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John 20: 1-18
It’s easy to make mistakes at dawn. When the sun isn’t quite up. When shadows still seem deep and dark. Easy to miss things. Easy to see things that aren’t there. Easy to see the things you want to see. Or the things you’re most scared of seeing. So in a way it’s not surprising that they didn’t really know what was going on. Mary thought the authorities had opened the tomb and moved the body. Peter saw the linen wrappings lying there, and didn’t know what to think. Who steals a body in the middle of the night, but stops to unwrap it? The other disciple saw and ‘believed’. But he didn’t say anything. And they went home, leaving Mary weeping and wondering outside the tomb. Not much rejoicing at the empty tomb on that first Easter morning. Not much Easter hope. A lot of confusion. A lot of uncertainty. Lots of people running about and thinking their own thoughts, but no-one quite brave enough to say it. They didn’t know what was going on. But Christ had risen from the dead, sin and death and hell had lost their grip on creation, and the world had changed completely overnight. It’s easy to make mistakes at dawn. But daylight is coming.
We’ve been through quite a journey together over the last week. I stood up in front of you a couple of weeks ago and told you what I saw: a church carrying a lot of hurt. I stand up before you today, on Easter morning, and I think I see something different. But just like the disciples, I’m not sure I’m quite brave enough to say it. It’s all glimpses, feelings, things half-guessed at. The way the numbers at our services crept slowly up as the week went past. The depth of the silence in church during the services. The people I know have talked about hurts they haven’t dared to share before. We’ve had a good Holy Week. God has been at work here. In silence here, in conversation there, in song somewhere else. Something has happened. I feel it. Do you? Something has happened. But at the moment, when the shadows still seem deep and dark, it still feels too uncertain to say it. It’s easy to see things that aren’t there. Easy to see the things you want to see. It’s easy to make mistakes at dawn. But daylight is coming.
Things are clearer in the daylight. The shadows shorten and disappear, as we begin to move into the day. The empty tomb, still dark and full of uncertainty an hour before, is now filled with light. When Mary looks in once more there is no longer room for uncertainty. Angels in white sit where the body had been, one at the head, one at the foot. The tomb can no longer be mistaken for the scene of a late night grave-robbery. This is not a crime scene. It is holy ground. Wherever the body has gone, it is clear that God has been at work. A miracle has happened. No-one could still think that he was stolen away by the authorities. Could they? But Mary does. She looks in, and sees the angels. And still she thinks that ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him’. She turns around and sees Jesus. And still she can’t take it in. She asks him if he has taken the body away. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. She is half out of her mind with grief and confusion. Mary, tears running down her face, can’t see what’s in front of her eyes. And when she does, all she wants to do is hold on to Jesus and never let go. Now she’s been through losing him once, she doesn’t want to risk losing him again. He has to almost forcibly remove her and remind her what it means that he has risen. The past has gone. There is a future to prepare for. The disciples must be told, and Mary, apostle to the apostles, has a job to do. Things are clearer in the daylight. And now she can let go of the fears of the past she can see what’s there. Now she can live with the risk of trusting Jesus again, she can move into the future he has opened up for her.
I think something has happened to us, between us, within us, this Holy Week. And as we move on from Holy Week, into the consultation morning, into becoming a parish in our own right, into a new future, I believe that things will be different. But we have to be willing to let go of the past if we’re going to be able to live in that future. Like Mary, it’s very easy for us to be so bound up in the fears and hurts of the past that even when the reason for those hurts and fears is gone we can’t see it. We ask Jesus where he’s hidden the body and whether he can point us in the right direction. We fail to see the truth of where we are and what’s going on because we’re still seeing where we were and what was happening. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic. I think we’ve done a lot together towards helping the hurts we’ve been carrying with us to be healed. Sometimes these are things that will take a long time to really mend, but progress has been made. A corner has been turned. But human beings are funny about their hurts. Amputees still get twinges in the limbs that aren’t there any more. We hold on to hurt when all reason for it is long gone. Mary struggles to believe that Jesus has risen, and then struggles again to trust that it will be alright if she takes the risk of letting go. God has been at work, but we have to trust that things will be different if we’re going to move into the future he is calling us into. Because he is calling us. It’s a new day, Christ is risen, and he calls us to do a new thing. He calls us to hope. He calls us to trust. He calls us to step into a future that can be different from the past. It’s risky. It means letting go of the hurts and the fears. The past has gone, buried in the tomb. There is a future to prepare for, and we have a job to do. Things are clearer in the daylight. And now, if we can let go of the fears of the past we can see what’s there. If we can live with the risk of trusting Jesus again, we can move into the future he has opened up for us through his resurrection.
