If Easter hadn’t happened…
Don’t know if you enjoy the sliding door motif in stories. You run for the bus, and catch it, and on it you meet a mysterious stranger – and oh the adventures for good and ill that flow from that. Or you miss the bus by a whisker, are furious and frustrated, but actually spared the trauma you would have endured if you caught it. It can be fun to speculate like that. What would have happened if I said yes, instead of no, if I made that decision instead of the one I did – and so we can go on. But what about this one? What if Easter hadn’t happened. Or more precisely,...
Read MoreRemembering Friday…
We are sometimes a little uncomfortable with Good Friday, rushing past it quickly to arrive at Easter Sunday. So much nicer to start a day with chocolate eggs than to reflect on a day of execution. Yet unless we feel the weight of the Friday, we will miss much of the mystery of Easter. If you are a theologian you might say that a theology of suffering must precede a theology of glory, lest the latter becomes trite and superficial. So this Good Friday I have been noting the things I need to remember… I need to leave the last supper and walk to the Garden of Gethsemane. I need to pause – is...
Read MoreA week before Easter: Reflections on not being ready…
Matthew’s recollection of the events on Jesus’ final journey to Jerusalem are worrying. It’s about a week before his crucifixion, and Jesus has alerted his disciples that his most challenging days are almost upon him. As Matt 20:17-19 records it: “Now as Jesus was going up to Jerusalem he took the twelve disciples aside and said to them, ‘We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified....
Read MoreComplicated Loyalty: Reflections on Peter’s Denial of Jesus…
With Easter approaching, it’s likely just a matter of time until you are reminded that the most famous of Jesus’ disciples, Simon Peter, denied knowing who Jesus was not once, or even twice, but a brazen three times. While overall Peter gets an impressive grade as the first human leader of the early church, this lapse is always remembered. Often it is spoken of in cautionary terms: “If it could happen to Peter, it could happen to you.” It also seems to have plagued Peter for the rest of his days. If the traditional account of the martyrdom of Peter is correct, he...
Read MoreThe stories we forget to tell, the stories we don’t notice…
“They also serve who only stand and wait” is the famous last line of Milton’s autobiographical poem, “On his blindness”. Milton wrote it after he became blind, and was struggling with feelings of uselessness. The poem asks if God is only interested in those who can actively serve God with their work – and then dismisses the notion, for “God doth not need Either man’s work or his own gifts”. The liberating conclusion is that “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Accepting your limitations is seen as its own form of service...
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