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| The Quiet Day Group at Cores End 30th March 2019 where this talk was first given |
At the beginning of Lent we travel with Jesus into the
Wilderness and watch him deal with three choices at the end of forty days of
fasting. Will he turn stones into bread,
will he bow down to Satan in order to reign over the kingdoms of the world and
might he throw himself off the temple parapet in a spectacular show, trusting
that God would send angels to soften his fall?
On every occasion Jesus chooses the way of love rather than power.
As Lent ends we’ll once more stand, as it were, at Calvary and hear those who mock Jesus as he dies upon the cross. Once more temptation comes his way, this time from brutish by standers calling him to use power and come down from the cross.
As in the wilderness, Jesus stays put. He does not short circuit his suffering – he endures it, offering forgiveness to those who beat him, hammered him, spat upon him and cursed him. I’m sure that everything about him would have instinctively wanted to lash out against the injustice of it all. Yet Jesus, at the Cross Road, consciously and deliberately chooses the way of peace and the offer of forgiveness in place of the hand of violence and the cries of damnation.
Jesus is horrified that Simon Peter cuts of the ear of the High Priest in Gethsemane’s Garden. And upon the cross our Lord cries: Father forgive them, they know not what they do.
The cross is one of those moments when we see God, - when we see who God really is – the character of God expressed in the face and person of Jesus Christ. At the cross we see forgiveness and encounter love.
Jesus dies because, in love, he reached out to the marginalised and in doing so somehow scandalised his mission. Eating with tax collectors, curing those with skin diseases, giving the woman at the well a new-found dignity – well, it undermined the rules civic and religious leaders laid down.
Jesus preached outside the box. He shows us love incarnate. Look at the way Jesus lived, listen to his sermons and night time talks, look up and see not an empty cross but Jesus who hung and suffered there, and aren’t we left with the conclusion that love is simply, wonderfully and overwhelmingly in God’s DNA.
On every occasion Jesus chooses the way of love rather than power.
As Lent ends we’ll once more stand, as it were, at Calvary and hear those who mock Jesus as he dies upon the cross. Once more temptation comes his way, this time from brutish by standers calling him to use power and come down from the cross.
As in the wilderness, Jesus stays put. He does not short circuit his suffering – he endures it, offering forgiveness to those who beat him, hammered him, spat upon him and cursed him. I’m sure that everything about him would have instinctively wanted to lash out against the injustice of it all. Yet Jesus, at the Cross Road, consciously and deliberately chooses the way of peace and the offer of forgiveness in place of the hand of violence and the cries of damnation.
Jesus is horrified that Simon Peter cuts of the ear of the High Priest in Gethsemane’s Garden. And upon the cross our Lord cries: Father forgive them, they know not what they do.
The cross is one of those moments when we see God, - when we see who God really is – the character of God expressed in the face and person of Jesus Christ. At the cross we see forgiveness and encounter love.
Jesus dies because, in love, he reached out to the marginalised and in doing so somehow scandalised his mission. Eating with tax collectors, curing those with skin diseases, giving the woman at the well a new-found dignity – well, it undermined the rules civic and religious leaders laid down.
Jesus preached outside the box. He shows us love incarnate. Look at the way Jesus lived, listen to his sermons and night time talks, look up and see not an empty cross but Jesus who hung and suffered there, and aren’t we left with the conclusion that love is simply, wonderfully and overwhelmingly in God’s DNA.
Yet there is nothing sentimental about all this. It’s the hardest, most secure, yet most
sacrificial love we could ever think of.
Incarnation came with a risk. In the end that upside down message of Jesus about the first being last, turning the other cheek and forgiving seventy times seven was publicly and utterly rejected by the authorities.
The subtle temptation Jesus must have felt – much more nuanced I think than those recorded in the Wilderness, might have been to have watered down this gospel. To collaborate with power. Maybe we in the Church do that too often.
The radical challenge of the Sermon on the Mount becomes a call for personal holiness rather than social transformation.
