Passion Sunday: Framed By The Cross, John 12:1-8 (Lent 5 Year C 2022)

John 12:1-8

You don’t have to be around my family long to find those of us who are passionate about photography. My daughter and I share a love for it, and it all began with my late father. He wanted to document his time doing National Service with the RAF and got the bug there. Belatedly, at the age of 21, I caught it off him. In his later years, few things gave him greater pleasure when we were with him than seeing our daughter’s latest photos.

So when Dad died, one of the things we spent some money from his estate on was a family portrait session at a studio we knew of in a nearby village. After the session, Debbie and I returned to the studio a week or two later to choose the photos we wanted.

But it wasn’t just about choosing the photos: we also had to pick frames for them from a selection we were offered. Some choices were easier than others: a portrait of our dog, who is predominantly black in colour, was paired with a black frame. It wasn’t always as straightforward as that, as we considered both the content of the photo and the colour of the wall where it would hang.

Our reading today has a frame. At the top and the bottom, the beginning and the end, we find the Cross of Christ. We have it in the beginning with the reference ‘Six days before the Passover’ (verse 1). For in chapter 19, as the Passover lambs die, so too will Jesus (John 19:14), the Lamb of God (John 1:29). Then near the end, Jesus says that Mary anointed him for his burial (verse 7). Who knows, perhaps she took what was left of the perfume she used here to the tomb.

The Cross frames our story. What Jesus has recently done for the siblings Lazarus, Martha, and Mary by raising Lazarus from the dead (verse 1) will be ratified by the Cross. Ultimately, it is the source of all our blessings.

And within that frame, we see in Lazarus, Martha, and Mary fitting responses to all that Jesus has done for them. The brother and his two sisters are all here examples of responding to the grace of God. They are examples of true disciples.

So in what ways do they respond to Jesus, and what can we learn from them?

Martha is first up in the text. John writes of her, ‘Martha served’ (verse 2).

This is very different in tone from Luke’s story of Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42), where we read that Martha was ‘distracted by serving’. Here it’s different. She is serving as her way of playing a part in honouring Jesus with this dinner.

Jesus had raised Lazarus back to life with no pre-conditions, but here is the natural response of someone like Martha. What can she do in gratitude? She can serve Jesus. On the surface it’s just a meal, but in John’s Gospel where even the most literal things are also symbolic, we see here an important spiritual principle for all of us.

We too have freely received from Jesus without any preconditions. He went to the Cross for us and offered us the forgiveness of sins. We owe him everything – and we cannot pay it. But we can offer to serve him in grateful response for all he has done for us. If we truly count our blessings we don’t merely end up writing a religious shopping list. Instead the cumulative effect of all those blessings is for us to say, ‘How can we show our gratitude?’

Serving Jesus is an obvious way to show our gratitude for the Cross and all it contains. And so we ask questions in prayer: ‘What do you need me to do, Lord? What would please you?’

Sometimes it will be obvious what we can do. There will be a presenting need. At other times we need to wait and seek God in prayer to know how he would like us to serve him. When the answer comes, it may be something we find pleasing or it may be something we find difficult.

It comes back to the Covenant Service, doesn’t it? ‘Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are hard.’ For me, responding to the call to ministry was part of my way of serving Jesus in response to all he has done. Sometimes it’s rewarding and thrilling, but on other occasions it’s dull, depressing, or even frightening. But I carry on because this is a way in which Christ has shown me (and the Church) that I can serve him in response to his great love for me.

Can each of us name ways in which we are called to serve Christ in response to his grace and mercy to us?

Lazarus is next. ‘Lazarus was among those reclining at table with [Jesus]’ (verse 2)

‘Reclining at table’? Put out of your mind a typical dining table. In particular, stop thinking about Leonardo da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, where it looks like Jesus and the disciples are sitting down to a meal in the way we would.

Instead, remember that a Middle Eastern table was close to the floor. In order to eat, you would lie with your head near the table and your legs away, supporting yourself on your left elbow while using your right hand to take food. That is what ‘reclining at table’ was like.

And the point here isn’t that Lazarus is lazily enjoying the food and the company while the women slave in a hot kitchen. It’s more that this is a picture of intimacy. Perhaps on a day when we celebrate Holy Communion, intimacy at a meal table has special significance.

And so again, we have a response to what Jesus has done here. Jesus has brought his friend Lazarus back to life. In response, Lazarus wants to get close to him. You can imagine that Lazarus will be getting to know his friend Jesus better as they eat together.