We have walked alongside Jesus in the company of the disciples through the public adulation of Palm Sunday, the intimacy of a meal at Mary and Martha’s house in Bethany, as he taught the crowds who came to the festival, and as he spoke in private to the disciples he knew were going to desert him. And now we come to the Last Supper – Jesus and his disciples gather together to celebrate Passover together, and Jesus knows this is the last time he will be able to teach them. Before the night is out they will all be scattered. And these same disciples, scared, guilty, fallible, will be all that is left to continue his work and proclaim the Kingdom. What lesson should he leave them with? What would you have left them with? Some words of encouragement? A parable? Some guidance as to how they should organise themselves?
Jesus gives no spoken parable, but acts out his message. Perhaps because what he needed to say could be communicated no other way. He took off his robe, tied a towel around his waist, took up a basin of water, and did the work of a servant: washing his disciples’ feet. These were feet that had been walking in sandals along dusty, filthy, streets all day. They would be smelly, covered in sweat, dust, and whatever else collected in streets without modern sewage systems, where beasts of burden were used universally. Washing feet was the lowliest of low tasks. Not something to be idly chosen as a symbolic example of humility, as we might regard footwashing now, when the chances of encountering genuinely unpleasantly dirty feet is slim. This was genuinely unpleasant. Jesus wasn’t just making some symbolic point about humble service, he was performing humble service. In the most basic, simplest way, he was teaching them something central to his life and ministry, and central to the lives and ministries of those who would be following him. Jesus had come primarily as one who serves, and that is best understood not in some spiritual, elevated way, but as a man washing manure off of people’s feet.
The foot-washing teaches the disciples something vital about who Jesus is. John says that ‘knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands’ Jesus washed their feet. He had been given all power, all authority by God, and his choice was to set that aside and to wash feet. Jesus is the rightful Lord of all creation, but rather than coming to impose that authority on others or demand it be recognised he has come to serve. Unless they really understand this they will never understand what he is seeking to accomplish through his coming suffering. He has the power to resist his death. He could choose another way, but he has come to serve, not to be served, and to give his life for others, not to save his own at their expense.
There is another lesson Jesus seeks to teach his disciples, though, and it is so important that he adds words to his actions. He has washed their feet, and they are his disciples, who are to follow his example in all things. If Jesus, the Messiah, the one given all things by the Father, has not held back from performing the most menial act of service for them, then none of them should think of themselves as too important to perform any act of service for each other. The church that would come after him must be built on this sort of service, says Jesus, service that does not seek glory or recognition, service that does not hold itself aloof from the least attractive tasks.
And from this service flows the commandment to love one another. Service that is compelled speaks only of oppression and injustice, of one person’s power over another. But the service Jesus calls his disciples to is a service that is not compelled but chosen. Such service speaks of love. Love expressed in service is to be the mark of the church. It is to be what identifies people as followers of Jesus: “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
That can seem like a heavy challenge to us, because we are often aware how short we fall of that ideal. The church is often marked by hierarchy, power, and a desire to assert its own importance rather than by humble loving service of others, and the same can often be said of individual Christians. These words can be heard with a sort of dread, a recognition that they form a sort of impossible ideal. But I think we miss the point if we hear them like that. These are not the words of a despairing Jesus trying to push his fracturing band of followers back together. He knows they will be broken. He knows they will be scattered. He knows that they will fail to live up to these words. And yet he does not despair. He knows that what seems like a broken group of failures will build the church. He knows that out of the apparent pointlessness and tragedy of his suffering and death, God will be glorified. When he looks to the future he does not see failure, he sees glory.
So don’t hear these words as words of condemnation, because they are words spoken by Jesus to the disciples he loves, in anticipation of the glory he and they will bring to the Father. Hear them as an invitation, an invitation to continue walking with him the path of loving service. An invitation to be the church that points people to Jesus. However unworthy you think you are. However frequently you or those around you fail to live up to it. ‘Serve. Love. Because by this, everyone will know that you are my disciples.’
