We first arrived in Chile not long after a major earthquake in September 2015. The pictures of damage caused by the Tsunami that followed were seen around the world- ships tossed onto the land, flooding and roads broken up, houses destroyed and lives lost. The first thing we did as we moved into our apartment was to read the earthquake advice and make sure we knew all the exits and had a cash of equipment, axes, crowbar, and torch, that we could use to extract ourselves if necessary. The secret of course is to be prepared, or as the earthquake advice leaflet says: ‘Take an active role in your safety’ A brutal massacre That could be the theme of this short passage in Luke's account of Jesus' teaching that ends with his lament over Jerusalem. Jesus has just heard of a recent massacre of Galileans by Roman soldiers struck down as they worshipped. Pilate then ordered that their blood should be mingled with the blood of the animals they had brought to sacrifice. The worshippers are taken unawares and unprepared, they have no means to defend themselves and no time to escape. Jesus is making a point about their innocence. This is not an act of Divine judgment as some had said but an example of the pointless brutality for which Pilate was well known. A tragic accident The same point is made, in a different way as Jesus reminds his listeners of a tragic accident that had recently happened in Jerusalem. One of the defensive towers on the walls of Jerusalem had collapsed and crushed 18 innocent bystanders. The point is made again, they are not to blame for the fact that they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nor is this a sign of an angry god taking it out on wayward humanity. This is just a tragic accident! However, Jesus ends this description of innocent suffering with the chilling words: “But unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” Luke 13: 3 Complacent crowds The common assumption in Jesus' day was that ‘Bad things happen to bad people’. The book of Job is an example of this kind of wisdom. Job’s comforters attempt to get Job to confess his sins since he must surely have done something terrible to deserve such suffering. The reverse was also true, in so far as those who prospered were assumed to be blessed by God. The so-called, ‘Prosperity Gospel’ still has a strong appeal among many Christians today, equating our comfortable lifestyle with a God who seems to have a bias towards the rich rather than the poor. It is this complacency that Jesus is determined to challenge with these chilling words. For the second time he says forcefully: “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” Luke 13: 5 The Parable of the Fig tree Clare once made me a cushion decorated with fig leaves. It is very precious to me as it represents a difficult time in my ministry when there seemed to be no ‘Fruit’, a barren time. I looked for other openings, applied for another post, but nothing worked out. Clare, however, must have had this parable in her mind as she stitched it because she gave it to me just as a new project began with my Bishop’s backing and an exciting 3 years of growth and blessing began. The lesson I take from this parable is that times of barrenness, when nothing seems to be happening are not a sign of God’s disfavour but of His Love and Mercy. Times like those are times when we should be growing in other ways, not maybe the showy fruit but the deep roots of faith. Only when those roots are established can the Fig tree bear the weight of the fruit. Christ in the wilderness - The Eagles This is very much the theme of Stanly Spencer's wilderness series, painted in a time when Spencer was in a wilderness of his own. He had divorced his wife for another woman but the relationship had not worked out. Hie erotic paintings featuring this new woman in his life had not been well received! To add to all this gloom Spencer relived the trauma of the Great War as Britain battle for survival. It was a time to reset and renew his life and the Wilderness series provided just the means to do so. In the eagles, he reflects on the violence of the world, maybe with the passage in Luke's gospel in mind. The Eagles gorge on a young deer, ‘Nature raw in tooth and claw’ we might reflect, but this is not the ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ where the lion is to lie down with the lamb. Jesus looks away, he too is headed for a cruel and agonizing death, an innocent victim of our cruel world. Just in case we are tempted to point the finger at those terrible Romans or is it Russians we are reminded that Christ died for the sins of all because we all share in the violence of this fallen world. Jesus lies prone like the fallen deer, maybe to remind us that his body and blood feed us too, for through his death we like the fig tree are given a second chance and given a good manuring! An opportunity to start again, to reimagine the future, to reset the agenda, or as Jesus puts it to repent. Maybe this is what Spencer was so desperately asking of his friends and family. Wilderness years are not lost years, but waiting years as we examine our lives ready for the next move forward. We do not know what that will be but we must be prepared. Jesus’ parable then doesn’t represent a barren tree but a growing tree that is about to fruit, given time. “We should wait”, the gardener says before we uproot it and so he digs around it so the water can reach the roots and manures it so that the rich mineral can nourish the soil. Repentance? Part of the process by which I came through my wilderness was by what I would like to call ‘Reimagining’ my ministry. Why