We too can draw near to Jesus in response to all the wonderful things he has done for us. Don’t we want to know someone like that better? This is why we pray. This is why we read our Bibles. This is why we gather for worship. This is why we eat in his presence, not only in ordinary meals but also at the Lord’s Supper. It’s all about getting to know better the One who has been so full of love for us, sinners that we are.

Sometimes when a preacher reminds us to pray, read our Bibles, worship, and take the sacraments it sounds like a sergeant-major barking orders. But that isn’t the reason for doing these things. All these so-called ‘means or grace’ (or in other traditions ‘spiritual disciplines’) are there as ways of coming close to Jesus.

So I’m not going to harangue you today about your personal devotions. But I am going to say this: let’s ponder all that Jesus has done for us, and let that motivate us to use the means he has provided to come close to him.

Finally, the star of the show (well, apart from Jesus, of course): Mary. We know how Mary responds to all Jesus has done for her, Martha, and Lazarus:

Then Mary took about half a litre of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus’ feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. (Verse 3)

If Martha responds by serving and Lazarus by intimacy, then Mary responds by giving. Her giving is generous and perhaps sacrificial. But it is so beautiful that ‘the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.’

That’s what true giving from the heart to Jesus in response to his love is like. There is a beauty about it. Mary is not paying a tax. Nor is she settling a bill. She is responding from the heart to the grace and mercy of Jesus. And everyone present can smell the fragrance.

Not only that, but we can also say her giving is prophetic. In the next chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus will wash his disciples’ feet. But Jesus’ own feet don’t get a wash. Not that he needed to be washed clean of sin, of course. But his feet have already been washed here by Mary, who has anointed him for burial (verse 7) after the Cross.

The one who doesn’t understand this is Judas, whom John tells us is a taker to the point of being a thief (verses 4-6) rather than a giver.

Now when Christians give, we do not ultimately give to the church, we give to Jesus. When we give, we do not pay a subscription that entitles us to benefits from the church, we give as an act of gratitude and worship because Jesus has done so much for us and our lives are framed by his Cross. Some of you will recall that’s why I never refer to ‘the collection’ in a service: I talk about ‘the offering.’

I know I’m saying this at a time when giving of the financial kind is especially hard. Inflation is at its worst for thirty years and is poised to get worse; and on Friday we saw our energy bills leap by 54%.

But nevertheless we can ask the general question about giving. And we ask it not in a way that is designed to inflict guilt on people: rather, we say, have we truly taken into our hearts and minds the lavish and outrageous grace of God in Christ who went to the Cross for us? Have we caught a vision of just how much God loves us? In gratitude, what can we give of our money, time, talents, possessions, indeed of our very lives?

Can we make the atmosphere fragrant with the scent of our giving?

So – Passion Sunday, when we start to see that the Cross of Jesus frames not just this reading but our whole lives: can we sense how broad and deep and high the love of God for us is in Christ?

And if we can, then like Martha can we show our gratitude in serving, like Lazarus can we show our love in drawing close to Jesus, and like Mary can we demonstrate our response to that love in generous giving?

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The Lost Sheep, Coin, and Son Luke 15:1-32 (Lent 4, Year C)

Luke 15:1-32

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a wonderful story. Told on its own, it’s a heart-warming parable of the Gospel that speaks powerfully about God’s love.

Don’t worry, I don’t propose to question any of that!

But the key words there were, ‘Told on its own.’ Today, I deliberately put it in its context. When you do that, you see much more the purpose of the parable.

The Lectionary almost got it right. Had we followed that slavishly we would have read the first three verses but not the two shorter parables about the lost sheep and the lost coin. We would have missed the fact that the Parable of the Prodigal Son is the third in a series of parables. It is, as the NIV calls it, the lost son.

What, then, do we learn here about God? And what does that mean for us?

Firstly, God loves the lost. Through all three parables here we get a sense of God’s love for those who are lost and far from him. When the Pharisees and teachers of the law mutter, ‘This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them’ (verse 2), Jesus explains exactly why.

For Jesus, the lost are not the collateral damage we put up with so that we can devote our energies to the insiders in the community of God. They are a priority – so much so that he will do crazy things to reach them. What shepherd risks leaving ninety-nine sheep to find one that has gone astray? (Verse 4) The Good Shepherd does.

Could it be that one of our problems in the church is that we spend so much time on the ninety-nine inside the fold that we forget our calling to those lost from us? We agonise about why people don’t come to church and we despair at church decline, but which of us will take the radical steps to reorganise our churches along the principles of the shepherd in the Parable of the Lost Sheep?