I dare not show you a picture of the real thing- it’s even more frightenning. Next year I hope to be a bit more on top of what I need to do…and of course have delegated a few more things to people I have my (or maybe God has his?) eye on!!
Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.
Here is the version I didn’t preach.
( John 12: 1-11)
Bethany was not far from Jerusalem, and Lazarus’ house was clearly one Jesus knew well. He had been a guest here several times before, and this would have been perhaps the final opportunity for him to stay somewhere safe, amongst friends, before the suffering he knew was to come. Mary and Martha are perhaps best known to us from two other stories about the sisters: the resurrection of their brother Lazarus, and the occasion when Jesus taught in their house and the two sisters had rather different priorities in receiving their guest. In the first story, it is Mary’s words ‘Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died’ that cause Jesus to weep. In the second, Martha sought to prepare a meal and play the hostess. Mary instead simply sat at his feet listening to his teaching. Much to Martha’s surprise, Jesus commended her sister and told her to stop worrying. Just as in the story we’ve heard today, Mary responded to Jesus in a way that was unconventional, offending those around her, and showing a deep personal devotion. And in both stories, Jesus commends her risky actions and rebukes those who are offended. Mary is shown consistently as a model disciple with a very close relationship to Jesus, an example of a vulnerable love that risks being misunderstood and condemned.
The story told here, though, is almost identical to one told in the other gospels. In Mark and Matthew’s accounts Jesus is in Bethany when he is anointed on the head with expensive perfume by an unnamed woman, to which all the disciples, not just Judas, object that the money would better have been used on the poor. Luke’s version of the story, however, is slightly different. He sets the story in Galilee, earlier in Jesus’ ministry, while Jesus was at a Pharisee’s house. The unnamed woman not only anoints Jesus’s feet with the perfume and wipes them with her hair she also washes them with her tears and kisses them. And Luke gives a different explanation for such extraordinary devotion: the woman is a sinner, forgiven by Jesus. Church tradition since the third century has linked these women together: Mary of Bethany and the unnamed sinful woman, and has linked them to another disciple of Jesus: Mary of Magdalene, the first witness to the resurrection, who went to anoint his body in the tomb even though she knew it was dangerous to be associated with him.
It may or may not be the historical truth that these women were all one and the same. What is certainly true, however, is that all of them were characterised by a passionate risky devotion to Jesus. And that devotion is spelt out in the story of the anointing. The perfume of pure nard was worth about 300 denarii. A denarii was the average daily wage, 300 could maintain a family for a year. When Mary cracks open that clay jar and the fragrance fills the house, that’s a year’s wages being thrown away in a single act of extravagant love. A year’s wages. Think about how much that would be worth in today’s money. A year’s wages. Think again about Judas’ protest that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Sounds a lot more sensible and reasonable now, doesn’t it? She takes a year’s wages and pours them out over Jesus’s feet. It was probably her life savings, her dowry, maybe her brother’s and sister’s savings too. This is her security, her future, maybe her family’s future too that she is smashing open and watching pour away over Jesus’ feet.
And then she wipes his feet with her hair. Even in our culture this is an act of incredible intimacy and humility, but in the culture of the day a respectable woman’s hair was covered when in company. For a woman to wear her hair down suggested a looseness of morals or someone who grief or calamity had pushed beyond the bounds of respectability. This was shameless devotion, a love that almost invited misinterpretation, that was bound to cause scandal and shock, that left her exposed and vulnerable, a love so strong that it had pushed her to the point where such things didn’t matter. What others thought didn’t matter. The cost to herself, her reputation, her security, didn’t matter. All that mattered was Him. And she knew that He would not misunderstand. He would not abuse her vulnerability.
Maybe it’s hard to imagine having that sort of love for Jesus. Taking risks so acute. Being so willing to be vulnerable in front of others. It seems very un-English. Too extreme. If it wasn’t that Jesus commends it we’d be tempted to call it ‘fanaticism’, ‘hysteria’ or ‘obsession’. We’re tempted to dismiss it, find good reasons why what Mary did just isn’t sensible or appropriate for us. The difficulty is that this starts to make us sound uncomfortably like Judas. ‘Now obviously we can admire Mary’s devotion, but really, where would we be if we all acted like that? Someone has to pay the bills.’ I think this story challenges us to ask why we are so quick to dismiss Mary and her love for Jesus. Why does such extravagant devotion make us feel uncomfortable? Do we find ourselves thinking (like Martha) that we’d all have been better off if she’d just stayed in the kitchen with her sister?
