From Caroline - [email protected], 01285 712467
Readings for Sunday: Acts 4.5-12; 1 John 3.16-end; John 10.11-18
The idea of ‘laying down one’s life’ is something that we might more usually associate with Remembrance Sunday, as we hear those familiar words from John’s gospel: “no one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends”. They get associated with the idea of military service and sacrifice, and take on that meaning.
But in the wider context of our Christian faith, that’s not really what those words are about. Jesus, the Good Shepherd, lays down his life for his sheep, and takes it up again. We, followers of Jesus, are asked to do the same. It’s not a military sacrifice that we offer, but one of a whole life’s service. There’s a wonderful line in one of my favourite book series, The Lord of the Rings (a deeply Christian work, but that’s a conversation for another time!) where in The Fellowship of the Ring, Aragorn the dispossessed king of his people says to Frodo, “If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.”
That is the nature of the call that is placed upon us by Jesus and echoed by John. We offer the service of our lives – not to throw down, but to live out. We serve Jesus with the days of our lives in every small way – in our words, our actions, those little things that some might think unimportant.
John gives us a little taste of what that life of service might look like: “Little children, let us love not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” We do the loving, serving, welcoming work of our Lord, ready to risk ridicule or apathy or aggression from the world that does not yet know Jesus. We do that because he showed us how.
We give our time, we give our love, we give our skills. We lay down the whole of our lives as an offering to the one who gave his life and death for us.
May we have the grace, the insight and the perseverance to give our lives in that service, and to make that daily offering this week.
Rev’d Caroline
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