If you want a sign of the sickness I’m talking about, then look for the reaction whenever somebody suggests a new initiative in the church which does things in new ways and goes beyond the existing members. Someone is sure to complain, ‘What about those we already have? Shouldn’t we be looking after them?’

It’s so infantile and selfish. How come these experienced Christians haven’t learned how to feed themselves spiritually?

The giveaway for me was one year when a church member complained to me in a letter about something. It’s so long ago I can’t remember what she was moaning about, but in the middle of the letter came the words, ‘First and foremost you are our minister.’ In other words, she who pays the piper calls the tune. We put money in the offering, and we therefore expect you to prioritise us. It’s a consumer attitude to religion. It isn’t a kingdom attitude, where we give for the sake of others.

These parables warn us clearly that if we just want things done for us in the church then we are like the Pharisees and the teachers of the law. Their faith had become so corrupted from God’s call to Israel to be a light to the nations that everything was centred on defining the in-crowd and concentrating on the in-crowd.

We have too many Pharisees in the church today. Look instead at the passion of the woman seeking her lost coin and the commitment of the shepherd looking for the lost sheep.

Look too at the father of the Prodigal, surveying the horizon for any sign that his errant son is on his way back, a son who by demanding his inheritance early was saying in the culture of his day, ‘Father, I want you dead.’

And see as that father does the undignified thing of running to his son, when the culture expected him to stand, face frowned and arms folded, waiting for the son to grovel. None of that. He is passionate for his lost son.

And look as well at the celebrations. The shepherd invites all nearby to celebrate, and Jesus says that’s a picture of heaven when a sinner repents (verses 6-7). The woman does similarly when she finds the coin and Jesus says that’s like the joy of the angels (verses 9-10). Presumably the party thrown by the father when the lost son returns is a parallel to them (verses 22-24).

Understand that this is how God feels about those far from him. Many of us have prodigals in our families. We have children who have not followed our faith, and it hurts to the core of our being. Some of them have gone off and done things in their lives that make us weep.

You may have had friends in the church who seemed deeply committed, whose faith you admired and whose friendship you valued. But one day they walked away. You didn’t have a clue what was going on under the surface. When they left the church you felt confused and bereft.

Know that in these parables Jesus spells out just how full of love and compassion for our friends and our children the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is.

With that knowledge I invite you to pray daily for the prodigals you know, remembering that God loves them so much he will send out his search and rescue mission for them.

And as well as ourselves individually and in families, how do we show this in the life of the church? What would it mean for us to re-order our priorities to reflect God’s love for those yet to know him rather than mainly putting on events that benefit us?

Secondly, God loves the Pharisees. One reason I wanted you to hear the whole context was so that you knew all these three parables are told in response to the moaning and groaning of the Pharisees and teachers of the law about Jesus hob-nobbing with lowlifes. They just don’t get the gospel of grace.

And yet these are people who saw themselves as defending the pure faith. I’ve probably mentioned before that the Pharisees started out as goodies, even though we see them largely as baddies in the Bible. Their movement began as a way of calling Judaism back to a pure, unsullied faith. It was a renewal movement.

But what happens when a renewal movement doesn’t meet its goals? What happens today when people who are passionate to renew the church don’t see things going the way they believe they should? Frustration sets in, and if they don’t guard their hearts they become embittered. They hold onto truth, but they forget grace, and so the pure well becomes poisoned.

What do people like that do? The sort of things the Pharisees did to Jesus. In their quest for purity and their failure to remember the grace of God, they hunt down Jesus and anyone like him who is a threat to what they see as the pure faith.

They do the same in the church today. Many ministers can tell stories of church members who have hounded them and resorted to underhanded tactics to undermine them or get them moved on. They think they’re serving a just cause, but they sink down to an ‘end justifies the means’ approach.

I know what I want to do when I encounter these people, especially when they threaten my livelihood and with it the home the church provides for us. There is a small number where I would have had the right to take them to court.

But the grace and mercy of God is so outrageous that he loves these people, too. How do I know?

It comes in the ending of the Prodigal Son parable. The elder son is clearly meant to stand for those Pharisees and teachers of the law. They are the ones who have been with the Father and had all his resources. But the celebrations of heaven and the angels just render them all the more angry.