I think the story suggests there are two big reasons why people feel uncomfortable with Mary’s love, and they’re not reasons any of us are going to feel comfortable with. For some of us it may be because, like Judas and the disciples, our priorities are not Jesus’ priorities, and our vision of Jesus is too small. Mary sees what no-one else does, that Jesus is going to his death, and that all she can do is to prepare him for it. It’s something no-one else wants to face up to, even though Jesus has been telling them for months. Jesus is days away from his death, seeking solace and support in the company of his friends, and no-one wants to recognise it except Mary. Maybe we need to bring our priorities and our vision of Jesus and his Kingdom before Him and ask Him to break and remake them?
For others of us it may be because, like the Pharisee in Luke’s version of the story, we have been forgiven little, and so we only love a little. Jesus described the Pharisee like this not because he saw him as a good upstanding man who hadn’t done much that needed forgiving, but because he saw him as someone who needed a great deal of forgiveness that he had never asked for. The Pharisee’s love for God was limited because he had never really felt his need of God, and never known how much God wanted to forgive him. Maybe we need to come before God and ask for Him to show us his love and give us his forgiveness?
The Mary in this story may not be the Mary who would rise early in the morning with spices to anoint Jesus’ body after his burial as this one had anointed him before, she may not be the woman the church would remember as the ‘apostle to the apostles’, but she is certainly a challenging example to us of the sort of disciples we are called to be. Our church has a mission statement: “St John’s is here to encourage and enable all people to recognise and to celebrate God’s unconditional love.” What sort of disciples are we called to be to make that a reality? To enable all people to recognise and celebrate God’s unconditional love? Mary could do that. Could we? And if we can’t, what are the things preventing us? This is a chance for us to come bring those things before God and ask for his healing and his strength.
And here is the one I did….was a nightmare to decide which!
Bethany was not far from Jerusalem, and Lazarus’ house was clearly one Jesus knew well. He had been a guest here several times before, and this would have been perhaps the final opportunity for him to stay somewhere safe, amongst friends, before the suffering he knew was to come. Mary and Martha are perhaps best known to us from two other stories about the sisters: the resurrection of their brother Lazarus, and the occasion when Jesus taught in their house and the two sisters had rather different priorities in receiving their guest. In the first story, it is Mary’s words ‘Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died’ that cause Jesus to weep. In the second, Martha sought to prepare a meal and play the hostess. Mary instead simply sat at his feet listening to his teaching. Much to Martha’s surprise, Jesus commended her sister and told her to stop worrying. Just as in the story we’ve heard today, Mary responded to Jesus in a way that was unconventional, offending those around her, and showing a deep personal devotion. And in both stories, Jesus commends her risky actions and rebukes those who are offended. Mary is shown consistently as having a very close relationship to Jesus, an example of a vulnerable love that risks being misunderstood and condemned, though Jesus consistently refuses to do so. Church tradition has identified Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalene, who had a similarly close relationship with Jesus.
That devotion is spelt out in the story of the anointing. The perfume of pure nard was worth about 300 denarii. A denarii was the average daily wage, 300 could maintain a family for a year. When Mary cracks open that clay jar and the fragrance fills the house, that’s a year’s wages being thrown away in a single act of extravagant love. A year’s wages. Think about how much that would be worth in today’s money. A year’s wages. Think again about Judas’ protest that it could have been sold and the money given to the poor. Sounds a lot more sensible and reasonable now, doesn’t it? She takes a year’s wages and pours them out over Jesus’s feet. It was probably her life savings, her dowry, maybe her brother’s and sister’s savings too. This is her security, her future, maybe her family’s future too that she is smashing open and watching pour away over Jesus’ feet.
And then she wipes his feet with her hair. Even in our culture this is an act of incredible intimacy and humility, but in the culture of the day a respectable woman’s hair was covered when in company. For a woman to wear her hair down suggested a looseness of morals or someone who grief or calamity had pushed beyond the bounds of respectability. This was shameless devotion, a love that almost invited misinterpretation, that was bound to cause scandal and shock, that left her exposed and vulnerable, a love so strong that it had pushed her to the point where such things didn’t matter. What others thought didn’t matter. The cost to herself, her reputation, her security, didn’t matter. All that mattered was Him. And she knew that He would not misunderstand. He would not abuse her vulnerability.
