Palm Sunday

 

Of all the characters in the Palm Sunday narrative, I wonder who you most closely identify; the disciples, the crowd, the Pharisees? It’s easy for the would be disciple of today to look with scorn on the latter and their distinct antagonism against Jesus and his teaching. We even find them complaining about the disciples and the Hosanna band of pilgrims. Jesus tongue in cheek rebuttal put the Pharisees in their place when they complained about the noise of those who followed Him, “If they kept quiet, the stones would do it for them, shouting praise.” Luke 19:40 (the Message)

However, I recently read, that Jesus also cautioned the disciples against an easy rejection of the Pharisees. His advice to the disciples being that they are not to reject the Pharisees outright but are to be discerning and wise. In particular, perhaps we need to recognise ourselves in the Pharisee - the Pharisee in us? Maybe, we need to ask God to help us to resist any rejection of others and to seek to appreciate good wherever we find it. Why not meditate on the following by Roddy Hamilton as you consider your place of pilgrimage this Palm Sunday,

Did the stones know?

Did the stones know

they would soon have to shout ‘Hosanna’

because those who had first shouted it

would soon be shouting ‘Crucify’?

Did Jesus know?

Did Jesus know

that those who followed in this fickle crowd

would soon turn their backs

on the only hope they had

Did Jesus tell the stones?

Did Jesus tell the stones

that they would be needed to shout

for they alone knew

the secret of tombstones

Do we know?

Do we know when to shout

and when to hold silence

as the saviour struggles for love

and love struggles with him.

posted on Mucky Paws. http://www.nkchurch.org.uk/index.php/mucky-paws

Lent

“Luke 6:36-38 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

Robert Robinson came to faith in Christ  through George Whitfield’s ministry. Shortly after that, at the age of twenty-three, Robinson wrote the hymn “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing, Streams of mercy, never ceasing.” 

Sadly, Robinson wandered far from those streams and, like the Prodigal Son, journeyed into a life of carnality. One day he was traveling by stagecoach and sitting beside a young woman engrossed in her book. She ran across a verse she thought was beautiful and asked him what he thought of it. “Prone to wander Lord, I feel it Prone to leave the God I love.” 

Bursting into tears, Robinson said, “Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I could enjoy the feelings I had then.” Although greatly surprised, she reassured him that the “streams of mercy” mentioned in his song still flowed. 

Robert was deeply touched. Turning his “wandering heart” to the Lord, he was restored to full fellowship. 

Can you remember times when you heard people gossip about you, with no understanding of why you behaved as you did? Can you remember times when you leapt to judge others without knowing the whys and wherefores? Remember the Sioux prayer: “May I never judge another until I have walked in his moccasins”. 

Good newspapers offer us information without judgments. Shoddy papers try to do our thinking for us, leap to take sides, and express their judgments in banner headlines.

We get from life what we put into it. The challenge of Jesus is more – to be merciful is to live in a way that makes the first move towards forgiveness, that is, to be non-judgemental of others and to always want to give. Mercy doesn’t count what it gives nor look for anything in return. Mercy is the heart of God’s love. Allow the word ‘mercy’ enter into your heart at prayer; just repeat it and let it move from lips to heart. As mercy takes hold of you, you will live by it.

Holy Jesus,

You call us into a life that others have told us is easy, but it is not.

You challenge us to forgive, to love our enemies,

to bless those who curse us.

We want the easy way,

but You have given us the hard path.

Grant us the patience and endurance to journey with You,

to allow ourselves at times to stumble,

to live into the hard way

so that we might fully experience

Your love, grace and peace in this world,

by becoming a people full of love and grace

and forgiving others.

In Your name we pray. Amen.

Lent

“There in their presence he was transfigured, his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as the light.” - Matthew 17:2

This must have been a mystifying and mysterious experience for the three disciples who went with Jesus to the mountain top on the day we now know as the transfiguration.

There can be transfiguatiognal moments in everyone’s life. Ever so often something like this happens once in a while. 

As Fred Buechner puts it this way, “The face of a man walking with his child in the park, of a woman baking bread, of sometimes even the unlikeliest person listening to a concert, say, or standing barefoot in the sand watching the waves roll in, ……. Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it's almost beyond bearing.

Here in this almost out of the world happening it is the Messiah, the Christ, in his glory that is seen. It is the holiness of the man shining through his humanness, his face so afire with it that the disciples were almost blinded.

There is another way of looking at transfiguration. Desmond Tutu describes it this way. “God places us in the world as his fellow workers-agents of transfiguration. We work with God so that injustice is transfigured into justice, so there will be more compassion and caring, that there will be more laughter and joy, that there will be more togetherness in God's world.”

O Holy One,

on mountaintops and valley floors

you reveal to us the light of your love.

Our hearts desire is to bask in the amazing glory

of the divine presence.

With each encounter we are changed and transformed.

Draw us nearer

that we might receive a double portion of your Holy Spirit.

Help us, O Holy One, to live our lives as a reflection of divine glory.

May we walk among our brothers and sister as a blessing,

bearing light into dark places,

hope to displace despair,

and love that casts out hate.

Our world is hurting

and we need the followers of Jesus to follow more closely.

Maybe then we will hear your voice speaking to us and saying,

… “listen to my Child, the Beloved!”  Amen.

Lent

“You must therefore be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48

Does it seem possible, that we, with our less than perfect ways, could ever be perfect? Well might we ask, is Jesus being unreasonable, asking too much of me? So what is this perfection to which Jesus calls us.