Yet look at the tenderness with which the father in the story speaks to the older son:

31 ‘“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”’

‘Come and join the party,’ says the father. The invitation into the father’s joy couldn’t be plainer. God longs for those who have contended for the truth to do so in response to his grace. He doesn’t want them to give up a passion for truth, but he knows how distorted and damaging it becomes when it isn’t paired with his grace. It damages those who are attacked with the truth, and it damages the Pharisees, too.

And so today, for all of us who have been elder sons, defending the faith vigorously but somehow losing our first love, the same Father who welcomes home prodigals seeks to melt our hearts too with his love.

How are we going to answer the invitation? You’ll notice that the story of the lost son doesn’t completely end. We don’t get to hear how the older son responds to the invitation of the father.

Except we do know in reality. Since the older son represented the Pharisees, we know what he would have said: ‘I’m going to kill you.’

Each of us must write our own ending to the parable in our own lives. Whether we are a younger son or an older son, a prodigal or a Pharisee, will we say ‘Yes’ to the Father’s extravagant love for us and for all people, or will we throw it back in his face and find that in our defence of truth we have chosen death instead of life?

I pray we write a good ending.

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Self-Examination, Luke 13:1-9 (Third Sunday in Lent, Year C)

I’ve no idea what the compilers of the Lectionary were smoking when they put together the current set of readings. Last week we were in Luke 13:31-35, but this week we jump back to the beginning of the chapter!

Luke 13:1-9

Whatever their reasons, though, I hope to show you by the end of this reflection that the themes of today’s reading are eminently suitable for Lent.

“Jesus, what about those Galileans whose blood Pilate mixed with the sacrifices at the Temple?” (cf. verse 1)

It has a horrible contemporary ring, doesn’t it? Jesus, what about those mothers and babies in the maternity hospital at Mariupol that the Russians bombed?

And for many people who bring sincere questions about suffering to God, it may sound relevant too. The child who died of cancer. The husband and father who went off with another woman. The natural disaster that killed hundreds.

These are not easy questions for Christians who believe in a loving and powerful God. We begin to answer them by talking about God who in Jesus Christ entered unjust human suffering himself. But we may not come to a complete answer, and not everybody wants an intellectual answer, many simply want to be heard and held.

And those who think the problem of suffering trumps the existence of God are deluding themselves. If the existence of unjust suffering is a problem for believing in a loving, just, and powerful God, then the existence of love and purpose are problems for an atheist. How many atheists would push their beliefs to the limit by saying to a spouse, “I have electrical and hormonal responses to you,” rather than “I love you”?

Which brings us to the way Jesus responds to his questioners here. Had they genuinely been seeking God, then surely he would have responded differently. How do we account for his apparently harsh response unless it is that this is one of those trick questions from people who are not serious about following him?

His answer makes sense if that’s the case. Not everyone who asks questions about spiritual matters is serious about getting to a point of following Jesus. I once shared digs with an atheist colleague during a work training course. He told me his objections to belief in God. I did my best to respond, but at the end he said he wasn’t interested in changing his mind, he just wanted a good argument.

And so Jesus brings the conversation round to the real issue for those who ask deep questions for frivolous reasons. Repent. Jesus didn’t call Pilate to repent of his wickedness. He called his hearers to repent. And if the collapse of the tower at Siloam (verse 4) sounds horribly like a first century Grenfell, it’s not the architect or the builder he calls to repent but his listeners.

Let’s remember that Jesus came proclaiming the kingdom of God, and that when he did so, he characteristically said, “Repent and believe the good news.” The good news is that there is a new king on the throne and it’s not Caesar. We need to repent in order to conform to the ways of his kingdom.

Jesus was telling his hearers that Caesar didn’t have final control over Israel, and nor did the self-interested religious establishment. God was on the throne of the universe in his Person. There would be further good news at the Cross as this God conquered his enemies, the principalities and powers of evil. So, says Jesus, here’s the good news – but it’s only yours when you repent.

And that repentance is not a one-off act. It’s a lifetime of turning back to God, turning our lives bit by bit back to the ways of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed.

Today, we rightly want Vladimir Putin to change his ways. We abhor what he is doing – and so we should. But we must not let that distract us from the challenge Jesus issues to us, too: repent.

We are all far from the finished article. I hope and pray we can look back at our lives and see where Jesus has changed us already. But his words in today’s reading are such that our prayer needs to be something like this: “Jesus, I’m grateful for all the ways you have transformed my life. What’s next?”

Well, that could be challenging enough. But if Jesus has already given us what we might construe as a ‘negative’ challenge in the call to repent – give up certain things, strip things out of your life, and so on – he also has a ‘positive’ challenge for us. Be Fruitful.