Maybe it’s hard to imagine having that sort of love for Jesus. Taking risks so acute. Being so willing to be vulnerable in front of others. It seems very un-English. Too extreme. If it wasn’t that Jesus commends it we’d be tempted to call it ‘fanaticism’, ‘hysteria’ or ‘obsession’. We’re tempted to dismiss it, find good reasons why what Mary did just isn’t sensible or appropriate for us. The difficulty is that this starts to make us sound uncomfortably like Judas. ‘Now obviously we can admire Mary’s devotion, but really, where would we be if we all acted like that? Someone has to pay the bills.’ I think this story challenges us to ask why we are so quick to dismiss Mary and her love for Jesus. Why does such extravagant devotion make us feel uncomfortable? Do we find ourselves thinking (like Martha) that we’d all have been better off if she’d just stayed in the kitchen with her sister?
I think the story suggests a reason why people feel uncomfortable with Mary’s love, though it’s not a reason any of us are going to feel comfortable with. It may be because, like Judas and the disciples, our priorities are not Jesus’ priorities, and our vision of Jesus is too small. Mary sees what no-one else does, that Jesus is going to his death, and that all she can do is to prepare him for it. It’s something no-one else wants to face up to, even though Jesus has been telling them for months. Jesus is days away from his death, seeking solace and support in the company of his friends, and no-one wants to recognise it except Mary. She may choose to express it in a way that more respectable people feel uncomfortable with, in a way that is unwise, imprudent, but Jesus takes what she offers and explains it in a way that transforms it, that makes this vulnerable, risky, misunderstood action something that will be remembered and honoured in the church.
This is what Jesus longs to do with all of us, to take what we bring, however we or others might perceive it, and transform it into something he uses for his Kingdom. Maybe we are like Mary, and need to bring our offerings to have Jesus transform them. Maybe we are like Judas and the disciples and need to bring our priorities and our vision of Jesus and his Kingdom before Him and ask Him to break and remake them. Whatever our need is, tonight we have the opportunity to come before Him as we are, offering all that we can, in the knowledge that he can and will transform and heal us.
Judas
(John 13:21-32)
Judas gets a very bad press. None of the gospel writers have a good word to say about him. For all of them he is first and foremost the man who betrayed Jesus, and this is how they describe him even in the lists of names of the twelve. John says that he was corrupt – stealing the disciples’ money for himself. Matthew says he was greedy – plotting with the chief priests to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. Luke and John say he was possessed by the devil, presumably feeling that’s the only explanation possible for his actions. Nor did it stop there. Christian tradition has tended to see him as almost the model betrayer, the perfect example of the sin. Dante, in his description of Hell, had Judas in the very deepest pit, being chewed up by Satan himself in eternal torment. People still say “You Judas!”, even if mostly for comic effect nowadays. It’s hard to feel any sympathy for Judas, indeed it is hard to even relate to him as a person. We are given so little to go on. So when we come to hear our reading today: Jesus identifies him as the one who will betray him, and Satan enters into his heart, it’s easy to just write him off as ‘a bad-un’.
That would be a mistake. The way the gospels portray him tells us more about the way the disciples saw him than the way Jesus did. Judas was one of the inner circle, called to follow Jesus, and then chosen as one of the Twelve. He was trusted with the group’s money. He went everywhere with Jesus. He was taught by him, saw the miracles… Jesus trusted him. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that Jesus didn’t really trust him, think that Jesus was forewarned and never let his guard down. You can’t be betrayed if you don’t trust. And Judas’ failings were not as unique as we might think. Satan may have entered into Judas, but he spoke temptation to Jesus through Peter. Judas may have stolen the disciples’ money for himself, but James and John conspired with their mother to get places of honour over the other disciples in the Kingdom. Judas may have plotted to betray Jesus with the chief priests for money, but Peter disowned him publicly three times rather than stand alongside him in his trial. And all of the disciples abandoned him in the end. None of them were loyal. Was there only one betrayer and eleven faithful amongst the disciples, or were all twelve of them guilty of betrayals, disloyalty, and failure of nerve in the end? And Jesus foresaw it all, told all of them that they would betray him, and still chose them all, trusted them all. The writers of the gospels may have seen Judas as guilty of a unique betrayal, but it doesn’t look like Jesus singled him out like that. His words about Judas, predicting his betrayal, parallel his words to Peter, predicting his, and for that matter also parallel his earlier words to all of the disciples, predicting their betrayal. Jesus had no good disciples and bad disciples, he just had the twelve, his closest friends, all of whom would betray and abandon him before the end.
