Hope springs eternal Have you ever noticed how many idioms, have the word ‘Spring’ in them. For example, we might say, someone has a ‘spring in their step’, when they are walking energetically or with liveliness, or we might need to ‘spring into action’ and start doing something quickly or suddenly, when we hear an alarm bell ringing for example. We might say that we have ‘spring fever’, by which we mean a feeling of restlessness of excitement felt at the beginning of spring as we look forward to spending more time outdoors. This restlessness of course, may also lead us to a bit of ‘spring cleaning’, and sometimes we might hear someone say, that someone is ‘no spring chicken’, perhaps meaning someone who is not so young as they used to be. As Spring has now sprung, I wonder what it is about spring, that lends itself so readily to so many sayings, and I guess, there is something around the freshness and newness of spring. Having just gone through the darkest, coldest season, with trees bereft of leaves, as Spring arrives, it feels like we have turned a corner and there is a fresh sense of hope in the air, which is sure to put a spring in our step. Our gardens and countryside are slowly being transformed as creation works its wonders, hedgerows are taking on a subtle green hew, that over the coming weeks and months will grow stronger, the spring bulbs are bravely breaking through the ground and bringing life and colour back, and soon there will be more and more lambs springing merrily across the fields. Which reminds me of another idiom, ‘hope springs eternal’. In this season of spring, we are reminded that hope springs eternal, hope never dies, there is always hope. As we look around us and see so many signs of new life, our hope is renewed. And I am reminded that in Lamentations we are told, ‘The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning, great is your faithfulness.’ (Lamentations 3:22-23) Hope springs eternal. I pray that as you travel through this season of Spring, with all its signs of new life and hope, that you will take hope in the steadfast love of the Lord. May God Bless you Heather
Joel 2:1-2; 12-17 & Matthew 6:1-6; 16-21 Today’s gospel reading almost comes as a relief: Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them. It’s a relief because we can be fairly reluctant to show signs of piety before others, especially when we’re outside of church services. If you want to get strange looks, read your Bible on the bus, pray aloud in a restaurant or talk about what Jesus means to you whilst waiting in the queue in co-op. So a gospel lesson in which Jesus says it’s better to practice your religious duties in secret may elicit a sigh of relief. But it’s odd, isn’t it? Especially when a few weeks ago in our set readings Jesus was telling us to let our “light shine before others, so they may see [our] good works and give glory to [our] Father in heaven.” Why the emphasis today on secrecy? And why the emphasis on secrecy today, on the one day of the year when we actually receive a visible mark, the imposition of ashes, that unmistakably says, “Something different is going on here”? Are we trying to show something? If so, to whom? We have to start by noting that the ashes are not for God. We’re not trying to show God something by wearing ashes on our foreheads. In Isaiah, God says it clearly: What I want from you is not sackcloth and ashes. I don’t want you sitting around looking miserable. I want you to get up and do something. Something good. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. House the homeless. Give to the poor. Change the world. That’s the kind of religious offering I’m looking for. Does God want to see something? Yes. But it’s not ashes. It’s to act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with our God Jesus wants to see action too. His message today is about practicing our faith, linking our spiritual lives to action, through almsgiving, prayer and fasting. Living our spirituality through action is an important way to respond to God. So why does Jesus say, “Beware of practicing your piety before others”? Jesus’ words highlight two things that can rule human life, two things that can distract us from having a right relationship with God. Jesus knows we can be motivated and misled by concerns over audience and reward. By audience, we mean, for whom are we acting? For whom are we doing our religious activities? Who is our audience when we give alms or do any charitable act? When we pray? When we deny ourselves anything? For whose benefit do we do these things? Who are we hoping will notice? The other concern that goes along with audience is reward. When the hypocrites do their religious duty as an act for the benefit of being seen by others, they have received their reward: They have been seen by others. That’s it. They have been noticed by people. Jesus invites us to put our faith into action, not so we can be noticed by people, but so we will receive our reward from God. Three times he says, “and your Father who sees you in secret will reward you.” Is it wrong to be noticed by others? No. If we let our light shine, if others see the good we do, we can be powerful witnesses to God’s compassion, mercy and love. But Jesus says if we’re motivated by being noticed by people and rewarded by people, that will be our only reward. If all the attention you want is from other people, help yourself. But why settle for less than the reward God wants to give us? So why the ashes? If they’re not for God, and they’re not about being noticed by others, why do something so visible and exterior? Ashes are a reminder of humility and honesty. Sometimes we get confused about what true humility is. It’s not beating ourselves up. It’s not denigrating ourselves and saying bad things about ourselves to bring ourselves down a notch or two. It is not some strange reverse pride where we say, “Really, no one is as bad as I am, no one is as stupid, foolish or forgetful as me. I have achieved the bottom-most rung of human reality. How can God possibly love someone as lowly as me? God couldn’t possibly love me; I’m just dirt.” “You are dust, and to dust you shall return,” we will hear as we receive our ashes, reminding us that we are mortal and echoing the creation story where God lovingly made human beings from the dust of the ground. If we are dust, we are beloved dust, and God can do great things with just plain dirt once it’s filled with the very breath and Spirit of God. Humility is about looking at what is true and real. Humility is about being grounded in the truth of who we are: finite, flawed, dependent on God, and completely, utterly, totally loved by God, nonetheless. As we begin our Lenten journey, we accept ashes as a sign of penitence and mortality and the truth of who we are. We are invited to spend this Lent learning to trust that God is gracious and kind and forgiving and merciful, and that what humans think of us isn’t as important as our relationship with God and what we do for others because we are loved by God. We are invited to take on a discipline of doing some action solely for the purpose of pleasing God, or giving something up in order to make room in our lives for God’s Spirit to come in and move around it us. God wants to be the focus of our attention and longing. God wants to be our audience and our reward. Let’s not settle for anything less.