We hear this in the brief parable Jesus tells about the unfruitful fig tree in the vineyard (verses 6-8). The fig tree hasn’t borne any fruit for three years, and the owner is persuaded to give it one more year by the gardener.

Some people observe that it’s strange to talk about a fig tree in a vineyard, but it did happen sometimes in the ancient world. The important thing here to remember is that Jews hearing about a vineyard will remember that in Isaiah chapter 5 that is the precise metaphor the prophet uses for Israel. The fig tree is someone dwelling among Israel, the people of God, who is not being fruitful.

We know Jesus had a lot to say elsewhere about being fruitful, not least in his ‘I am the vine’ passage in John 15.

But what kind of fruitfulness does Jesus expect of us? Not literal figs, I hope – I can’t stand them! It is of course a metaphor for the work of the Spirit in our lives individually and as God’s people. So Jesus expects churches to make more new disciples of him. He expects us to exhibit more Christlikeness as individuals and as a community. He expects us to make a difference in society as, in the words of Jeremiah, we ‘seek the welfare of the city to which [we] have been called.’

What if we used this as a report card on our church? Are we making new Christians? Is our love for God and one another increasing? Would our local community miss all the good we do if we suddenly vanished overnight?

I don’t know what you’d say, but for many churches today I suspect it might be quite a mixed report. New Christians? Few, if any. More love? Yes and no. Making a difference locally? Maybe, maybe not.

In the parable, the owner and the gardener agree to give the fig tree just one more year. If nothing changes, then they agree to cut it down. Could it be that a spiritual principle like this is behind some of the church closures we see in our time? I know there are other factors as well, but does Jesus actively close some churches because they are no longer fruitful for the kingdom of God?

I have to say, it wouldn’t surprise me.

What do we need to do in order to change and improve? Do we need to stop behaving as if the church is all about satisfying our own personal needs and tastes? I believe we do. Do we need to stop speaking to people in the church in ways we never would countenance in our families or at work? Sure. Do we need actively to structure our church life around an outward-looking focus rather than an inward navel-gazing? Yes, I think so.

So in conclusion, to come back to where I began by saying this reading had highly suitable themes for Lent, why did I say that?

Well, repentance is probably quite obvious. Lent is a time when we examine ourselves. Often that means we have to put right things in our lives where we have gone awry from the purposes of God. So yes, repentance is a Lent theme.

But so is fruitfulness. Because that too requires self-examination. And I hope I’ve shown that when it comes to fruitfulness, we not only need to examine ourselves as individual Christians, we need to do the same as churches.

Shocking, then, as this reading may be – it’s hardly Sunday School ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ material – may the Holy Spirit use it that we all, both individually and together, may change for the better, for the sake of God’s kingdom as revealed by Jesus.

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The Fox and the Hen, Luke 13:31-35 (Second Sunday in Lent, Year C)

Luke 13:31-35

It’s very common in our road to see foxes. Mainly we see them of an evening, but it’s not unusual to see them brazenly strutting around in the daytime.

They are of course on the lookout for food, and this means we have to take extra precautions with putting out our food waste bins on ‘bin night’. It isn’t enough to lock the bin by pulling the handle forwards, because the foxes use their noses to flip the handle back and they can then open the bins, find food, and leave a mess. I know: I’ve twice had to clear up afterwards.

Instead, not only do we pull the handle forwards, we put the food bin on top of the regular black waste bin or blue recycling bin. The refuse collectors don’t like us doing that, because they have to move the food bin to empty the main bin, but it’s the only way to stop the foxes.

Thankfully, we aren’t a household that keeps chickens, or we would have much bigger problems to solve with the foxes.

Which brings us neatly to today’s passage, where Jesus describes Herod Antipas as a fox and compares himself to a hen. Is that relevant today when we see the actions of a vicious fox, Vladimir Putin, on the world stage? Perhaps. Let’s think about Herod the fox and Jesus the hen. And let’s ask what these images mean for our life and faith today.

Herod the fox

I think we need to remember the context. Although last week for the first Sunday in Lent preachers will have jumped back to Luke 4 and the temptations in the wilderness before Jesus’ public ministry began, we have to remember that before that we were part-way through that ministry in our readings. We had reached the Transfiguration, where Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah about his departure which he was going to accomplish at Jerusalem – that is, his death and resurrection.

By now, Jesus has told his disciples that he is going to suffer and die at the hands of the establishment in Jerusalem, he has tapped a Jerusalem postcode into his sat-nav, and that’s where he’s heading. He’s on his way to betrayal, torture, Calvary, and a temporary stay in a tomb.