was it not bearing fruit? What could I do to change that? I actually took time out to study and re-examined what I believed Parish ministry to be. By the end of this process, I was a very different person and approached parish life in a completely different way. Smell the Coffee! That’s the way we talk about repentance today. It is a call to wake up and realise where we are heading and just what is ahead of us. Are we sleepwalking into a disaster? If so it will be entirely of our own making. We have been given time to think, to change, to reimaging our future but we have been asleep. “Wake up, ‘smell the coffee’. Lent Lent, is rightly understood as a time of repentance in which we reflect on our life choices and ask whether we are going in the right direction. We have time and space. We have a loving and merciful God who patiently watches over us watering and nourishing us with His gracious gifts so that we can bear abundant fruit. So let’s be fruitful!Rev Simon Brignall
At the North-East corner of the Mount of Olives near the site of the tombs of the prophets Haggai, Malachi, and Zecharia is a lovely little chapel called Dominus flevit, built in the shape of a tear and designed by the famous Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi. As you kneel in prayer and look towards the Crucifix on the Altar you can see a lattice window incorporating a chalice and beyond it is one of the most beautiful views of the old city of Jerusalem. It was there, at that spot that Jesus wept for Jerusalem. It is difficult to spend any time in the Holy Land without being overcome with the sadness that pervades its history. How everything that was meant to be just isn’t. It is now a land of Promise that is morally impoverished by hostility between those who inherited it from God; a land in which security is only won at the expense of others. A land without love in the place Jesus showed us how to love one another. A city for all: That chalice in the window says it all. It represents the unity for which Christ lived and died. Around Christ’s table we are called into fellowship with each other – to eat and drink together, leaving behind differences of race and gender, doctrine and dispute, and yet everywhere we fence that table around with barriers, claiming exclusive rights to the blessing Christ proclaimed and made a reality through his death and resurrection. On my visits to the Holy land, I have witnessed the tragic divisions that scar not just our world but particularly our Christian denominations. At many sites, there are Altars exclusively reserved for the use of one denomination or another. Most offensive of all is the infighting that goes on in the church of the Holy Sepulchre where Christian denominations war for control of the holiest places in the building. The Pharisees who came to see Jesus on this occasion had the same agenda. They wanted him out of Jerusalem. This was their city and they alone had the authority to say what happened here. They came to Jesus with a threat veiled as a warning. “Watch out! Herod is coming to get you. It was they, with the collaboration of the chief priests and rulers who eventually handed him over to Herod and the Roman power. Jesus refused to leave, he would he said “Reach my goal” and complete his mission. “So go tell that fox, ‘I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day, I will reach my goal” Luke 13: 32. The agenda of the Pharisees was the same as the current religious powers, they will keep the ‘Others out’. They will stop at nothing to maintain their authority over Jerusalem. Yet Jesus’ life and death were not determined by Herod or the Pharisees but was planned and directed by God, and his mission would unfold in God’s time and according to His will. A chicken and its chicks: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often have I longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! Look, your house is left to you desolate”. Luke 13: 34/35. Stanley Spencer caught the essence of this picture in his final painting in the Lent series ‘Christ in the wilderness. He called it ‘The Hen’ and it was painted in 1954 some fourteen years after the completion of the other paintings in the series. Christ is portrayed as a hencoop, sheltering the mother hen who hides the chicks beneath her wings. He could have portrayed Christ as a sheepfold, for this too is a familiar image from the gospels. Christ is the gate into the sheepfold and he is the protecting walls around it. So too is the image of the mother hen sheltering her chicks beneath her wings. The prophetic writing of the Old Testament often refers to the Almighty as a protecting wing. We can see from the huge sleeves in Jesus' robe that there is room for many chicks in the folds for he too is our protecting wing. There are some cockerels and a hen who choose not to enter into the hen coop but wander around outside, but the door is open for them to come in too. We can see a late arrival just coming into land, it is not a chick but a sparrow, however, it is welcome too. This is a picture of inclusive love for all whatever their stripe! Jesus is the one who gathers in as opposed to the religious leaders who wish to exclude all but their own. Such is the love of our Saviour for us that he welcomes the stranger, and protects the weak. The loving, saving, presence of the one who stayed with us to the end, refusing to be moved from his task, that all could take shelter under his wings. The time for weeping is over, it is time to start mobilising God’s love to counter the divisions of race, religion, gender, and class, be it here or in Jerusalem. Only then will we be blessed because we come in the name of the Lord. That is the Chalice that Christ hands to us. Rev. Simon Brignall
