeeds in making all things new, do they arrive, but with trauma and loss.

The angel they find rightly soothes them with the words, stop being afraid,' but it hardly has any effect. They run away and for a time remain too terrified to speak.

What must have been the impact of this early morning event as they went away? The plans and concerns of the last 36 hours have all been wiped away. There is no body to care for. There is no Jesus to prepare for proper entombment. How did it finally dawn that there this might mean resurrection? When did they dare to believe? Was it Mary's experience? Followed by Peter and Cleopas and Luke?

Just imagine the transformation of perspective! Hope beyond hope! It must have been strange - the certainty of the death and mourning rituals replaced with the uncertainty of of hope in the miraculous. How much evidence would it take? How many appearances? How much explanation until it finally sank in.

But with the joy of the resurrection dawns the understanding of the significance - not just for them, the ones who were mourning and are now rejoicing, but for the world! How long until the responsibility for them begins to take hold and they realise that their testimony is needed for the world to understand what God is doing in Jesus.

Isn't this where our journeys become connected. Once the reality of the resurrection sinks in and we become convicted of its truth, so the responsibility of that understanding dawns too. This is not simply a personal event but a transforming event for all people. And we who believe without seeing first hand have no less a share in that responsibility than those first few who experienced Jesus alive directly before them.

Morning Prayer - Easter Eve

1 John 5.5-12 (Click here for text)

We are being offered new life in Christ every day. This new spiritual (spiritually evolved) human being that each of us is called to be us real, every day. Our role is to live it.

How do we do this?

There is no avoiding that the starting point is faith. While we search and argue and debate (and no doubt we will always do this) we are not necessarily embracing this new life offered. We embrace through believing it - accepting that this the reality. God through Jesus really has bought into being a new way of being a human being and the Holy Spirit enables us to become this. The first step to living this is believing it and embracing that like is often linked symbolically with the water of baptism, not simply a washing away of sin but an act of commitment - saying this is my view of the world.

The second thing we do - and this is very difficult -  is that we begin to die with regard to things of the old way of being. Jesus death on the cross - as well as a physical death - is a death to the old order of being. He will not retaliate, He will not use the sword, He will not flee, He will  have faith that God is bringing in to being the new order. So he forgives; he blesses; he offers peace even to those who hate Him. In this day and age, with an aggressive secular, atheistic streak there is a real temptation to respond in kind. Such a response is a lack of faith. The new order forgives, reaches out, blesses, understands their blindness and reaches out. The blood of Jesus is the symbol of an atoning death that fulfils and removes a previous sacrificial system but it is also a symbol of overcoming the brokenness of the old humanity - of dying to the world - so that the new can grow. This is the blood that we must share in - the cross that we must carry.

And finally we must allow the Holy Spirit to do His work in us. To take the points of tension in our lives and resolve, like a spiritual dissonance into the cadence of the Kingdom. We must allow ourselves to be for others even when they are against us - 'for others' meaning that the hope that they too will embrace this new humanity and allow the Spirit to draw them on too.

We live it primarily through 'becoming' - through being changed in our mind and our desires that our actions will flow from the Kingdom that one day will be fulfilled in Jesus.

Morning Prayer - Good Friday

Hebrews 10:1-10 (For text see here)

Here is the heart of the Gospel; that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once and for all.

To a post-modern mind this statement can appear shocking.

To start with 'we' are passive in this. However, being made 'holy', taking on the likeness of Christ is a divine act of Creation. We cannot give ourselves life, we cannot choose to be born or be instrumental in our own making. In the same way, we cannot be instrumental in our sanctification - our being 'born again'. This is an act of God - an act that has been completed in the death and resurrection of Christ. The Old Testament tells of man's awareness (his consciousness in this passage) of sin. This awareness invokes fear of judgement and guilt and the systems of sacrifice were there to absolve the conscience on an annual basis - a ritual dealing with the fear and guilt that the consciousness of sin invoked. It did not prevent sin, but enabled the people to continue in some kind of relationship with their Creator despite the awareness of the reality of the grip of sin on their lives.