The Pharisees who come and speak to him are concerned for him. (Yes, there are well-intentioned Pharisees in the Bible.) But their reading of the politics is that Jesus won’t even make it to Jerusalem. Herod will get him before then.

‘Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.’ (Verse 31b)

Jesus, make your escape, they say. They know what Herod is like.

So how does he respond?

32 He replied, ‘Go and tell that fox, “I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.” 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day – for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!

In calling Herod a fox he is not referring to the man’s cunning or intelligence but to his ‘malicious destructiveness’[1]. To Jesus, Herod is

a varmint in the Lord’s field, a murderer of God’s agents, a would-be disrupter of the divine economy[2]

Herod the fox murders God’s people, says Jesus. After all, he had cowardly agreed to the murder of Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist. He had a track record.

So shouldn’t Jesus get out of that territory? Well, he does move on, but not because he’s scared of Herod. He does so because he knows his destiny is to complete his work not on Herod’s turf but in Jerusalem. No prophet can die outside Jerusalem.

Jesus isn’t scared by Herod, but that doesn’t mean he won’t suffer. In the face of fear, Jesus sticks resolutely to his God-given task. He doesn’t compromise, he doesn’t back down, he doesn’t run away, he says, this is my purpose and no Herod in this world is going to knock me off course. And by staying on course he brings about the salvation of the world.

What are the things that might scare us off course as Christians? Is it mockery by our friends? Is it changes in the law of the land? Is it the church adopting a policy on something that deeply upsets our conscience?

Whatever it is, it’s time to rebuke the fox and keep going. It may be costly to do so, but God has called us to be disciples of Jesus and imitate his Son. But the example of his Son says that when we stay the course, however difficult it may be at times, the results are measured in blessings.

Jesus the hen

So who will rise to this task? Jesus issues a challenge to Jerusalem ahead of his arrival there, but how hopeful is he of a positive response?

34 ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”’

It doesn’t sound very promising, does it? The very people who longed for the Messiah have either not recognised him or they have rejected him, and so they are not gathered under his protective care. How dreadful their future will be.

It is no good soft-soaping this. It is no good pretending that everyone will make it into the kingdom of God. God loves all people but not everybody responds to that love, and thus they find themselves outside, in a desolate house to use Jesus’ image here, instead of under the caring love of God in Christ.

You see, the question isn’t what religion we are. It isn’t what nationality we are. It’s about whether we say yes to walking with Jesus.

So is there no hope for the Jews? Is this one of those passages that anti-Semitic racists can use against the Jews? I think of the Jewish lady I worked with in an office, who told me one day how when she was a child other children called her a ‘Christ killer.’ What a miracle that years later my friend Doreen found God’s love in Christ for herself.

Yet there is a hint in what Jesus says that God has not finished with them. If there were no hope, Jesus could just have ended with the words, ‘Look, your house is left to you desolate.’ But he doesn’t quite. His final words here are,

I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

There is always a hope of acknowledging Jesus. People who have once said ‘no’ to him can still be drawn back to him at a later date by the Holy Spirit and bow the knee to their Lord, saying ‘yes’ to him.

Could that be one of us? Have we relied on our religious upbringing or our regular attendance at church without ever having said ‘yes’ to Jesus? Have we never known the security of his saving love?

Or is it that there is someone dear to us who up until now has either consciously rejected Jesus or alternatively simply been completely apathetic about him? Who are those people we long to discover the love of God in Christ? A family member? A dear friend? Someone we’ve been praying for over a long period of time but where we have been tempted to give up? Let’s renew our prayers for them. It is still possible they will see the beauty and glory of Jesus and say ‘yes’ to him.

Conclusion

We’re only in this position of being able to say ‘yes’ to Jesus or pray that others do because Jesus didn’t allow Herod to knock him off course. He went through with his calling, costly as it was for him to do so.

So let’s make sure we don’t waste the opportunity – either by making our own response to Jesus or by continuing in prayer for others to do so.

[1] Ian Paul, Who is included in and excluded from the kingdom in Luke 13?

[2] Darr, Character Building, cited by Joel Green in Luke NICNT p536 and quoted by Paul, op. cit.

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The Transfiguration of Jesus and our Spiritual Experience of God, Luke 9:28-36 (Last Sunday Before Lent, Year C)

Luke 9:28-36

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart. But it was not long before the enemy suggested, “This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?” Then was I taught that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation; but that, as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth, them according to the counsels of His own will.

