Month: March 2021

In today’s Lectionary, Judas goes out and betrays Jesus. We don’t really know what went on in his head. It seems that afterwards he was ashamed of what he had done. In our lives, betrayal it seems to me is almost always more complicated than we imagine. But we love to hate the traitor. In America there’s this historical figure called Benedict Arnold, and they all love to hate him, because (I assume) it makes them feel good about who they are, gives them a sense of national cohesion. And who decides who is the traitor? The press like to bandy that word about (with minimal justification sometimes). Maybe that’s also one of the privileges of writing history – you get to decide who the traitors were.

However… just remember those last days of Jesus – the swords were sharpened all around him.

A bad kind of despair is when you’ve worked until you can give no more and it feels like you’ve been wasting your time. The Isaiah reading in today’s lectionary speaks about that… (49:4) ‘But I said, “I have laboured in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity; yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God.”‘ But in the end there’s a note of hope – more than hope… (49:6)'”It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”‘ God’s saying, ‘Even though you’ve failed, you’ve kept faith, so I’m going to make you part of an even greater achievement’. There are specifics too – Christians associate this ‘servant’ with Jesus. And the greater thing is something that’s mentioned sometimes in the Old Testament – God’s hopes for all nations to come under the umbrella of God’s love. Surely this applies to Christians too. There’s no excuse for chauvinism.

Much cheer in the English (sic) media about the relaxing of some COVID restrictions. But I’m not ready to be cheerful yet because;-

(1) Case numbers seem to have (almost) stopped reducing, even though hospital admissions must be way down. And that’s just the UK.

(2) It’s Holy Week. Jesus’ conflict with the authorities is coming to a head. A bleak time is ahead.

So, a day for remembering Jesus’ donkeycade entering Jerusalem. That’s a mixed message – but I think we might be able to handle it – after all ISTR a Queen of the Netherlands used to ride a bicycle. I have no problem either with a national leadership that’s no strangers to the bicycle or to a bit of shab. What they do – that’s important.

And what Jesus did, and what sank him (spoiler alert – he’s alive), was to live as humble as he acted, and to respect people who were poor and sick and outcast and care about what happened to them.

Small deposits of iciness in the corner by wall at Torside Crossing this morning. I think it’s likely to be hail or possibly graupel, rather than snow. There was a little whiteness on the high parts around the valley.

As to tomorrow’s celebration, Palm Sunday…. I’d sooner the crowds had developed an enduring love for Jesus rather than waving palm branches then changing their minds. It makes you wonder about people in our generation who are rather too fond of waving flags.

Last night I had a dream. I don’t often remember dreams. And I certainly don’t remember one like this – for I woke up feeling guilty for what I’d done in the dream. I was at some kind of training event in an old manor or some place like that, and I stayed too long at my break. I arrived late at the next session, which was some kind of role play about a workplace grievance. Soon after I got there, the leader turned to me and asked what I thought or felt or some such. Not really knowing what was going on, and wanting to be provocative, I said that I blamed the management, they were lying. The leader turned away, obviously upset. I had hurt her feelings because she took this as a comment on the actual management of the course, not the fictitious management of the role play. I had hurt her feelings, and woke up feeling guilty.

It was only a dream, the guilt is long gone. But it was thought-provoking. It crossed my mind that with my perception masked by apologetic habits, I often don’t realise that I have the power to hurt people’s feelings. I had long left home, before I was grown-up enough to realise that I had the power to hurt my mother’s feelings for example.

In Sunday’s Lectionary, “118:22 The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. 118:23 This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.” Jesus, the stone the builders rejected, and whose person and ways are still rejected. At times when I feel most powerless, though, I like to remember that God can do stuff too.

Meanwhile , the cornerstone of our UK free society is capitalism. So I’m glad to see today that in our village, capitalism is alive and well. The cafes and little shops are letting in young men singly and in groups with no face coverings, because if they don’t they will go out of business. That’s how things are where everyone’s anxious over their livelihood.

Based on Psalm 118:1 in the Lectionary for Sunday…

“O give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!”
We thank you God
for the love that lasts,
beyond our faith and our faithfulness,
through the times when we know your love,
and when it seems absent;
we thank you our God and our rock.

We are in the middle of watching two different TV crime drama series. It’s fair to say that we don’t completely understand what’s going on. Maybe in the last episode we shall. We may at least know whodunnit or who’s doing it and what it is they’re doing. Or maybe we shan’t. Our comprehension may be limited, even if there is a helpful glossary to explain what a CHIS is.

In Sunday’s Lectionary, the writer of John’s gospel tells us, “His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.” One takeaway from that is that it may sometimes be for us like it was for the disciples – the things we don’t understand now, we will understand later. And yes, it really does work like that sometimes – “Cheer up, my sister, walk in the sunshine, we’ll understand it all by and by”, as the song goes. But you can’t insist on the truth of this, especially to someone whose life has been ruined. And common experience also tells us that we sometimes never understand what has happened to us, this side of the grave. May God give us grace to keep on living even through the dark valley.

Also, what was it that the disciples understood? It was a fearful thing. Jesus’ agonising death was essential to his ‘glory’, lifted up, but on an instrument of torture. In this suffering, Jesus comes close to us in our predicament. He is the friend who walks with us through the valley of shadows.

And with it something exotic is coming to northern Europe. Adults and children worship the coming king with branches or little pieces of palm from the Middle East – or they would if it weren’t for a pandemic. The props come from a long way off, just like our faith does. Even the more local donkey has not been a big feature of our daily life for a long time. The crowd welcomes a ‘king’, but it’s a long time since monarchs wielded any real power in our part of the world. The Bible is a long way away, in space and time. But there are points of correspondence with our life. The donkey symbolism represents a humble leader – but a powerful influence nevertheless. It is said that Churchill described Clement Attlee as “A modest man with much to be modest about.” Yet Attlee had a powerful impact on the life of the UK.