Jesus Christ is a new act of Creation by God. Fear of judgement and death are removed permanently by the cross where the divine takes the reality of sin and judgement and death visibly and transforms them into the resurrected Christ. The consciousness of sin is the first stage in a process of spiritual creation (spiritual evolution?) in which the direction of humanity (as free from sin - i.e. sanctified and holy) emerges. The Cross is the act of God which offers the way into the completion (next stage?) of humanity. The cross, by the reckoning of it's shadow (the sacrificial system of the OT) deals with punishment - but the event is much more than that. The shadow or type can never hold the reality of the new paradigm, of the new order. Likewise the OT model is broken in God making Himself the offering for sin. But in its place is a new power - a sanctifying power - now at work in the world, the power to take the human being and lift her into God. In this way a whole new consciousness is born - a new mind - the mind of Christ. Not a set of boundaries of behaviour or rules to be followed, but a new way of thinking that shapes us so that we are different and from this change in our being new behaviours flow and new possibilities arise.

So if this is God's work what is our role? Our role is to live it!! To believe in what God is doing and to embrace His vision for us. To connect with the power of the Resurrection for our own lives - to open ourselves to its possibilities. This is not a return to an older, more perfect order of things before 'a fall' but the on-going Creative work of God, leading us on. This we work towards, guided by the same Holy Spirit that raised Christ to new life from death. This is the meaning, purpose and direction of all life. It is not a political vision (but change flows out of it), it is not a cultural vision (but new ways of keeping this vision before our eyes are essential). Embracing this work of God, living in it, is quite simply the answer to life's questions and the basis and direction of all human life.

Morning Prayer - Wednesday of Holy Week

Luke 22:54-71 (Click here for text)

It is very easy to speak of commitment and to make brave statements about what we believe. We will never really know what we are committed to until our backs are against the wall and there is a real cost to pay for what we believe in. It is when the cost comes to bear that we find out what we really believe in. Even then, it is part of a process. How we feel about the decision we have made - will we be able to live with ourselves and the choices we have taken? Working through these choices is the subtext of this reading.

Peter - after all his bravado - finds that he cannot stand. But then when he falls, he finds he cannot do that either. He learns, taught by a short prediction of Jesus followed by a quick glance, what both sides of the decision feel like. The boldness of standing next to Jesus and the cowardice of running away. This lesson is a difficult one for us all to learn and can we ever say we have fully 'chosen' to stand by Jesus until the end.

Jesus, in his responses to the Pharisees, attempts the same kind of dialogue. They are only interested in finding a charge to bring against Jesus before Pilate so that the judicial processes in place swing into place and dispose of this troublesome man! Jesus, in contrast, does not seek to defend Himself but to engage them with their own behaviour and attitudes. He refers to the scriptures in understanding His Messiahship, He points out to them their own accusations and the testimony of the people. In other Gospels, Jesus talks of the openness of His teaching and exposes their underhand tactics in dealing with Him.

Jesus is being denied and set-up. He is being beaten and humiliated. But He never responds in kind or out of fear. He has fought His battle in the Garden and set His face to expect no different.

Morning Prayer - Tuesday of Holy Week

Luke 22:24-53 (Click here for texts)

Following Jesus means living as though the cross and resurrection happened last week. There is a world of difference between knowing about some past events, watching a film and feeling the fallout of the events of Jesus' Passion.

The experiences of Jesus and the disciples must not become fully assimilated - we must not adjust ourselves to accommodate and get over what has happened but rather we must feel the intensity of the emotions day after day. We must not forget nor must remembering become an exercise of memory.

I mustn't forget how the disciples were so wrapped up in the possibilities of their own glory that they failed to listen to what Jesus was saying and then when He needed them to be there for Him they fell asleep and denied Him. I need to feel how easily that happens in my own life. How easily I forget who I'm serving and get drawn into tasks and my own achievement - as though they mattered in the light of what Jesus does.

I mustn't forget how Jesus had to accept the burden of the world's sin - punishment, abandonment and isolation, despair - being taunted by the tempter to relinquish the hope for mankind as a lost cause. The feelings he must have borne

He has made my teeth grind on gravel,
   and made me cower in ashes;  my soul is bereft of peace;
   I have forgotten what happiness is;  so I say, ‘Gone is my glory,
   and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.’ 

These feelings for Him are real and felt for me and every person who has ever lived and will ever live. He did this for and because of my deepest wickedness and selfishness. And it happened yesterday and I know Him and He knows me. And there is no escaping that He had to do it for me because it is the only way that I could be broken out of my sin and selfishness - the only way I could be drawn into God. And I am not worth the effort (except that I must be if He does this) and He is worth everything (and I cannot ever do that justice).