Longstanding Methodists should recognise that extended quote as coming from John Wesley’s Journal for the date 24th May 1738, the date we sometimes call his conversion.

And I read it today as an illustration of Christian experience. His heart is strangely warmed. Yet on the other hand he then expects to be filled with joy but he isn’t, and he learns that sometimes God gives joy and on other occasions he doesn’t.

This live experience of God is something Wesley emphasised as a way of knowing God and his ways in addition to the classic triad of Scripture, the traditions of the church, and human reason.

And if the story of the Transfiguration is about anything, it’s about Peter, James, and John having a vivid experience of God. I think it gives us a good vantage point from which to consider why God does and does not grant us significant spiritual experiences.

Firstly, a spiritual experience is about grace.

Peter, James, and John are not chosen due to their merits or superior spiritual status. No, they are simply chosen by Jesus to accompany him. No more.

We need to remember, then, that if someone has a profound experience of God they are not to be thought of as somehow better than the rest of us. For those who do have the privilege of such things, it can be tempting to think that they are closer to God than others. But it isn’t necessarily the case. A spiritual experience is not a badge to wear, it’s a gift to receive with gratitude. And like Wesley in his analysis of joy, we may or may not know why God has granted it.

If you want any evidence that Peter, James, and John are not of a higher status than the other disciples, you have only to look at what happens after this incident. They come down from the mountain to find the other disciples failing to cast a demon from a boy. But do Peter, James, or John with their extraordinary encounter intervene and sort it out? No. They are no more competent than the rest of the Twelve. They have not been elevated by what happened on the mountain.

If you are granted some special meeting with Almighty God in your life, do not set yourself up as better than your brother and sister Christians. Instead, appreciate the wonder of God’s grace.

And if you come across someone who has a dramatic appointment with God, then equally do not regard yourself as inferior, and do not be envious. And I know this one: I’ve sat in meetings where speakers have picked out people to give them prophetic words from God, but they never pointed to me. Was God not interested in me? Was I not special to him?

But it is all about grace. God has his purposes. Sometimes we understand them, sometimes we don’t, but grace is at the heart of his actions.

Secondly, a spiritual experience is a glimpse.

What do we make of Peter’s blabbering suggestion to put up three shelters – one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah? Even Luke says that Peter didn’t know what he was saying. (Verse 33)

It could be some kind of monument. There are examples in Scripture of people building something to commemorate a particular divine encounter. But the trouble with monuments is we turn them into museums, and we don’t continue with a live, on-going relationship with God in Christ, we just look back with Instagram filters to the past and appoint curators instead of prophets.

I think the New Testament scholar Ian Paul has got it right in assessing Peter’s mistaken suggestion when he writes,

He has not yet understood that this is a momentary drawing back of the curtain, giving him and the other two a glimpse of the heavenly reality of who Jesus really is, but that this is not the end of the story—yet.

‘A momentary drawing back of the curtain.’ Peter, James, and John catch a glimpse of what is to come. It isn’t now, but it’s a sign of what’s to come.

So any Christian who tells us that we should be living in a permanent state of bliss and of heightened spiritual experience is wrong. The end of the story hasn’t happened yet. We know it will come, and occasionally God grants us little foretastes to assure us it’s on the way. But right now we cannot spend all our lives on the mountain in the cloud of glory.

That isn’t meant to be an excuse for those of us who want the very minimum experience of God: those of us who want enough of God to be forgiven but not so much that we are challenged; those of us who are happy to give him Sunday but not Monday to Saturday.

But it is to say, let’s keep spiritual experiences in perspective. We can expect they will happen from time to time (although we cannot predict them). But they happen to keep us oriented towards God’s great future. The true fruit of a powerful divine experience is that we live more passionately for Jesus and his kingdom as a result.

Thirdly and finally, a spiritual experience is an encouragement.

The context is important here. Just before this incident Jesus has given his first prophecy to his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem where he will be betrayed, suffer, die, and be raised again.

It’s picked up in the reading, when Moses and Elijah talk with Jesus:

They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfilment at Jerusalem. (Verse 31)

His departure? Well, remember there’s an Old Testament book called ‘Departure.’ Exodus! And that’s the Greek word here: exodos. Just as God set his people the Israelites free from the oppression of Egypt in the Exodus, so now his Son will set people free from the oppression of sin by his own exodos at Jerusalem, in his cross and resurrection.