Jesus did not shirk from the risk of incarnation. He kept walking to Jerusalem.
At the cross road Jesus chose to speak truth unto power.
When he was crushed and bruised, this Man of Sorrows so acquainted with grief, dies uttering words of forgiveness and offering love to both the penitent thief beside him and his mother who so faithfully kept watch at the foot of the cross until he breathed his last.
Thank God love has a power to endure. In fact, I suspect that is the central message of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
In his book: Hanging by a Thread - Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin in the Fields, tells the story of a forgotten part of town by the canal. Mabel and Arthur used to live there until they died in a gas explosion in the front bedroom of their home – their bodies were never found. For thirty years this canal area became greyer and greyer full of vandalism, a no-go area, a left behind place.
One July a sunflower unexpectedly grew next to Mable and Arthurs derelict house. It bloomed and suddenly there was colour. At first people loved it, they walked taller. But eventually it confused them. This beauty – ironically – seemed to threaten them. So, one evening a few of them tore down the sunflower and trampled upon it. It was crushed, seemingly destroyed, done away with.
Yet its seeds were ripe. In pulling the plant to pieces and treading it under foot those who wished to destroy the beauty had, in fact, released hundreds of ripe seeds around Mable and Arthur’s house. Many had been trodden into the ground and next spring germinated. The plants grew and at last there were flowers, dozens of sunflowers, upon Mable and Arthur’s grave.
Rob Bell has a book that says it all in the title: Love Wins.
Incarnation came with a risk. In the end that upside down message of Jesus about the first being last, turning the other cheek and forgiving seventy times seven was publicly and utterly rejected by the authorities.
The subtle temptation Jesus must have felt – much more nuanced I think than those recorded in the Wilderness, might have been to have watered down this gospel. To collaborate with power. Maybe we in the Church do that too often.
The radical challenge of the Sermon on the Mount becomes a call for personal holiness rather than social transformation.
Jesus did not shirk from the risk of incarnation. He kept walking to Jerusalem.
At the cross road Jesus chose to speak truth unto power.
When he was crushed and bruised, this Man of Sorrows so acquainted with grief, dies uttering words of forgiveness and offering love to both the penitent thief beside him and his mother who so faithfully kept watch at the foot of the cross until he breathed his last.
Thank God love has a power to endure. In fact, I suspect that is the central message of the Good News of Jesus Christ.
In his book: Hanging by a Thread - Sam Wells, Vicar of St Martin in the Fields, tells the story of a forgotten part of town by the canal. Mabel and Arthur used to live there until they died in a gas explosion in the front bedroom of their home – their bodies were never found. For thirty years this canal area became greyer and greyer full of vandalism, a no-go area, a left behind place.
One July a sunflower unexpectedly grew next to Mable and Arthurs derelict house. It bloomed and suddenly there was colour. At first people loved it, they walked taller. But eventually it confused them. This beauty – ironically – seemed to threaten them. So, one evening a few of them tore down the sunflower and trampled upon it. It was crushed, seemingly destroyed, done away with.
Yet its seeds were ripe. In pulling the plant to pieces and treading it under foot those who wished to destroy the beauty had, in fact, released hundreds of ripe seeds around Mable and Arthur’s house. Many had been trodden into the ground and next spring germinated. The plants grew and at last there were flowers, dozens of sunflowers, upon Mable and Arthur’s grave.
Rob Bell has a book that says it all in the title: Love Wins.
I’ve been thinking recently of those two state funerals
India held for two of its citizens that says so much – the state funerals of
Gandhi and Mother Theresa. Held, not to
honour a president or a person of wealth but a man who owned nothing but a loin
cloth and a woman who said she saw the face of Jesus in the sick of Kolkata.
Love wins.
At the cross road of
Jesus life, as he took the risk of incarnation, Jesus chose love, sought peace
and offered forgiveness. Not a cheap
love, but one worth dying for.
Love wins.
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