Our Gospel this week (Luke 13.1-9) is all about God not giving up on people when it looks like their lives are condemned failure or sin or whatever it may be. On Wednesday of last week, I had the honour of attending a private view of a new exhibition put on by The Lived Experience Collective at the Primeyarc Gallery in the Market Gates shopping centre. The artists are all formerly homeless people. And I had a chance to talk with a few of them. They are incredible people! People who have struggled with perhaps some of the most difficult problems any person can struggle with – who have been cast out on the streets and condemned – but who have managed to transform their lives with the help of those who would not give up on them.I left full of hope, the hope of the Gospel that calls all of us to repentance and new life!Rev Richard
The gospel reading today paints powerful word pictures. One is Jesus’ determination to go to Jerusalem to complete his task, even while he identifies that the people of Jerusalem will not recognise or accept him. But perhaps the greater picture today is of the hen who would shelter her chicks under her wings, ready to give her life for them. It is significant to all of us that Jesus uses the image of the hen and her chicks – the female nurturing parent.By the end of Lent we’ll come to focus on Jesus’ journey to the cross. Jesus will stand in Jerusalem and be robed in a mocking costume and stand in the courts of the powerful and why? Because of that image of sacrificial love of which he speaks in the gospel today.Father Simon
It’s not Lent yet but I am going to talk about it today because it’s important to think about Lent before it actually arrives! Many of us immediately think of fasting and giving things up for Lent which has a place but it is equally important to think about what you could take up: extra time in prayer, reflection, spiritual readings, doing good deeds, joining a Lent group, committing to an extra midweek service – all of these can help us to grow spiritually, and that is the point of Lent. One of the keys to a good and holy Lent is to plan ahead and think about what we can do.The reading for the Sunday Before Lent is always an account of the Transfiguration. This is because it gives a glimpse of glory prior to the solemnity of the season and the time when our worship becomes a little simpler and less exuberant. The glimpse of glory we see helps us take heart and look ahead to our destination and the hope that after a time of growth and effort we will be refreshed and stronger.Fr Simon
“The Lord God took the man [adam] and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” (v 15)The Hebrew word adam means ‘man’ or ‘human’ and is not a first name in the sense we would understand. So adam in the story is representative of ‘mankind’ or ‘humanity.’ God loves this adam, creating for him a beautiful garden, animal companions, and then another companion, called ‘woman.’ The story emphasises how close God is to adam and woman, talking and walking with them in the garden; how much this is a relationship of love. Tragically, as we all know, it becomes a sad story of deceit and disobedience. In this way, the story tries to untangle and understand the reasons why humanity often seems so far from God, both in how we act and how we feel. But the good news is that the rest of the Bible is a story of how God is always seeking to be close to and to walk with us again - something which he does definitively in the person of Jesus.Rev Richard