It’s always easier for us to find the villain of the story than to admit there might not have been one, especially when it’s a story we’ve played a dubious part in ourselves. If we can point to someone else as the one who is ‘really’ to blame, or certainly far more blameworthy than we are, then it lets us off the hook. We can avoid examining ourselves, avoid asking the awkward questions, avoid facing up to our own guilt, our own need to repent and accept forgiveness. Because the fact is that even the greatest saints of the church are not without their faults. And the disciples had to come to recognise this.
As we walk alongside Jesus in Holy week it may be easy to forget that this requires us, for most of the way, to walk alongside Judas too. What might we learn from walking in his shoes? What might we learn about ourselves in our reluctance to see ourselves in the role of Judas? Are we betrayers of trust? Deniers of friendship? Or, like most of the disciples, simply those who find that whatever high ideals we might claim, when faced with difficult conflicts we find it easier to run away. Do we find ways to avoid seeing ourselves in Judas? Do ways of downplaying our own failings and exaggerating his come easily to us? Inventing hierarchies of blameworthiness is something we are all prone to. We may be bad, but we’re not as bad as him… As long as we can find someone who is a worse sinner than us, we fool ourselves into thinking, we can’t really be that bad. And that fooling ourselves stops us from facing our guilt. It stops us from looking Jesus in the eye and accepting his forgiveness, his love, and his trust.
Because the truly shocking thing we must face up to when we walk in Judas’ shoes is that Jesus loved and trusted him. Even knowing what he had done and was going to do, Jesus loved and trusted him to the end. We may fail, but we are still trusted by Jesus. Following a betrayed Master, we must trust each other just as he does – knowing that sometimes we will ourselves be betrayed and hurt – and that sometimes we will betray and hurt those who trust us. When we do not recognise this, when we try to hold on to our idea that others are worse than us, we become self-righteous, legalistic, morally cocky, haughty. Our denial of our own betrayals leads us to an even deeper betrayal, the betrayal of ourselves, and the reality of who we are. We try to be something we are not because we cannot accept that we can be trusted as we really are.
The sort of trust that Jesus showed in Judas, that we are called to show to others, is impossible without forgiveness. But how can we be forgiven if we fail to recognise where we and those around us have betrayed, denied, deserted? It is an unpleasant truth, but one we must face up to if we are to find a new start, if we are to learn how to trust again.
The story of Peter is a helpful counterpoint to the story of Judas, and it points to a deeper truth than the demonization of Judas the betrayer – here was a man who realized that he was himself guilty of the most horrendous betrayal. And he faced up to it, and accepted Jesus’ forgiveness. The tragedy of Judas is not that he was guilty of a betrayal of a greater magnitude than Peter’s, but that he couldn’t bear to look Jesus in the eye and accept the forgiveness he offered.
So let us face up to our betrayals and betrayers, let us offer forgiveness and accept that we are forgiven. Let us never forget that we can trust and be trusted as those called, warts and all, to be our Lord’s disciples.
the annual re-enactment of the passion of our Lord. We began well this morning commemorating the entry into Jerusalem, blessing palms and participating in the passion story. It was a fairly simple communion service otherwise and we even sang a new hymn ‘come and see’ which fitted very appropriately during the administration of communion. All of this after the vicarage Lent group drew to a close last night in watching ‘The Passion’- Mel Gibsons film. It’s a film during which there is much violence and suffering but several moments within that film really touched me. Most striking was the foot washing- something I feel is central to my own understanding of ministry and something I felt was very key in my calling to serve the church I am currently licensed to.
Then this morning one of my team gave me this extract from Tom Wright’s book ‘From the scriptures, the cross, and the power of God’.
‘I’m doing this for you – yes, you, not just the person sitting next to you. And if you let me wash you, the sad parts, the lonely parts, the messy and muddled parts, the parts you wish with all your heart could be healed.’
It’s a healthy reminder to me in my first post of ’sole charge’ that God seeks to wash me too.
So Lord, do this for the people around me, work through me this week but do it for me too.
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