Remembering is about not allowing some wounds to heal. 

Morning Prayer 3rd April

John 12:30-36 (Click here for text)

The hour has come.

Throughout His ministry Jesus has often said that the time had not yest come for Him to be revealed. Now He says that the time has come for him to be revealed in His glory.

The trigger for Him is the beginning of a Gentile following. That nations will come to Jerusalem is a sign of the Day of the Lord and that Day is the day that the Messiah is glorified and God's Kingdom is established.

But the lifting up of the Messiah is to be understood in an ambiguous way. It is a 'lifting up' that will fulfil both meanings of the word - a lifting up on the cross to bear punishment and death and a lifting up to the throne of Heaven in the resurrection. Both these meanings are captured in this passage and the paradoxical nature of the unfolding of God's intentions are the subject of the wrestling in Jesus' words.

The seed must die to bear fruit; life must be relinquished in order to be gained; to hold on to life is to loose it. If only there was another way - Jesus prays that there is but understands only too well that there is not.

As usual, everyone else in the passage is confused by what is going on and what Jesus is actually prophesying.

Philip and Andrew don't understand whether or not Jesus is for the Gentiles or not. They talk amongst themselves and take the issues to Jesus. We don't know whether that understand his answer as an explanation that it is a sign of the coming fulfilment or not.

The crowd, as usual, are baffled. They don't understand the Messianic allusions that Jesus is making. They don't understand why there is an ambiguity in the lifting up of the Messiah as they understand the Messiah is going to reign forever - so how can he be killed?

Jesus doesn't engage with their confusions merely encourages them to continue to follow and listen to Him as He shifts the entire framework for understanding God's plans for His Kingdom to a new level. As ever, these things will only be understood when the cross and the resurrection are understood together as the saving and transforming work of God.

 

Morning Prayer 2nd April

John 12:12-19 (Click here for text)

Every action Jesus takes is designed to communicate God's Kingdom and just how different it is to the expectations that people tend to project onto God. His triumphal entry into Jerusalem is packed with irony. As with so many passages in John, he describes the different perspectives and symbolises how  Jesus' own is in contrast with them all.

Firstly there is the crowd. They are well in role proclaiming and waving their 'hosannas' around. Their words are a literal pleading to Jesus to save them and yet the salvation they seek is at best temporal and at worst a switch in political power base to them. However, spurred on by the miraculous sign of Lazarus they are really hopeful that at the least, something interesting might happen!

Secondly, the disciples haven't really got much of a clue. They are involved (and according to the synoptics instrumental in assisting Jesus with his mode of transportation) but they are totally bewildered. They will only be able to interpret events once they have all unfolded.

Jesus, as ever, knows exactly what He is about. He chooses deliberately to undermine the image of a warrior messiah and in contrast recreates the symbolism of the prophet Zechariah. He is about peace 'to the nations' and his victory is of justice. It is again ironic that the Pharisees comment echoes this idea - 'the world has gone after him' - but without understanding the true implications of their words.

It seems that Jesus is planning for his actions to be understood in hindsight. This is the amazing faith that Jesus demonstrates. To follow His understanding of what God is calling Him to - through death and to the resurrection beyond. Talk about a maintaining a sense of perspective!

This, of course, is the Christian perspective. Not only life before death, but to walk in His footsteps through death and to to what lies beyond. But it takes a lot of faith to maintain this sense of perspective when the decisions on this side of eternity cost you something!

Morning Prayer 1st April

John 12:1-11 (See here for text)

The love and unreserved devotion shine through Mary's actions. Mary is portrayed as someone who seems to understand better than those around her who Jesus is. When Jesus visits Mary and Martha it is Mary who sits as a disciple at Jesus' feet - not avoiding her duties but recognising the moment as a moment to be with Jesus.

When Jesus comes to the tomb, Mary stays at home - maybe more trusting about Jesus being in control (like the centurion who has no need of Jesus actual presence to know his power). But the moment when she meets the needs of Jesus intuitively through her devotion to Him is this outrageously generous and uncalculating act of love.

She anoints Jesus for his greatest trial in a simple and beautiful act. Many of us would be unable to make such an act. We would be too self-conscious, or too concerned that others may think us showy or wasteful. But the offering from this pure heart is received as exactly what is needed and intended.

The best gift she could give.