But to face that is terrifying. Nowhere do we see that more clearly than when Jesus prays in Gethsemane. I believe that to help him face that terrible time the Father grants his Son a profoundly close encounter, where he affirms him above all others – even above Moses and Elijah:

A voice came from the cloud, saying, ‘This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.’ (Verse 35)

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that some of the most vivid accounts of people meeting with God come from the testimonies of the persecuted church. These are folk who need the encouragement to stand firm, even in suffering for the name of Jesus. The spiritual experience is not some heavenly tickling just to make us feel good. Often God makes himself known in the most powerful way to those who most need that encouragement.

Certainly, I can look back on the deep experiences of God I have occasionally had and realise that several of them were clustered around a very dark time of my life. God reminded me he was still there and he still had his hand on my life, no matter what I was going through.

As we conclude, note how the story ends:

When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone. The disciples kept this to themselves and did not tell anyone at that time what they had seen. (Verse 36)

They don’t go back and boast about it. Maybe they sense what I said at first that these experiences are about God’s grace, not our merit. Perhaps they realised the privilege they’d been granted in being given a glimpse of how the great story ends. They might also have felt encouraged, even though doubtless they still didn’t understand the necessity of Jesus suffering.

But I pray that we’re all open to whatever God is saying and doing when he interrupts normal service with something special.

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What Are You Doing For Lent This Year? A Suggestion.

An interruption to the weekly teaching videos: I wrote this piece for the newsletter at one of my churches. After completing it, I thought the idea in it might be appreciated by other Christians who are thinking how they might spend Lent this year.

The idea isn’t stunningly original, but it’s simple. And it’s a discipline of engagement rather than a discipline of abstinence. See what you think. I’d love to know if you find this helpful.

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Between Christmas-Epiphany and Easter I find the calendar of the ‘Church Year’ confusing. And the culprit is Lent.

Why? Well, once we’ve got past the birth of Jesus and the (slightly later) visit of the Magi, we then usually go to the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry at his baptism, having ignored the temptations, because we’re saving them for Lent. We then skip through the early and middle parts of his ministry, right up to the Transfiguration on the Last Sunday Before Lent. But then, instead of heading towards Jerusalem, we jump back to the wilderness temptations for the beginning of Lent and follow Jesus’ example of fasting and self-denial for forty days right before the end of his ministry rather than at the beginning. And while we’re doing it, we do another quick run through his public ministry.

As the introduction to one famous TV comedy show used to say every week, ‘Confused? You will be!’

Is it any wonder that many experienced Christians still don’t get a grip on the great biblical narrative when the church organises things in such an inconsistent way, and has done for centuries? In my weekly videos and sermons this year I’ve tried to bring some semblance of order to the post-Epiphany/pre-Lent period by concentrating on the Lectionary Gospel passages about the early and middle part of Jesus’ ministry, so that we can keep the story building. But once Lent kicks in, the continuity will go to pot.

So I have a suggestion. Make your Lent discipline one in which you read all four of the Gospels. At two chapters a day, you will get through them all in Lent, and that will be less than ten minutes’ reading each day.

Here is a suggested pattern. Because there are four documents to read – not strictly Four Gospels, but one Gospel and one Jesus according to four different writers – you will get a better flavour of each if you read them separately. I recommend that you begin with Mark. It was almost certainly the first to be written, it is the simplest, and Matthew and Luke clearly depend on it for some of their material.

Once you’ve read Mark, then read Matthew, the most Jewish of the Gospels, followed by Luke, the most Gentile of the four.

Finally, read John. Most scholars think it was the last to be written. John’s style and material are very different from the other three. While people puzzle about that difference, a worthy theory is that John expected his audience at the very least to know the content of Mark, so he sees no point in repetition.

Now this approach isn’t without its own problems. Mark, Matthew, and Luke will take you on a similar shaped story culminating in just one visit to Jerusalem by the adult Jesus. John, on the other hand, writes of three visits that Jesus makes to Jerusalem during his ministry. But you will get more of the ‘big story’ of Jesus’ life and ministry.

As I said, this is not a demanding discipline to try. There are actually forty-six days in Lent (because the Sundays are additional to the forty days). If you begin on Ash Wednesday, you will spend eight days in Mark, fourteen in Matthew, twelve in Luke, and either ten or eleven in John. You will finish around Good Friday or Holy Saturday, just in time to celebrate Easter.

I encourage you to try this. And if you do, I would love to hear how you get on. Please give me some feedback about how it goes for you. Let’s do something that engages deeply with Jesus this year.

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