John 11:1-45 - The Raising of LazarusAre we nearly there yet, the familiar cry on any long Journey from the back seat of the car if you have children.Well today we are nearly there, we have been on this Lenten road since Ash Wednesday and we are certainly on the home stretch – As Tom Petty so wisely put it ‘The waiting is the hardest part.’Waiting is what Jesus makes Mary and Martha do in our reading today.Jesus is asked to come and heal his sick friend – and yet he delays going? Jesus even says that the sickness that Lazarus has does not lead to death. But it does.Can you imagine the anxiety of Mary and Martha? Here they have been travelling with, working with and likely funding Jesus and his ministry. They have witnessed wonders beyond description. Now their brother Lazarus, who is a dear friend of Jesus, is ill. Let us pause for a moment and remember that in the first century, in Palestine, illness was quite serious, there were no antibiotics, and illness, more often that not, preceded death. This was serious, and they knew that Jesus had it within him to heal Lazarus.Can you imagine their supreme disappointment when Jesus says he will wait to visit Lazarus? ‘Wait!’ the sisters may have shouted, ‘He will die!’And Lazarus does die. It’s heartbreaking; He dies. When Jesus does finally come to lazarus, the sisters and the entire village are in full mourning. Mary greets Jesus when he comes, not with words of welcome but words of accusation: ‘Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ One wonders what was going through her mind. Was she ready to stop following Jesus? Was she in that empty space in her spirit where grief besets us? Grief is grief, even for those who walk with Jesus. Why did Jesus not act? Where was he?At this point, we are met with what is, in most bible translations, the shortest verse in the Bible: “Jesus wept.”It’s an important point. Weeping comes from deep empathy and grief. Twice in this passage we are told that Jesus is deeply moved, or disturbed in his spirit. Jesus is not some all-seeing, distant, stoic God. Our God is a feeling, empathizing God. Jesus acts out of this empathy, out of this “co-feeling,” which is the literal translation of “empathy.”But something else happened. It doesn’t appear to have caused Jesus to raise Lazarus, but it is certainly a part of the story, and we ought not to ignore it. You see, all this talk of miraculous raisings and Jesus’ empathy has overshadowed an important point of this story: Mary and Martha begged Jesus to heal their brother, and they are let down by him. When Lazarus does in fact die, they mourn and appear to be even angry with Jesus for not acting. And it is right there in that hard, desolate place of loss and grief that Jesus speaks life. “Lazarus, come out!” Even here, we see that death having the last word is not in God’s plan.Certainly each of us has had those moments of wondering where God was in a time of trial or loss. “Why did God let her die?” “Where was God when I needed him?” All of us have wondered at God’s apparent departure. But sometimes, in that area of wondering, Jesus shows up, even after the death and loss. And his arrival is prompted by our raw grief.The truth of the matter is that being as close as we are to our own experiences, we lack the proper perspective to see God in the midst of things, even in loss. To be sure, we may not recognize God’s empathic presence with us, but we can trust, somehow, that he is present.But it is the waiting for Jesus that is the lesson from Mary and Martha today. Even though all hope is lost – Lazarus has died – they still wait; for what, they do not know. And it is in the midst of this waiting that God moves. It is in waiting past the point of hope that God sometimes moves.Be patient with God. His understanding of the timing of things is different from yours. Even when all is lost, hold on for a while longer and allow God to act on your heart in his own good time.Here, near the end of Lent, is as good a time as any to be reminded that God moves in God’s time. Maybe, since we all lack it, God will grant us the grace to be patient with him, and allow him to surprise us with life and resurrection.Let me finish with a Meditation of Lazarus written by Nick FawcettMeditation of LazarusIt was so weird,so unreal.At least that’s how it felt.And yet it happened!I’d breathed my last, no question about that.After those long dark days of sickness,the pain growingthe strength failing;after those final terrible hours,sweat pouring down my face,lungs gasping for air;At last came peace,darkness closing about me,suddenly welcome though it had been long feared.An end to the struggle,the battle nearly over.For a moment I was a child again, comforted by my mother’s embrace,a youth running wild as the wind,a man setting out afresh on life’s great adventure,a father, taking my child into my arms.And then rest.The light went out,the flame extinguished,the game completed.Only it wasn’t,for suddenly a voice summoned me back to the fray,sunshine burst into the tomb,and consciousness returned.No wonder they gasped,no wonder they swooned,no wonder they wept for joy,for I who had been taken from them, I who had been dead,was alive!And yes, I thanked him, of course I did,once the confusion had cleared anyway,but it took a while, I can tell you.And even now just once in a whileI wonder if he really did me any favoursfor I know that one day I must face it all over again.Yet it will be different,not just because I’ve been there before and know there’s nothing to fear,but because Jesus has shown methat death is not so much the end as the beginning.That’s why he raised me from the tomb.Not just to restore life,not simply to defer death,but to point to a new birth,a resurrection which only he can bring.He came back too, you know,back from beyond the grave.Three days in his tomb,long enough for decay to take hold,but he appeared to Mary,to Peter,to the apostles,to us all.And we know that even though we dieone day we shall liveeven as he lives now! Thanks be to God. Amen