Deuteronomy 26: 1 – 11/Luke 4: 1-13. Once upon a time, there was a young boy, he was looking with fascination as a butterfly emerged from its casing, the chrysalis. As the butterfly struggled to shed its hard shell it appeared to tire, no longer struggling to emerge but pumping with its body. The boy was worried that it might never emerge and so, hoping to help, he eased the butterfly out of the case. The crumpled body of the butterfly flopped to the floor of the glass case and attempted to drag its body toward the light. Its wings were limp and useless, hanging like rags instead of spreading out with a display of its shining brilliance. Those wings would now never flash in the sunlight because they had been never been pumped up with the blood that would flow into the tiny vein that formed its wings. The butterfly had been prevented from pumping that precious blood into its wings because it had been eased out of its chrysalis too early. The struggle to emerge was part of the creation of strong and beautiful wings with which it would fly. Christ in the Wilderness – Rising in the morning (1940) The natural world has a way of teaching us lessons for life. Jesus often pointed to the birds of the air, the grass of the fields, or the fruit on the vine. Artists too have used this rich imagery to illustrate his life. Stanley Spencer pictures Jesus as a kind of butterfly emerging from the broken shell of the cocoon in the last of his studies on the ‘Temptations of Christ’. The painting, one of a series designed originally to cover the forty days of Lent, recalls Spencer’s own traumatic experiences in the first world war. He served both as a medical orderly and as a regular soldier in Macedonia. The series, which eventually reached a total of eighteen paintings was begun in 1940 as war again engulfed the world. The backdrop to the paintings in the Macedonian landscape of red earth and scrubby bushes. In this painting, Christ in the wilderness – Rising in the morning. (1940), Christ rises from a shell crater to bring healing and restoration to creation. Jesus emerges from the trials of his confrontation with the power of evil with wings spread out ready to fly. He has emerged stronger from the struggle and is ready now for the ministry God the Father has prepared for him. Just as the butterfly must struggle to free itself from the restrictions of the cocoon, so the wrestling in the wilderness is a necessary preparation for his ministry. The wings of the butterfly would have no strength without the struggle and the ministry of Jesus would have been powerless without the trials of the desert. The formation of Israel The wilderness years of wandering in the desert are often thought of as wasted years in the history of God’s people yet they are told to remember them when they emerge into the ‘Promised land’. It was here they learned important lessons about themselves and their God. Identity: It was there that they learned of their true identity as the ‘People of God’. They had been a bunch of ‘homeless Aramaeans’ but God called them to be a great nation. Vocation: It was here that God called them out of the slavery of Egypt to be a holy people serving Him alone. Covenant: It was here they received the Law, not as a burden to bear but the promise of a faithful God who would be at their side in all their struggles. They discovered all this in the heat and dust of the desert. When they were tempted to turn back because they had no food, they found God mindful of their needs. When they were tempted to revert to the worship of Egypt’s gods, they saw God’s power displayed in mighty signs and miracles. As they faced empty stretches of desert and marauding enemies God proved faithful to His promise to be with them. So now as they enter the Promised Land they were called to bring the first fruits of all they produced so that they should remember: Who they were – God’s people, dependent on Him. What they were called to be – A Holy people dedicated to God. How they had arrived – Through God’s goodness and faithfulness. Blessing through adversity Most of all they were to give thanks for God’s blessing in and through their adversity. It was not just that God delivered them to a good place and fulfilled His promises, but that the adversity itself was a blessing rather than a curse or a punishment. If even Jesus had to go through this wilderness to equip him for his ministry we should expect God in His goodness to test, or should I say bless us, at every stage of our pilgrimage so we are equipped for the journey. Jesus himself was tested but yet it was through his testing that he was confirmed in his identity as the Son of God: Who is Jesus? “If you are the Son of God” Luke 4: 3 In his time of testing his Mission was refined and defined in such a way that he remained focused on His Father’s will. What is he called to do? “You shall worship the Lord your God” Luke 4:8 To equip and strengthen him for his mission and to confirm his identity as Son of God he was given the Holy Spirit. How is he equipped to serve? Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit” Luke 4:1 Like the butterfly, we have no power to fly without the struggle. Without the struggle, we will not be strengthened to serve or remember from whom we have received everything. Without the struggle, we will not remember that we are held and known by a loving God. Without the struggle, we will not remember to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer, and perfecter of faith. Rev. Simon Brignall