A man once came up to C. H. Spurgeon, the great English preacher, at a Christian retreat, and said that he had reached a state of spiritual perfection. Without a word Spurgeon picked up a pitcher of ice-cold water and poured it on the man's head. When the man became angry and reacted like any normal person would if cold water were poured on his head, Spurgeon said, "Well, now I know exactly what spiritual perfection you've come to!"

Throughout his teaching, Jesus portrays God as a loving and proud Father who sees Himself in us and in each one of his daughters and sons. So He expects of us as a dearly-loved child of his, created in his image, that we will be good to all our brothers and sisters, even our ‘enemies’ and persecutors. In reality such perfection calls us to not to retaliate, but should give, share, lend and go the extra mile.

We are called to nothing less than perfection. In the Gospel of St Luke we learn more about the sort of perfection called for. St Luke’s phrase is: “Be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful”. What is called for is the perfection of mercy. In his last moments on Calvary Jesus gave us an example of what is meant: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do”.

As we try to listen to these words of Jesus, we do so not as law-giving, perhaps not even as a sermon, but as a message that is given for our freedom. Jesus wants us to be free of limits that we may have set upon ourselves by imagining others wrongly. We pray that attitudes and actions may change by our; acting in the freedom that Jesus gives.

God of goodness and mercy,

of gentleness and kindness,

of righteousness and faithfulness:

be the light of our salvation

and sustain our souls.

We offer the daily tasks

that consume us to you,

for we accomplish nothing

without your grace.

We submit to your will,

that we should love you

with our everything

and love our neighbours,

and even our enemies,

as ourselves.

Renew us and transform us

by your steadfast love

into the people of God.

Amen

Lent

“Go and be reconciled with your brother first, and then come back and present your offering. ” Matthew 5:24

It is often in times of meditation in the presence of God that we can become more aware of our shortcomings and a better sense of how we should serve Christ. This verse is all about whole hearted reconciliation, yet. so often we tend to limit our efforts to but wrongs right.

One New Year's Eve at London's Garrick Club, British dramatist Frederick Lonsdale was asked by Symour Hicks to reconcile with a fellow member. The two had quarrelled in the past and never restored their friendship. "You must," Hicks said to Lonsdale. "It is very unkind to be unfriendly at such a time. Go over now and wish him a happy New Year."

So Lonsdale crossed the room and spoke to his enemy. "I wish you a happy New Year," he said, "but only one."

The wounds inflicted by men and women on each other constitute the fundamental fault line running beneath all other human conflicts. However, the biggest reconciliation issue of all is our need to be reconciled to God. Jesus fully understood this need and in his words was doing no more than recall the Jews to a principle which they well knew and ought never to have forgotten. 

The idea behind sacrifice was quite simple. If a someone did a wrong thing, that action disturbed the relationship between them and God, and the offering was meant to be the cure which restored that relationship. Secondly, to be effective, such an offering had to include confession of sin and true penitence; and true penitence involved the attempt to rectify any damaged relationship.

Charles Finney an American Presbyterian minister (1792-1875) once said. “If an elder or private member of the church finds his brethren cold towards him, there is but one way to remedy it. It is by being revived himself, and pouring out from his eyes and from his life the splendour of the image of Christ. This spirit will catch and spread in the church, and confidence will be renewed, and brotherly love prevail again.”

Loving God,
you have reconciled us in Christ Jesus
and have given us the ministry of reconciliation.
We pray for all those from whom we are estranged.
Bring healing to strained or broken relationships.
Forgive us for the times we have wronged others,
whether by ignorance, neglect, or intention.
Grant us the courage and the grace to seek their forgiveness
and opportunity to make amends.
Where others have wronged us,
grant us a gracious spirit,
that we might forgive
even as we have been forgiven in Jesus Christ. Amen.

Lent

“As for ourselves, save us by your hand, and come to my help for I am alone and have no one but you, Lord.” Esther 4:17 

Mark Twain, the great American author once said, “The worst kind of loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself.” Loneliness is perhaps one of the aspects of Jesus temptations in the wilderness that can easily be overlooked. This notion of isolation, of loneliness can be a blight on our well-being. 

William H. Willimon the United Methodist Church Bishop recalled a incident from his childhood. "A little girl in my second grade class got the dreaded disease of polio. Our teacher described to us the possible complications of her disease. She told us in some detail about the bad things that could happen to her body.

"But our teacher also told us that, because of the polio, we could have no contact with her. We could write her a get-well card, but we could not visit her. And I remember thinking at that moment that the polio itself wouldn’t be all that terrible. I, as an eight-year-old, could put up with the physical pain and inconvenience, but the isolation, the shunning, the loneliness would be the worst."

Loneliness is different from being alone. You can be alone without feeling lonely. However, you can feel lonely even when surrounded by people. Loneliness may have insecurity, sadness, disappointment or grief at its roots. But being alone with God is to be in a completely different place even if our location is the same.

As the demand for our time and attention grows, so does our need to “withdraw to desolate places to pray.” If we wish to be refreshed and refuelled to better live out our passion and purpose, we must make an intentional decision to “unplug” from everything and everyone to spend time with God even when life is at its busiest. Indeed, there is great power in being alone with God.

In you alone we put our hope,

God the Father, Creator and Sustainer,

who gives all good things

seen and unseen.

In you alone we put our hope,

God the Son, Saviour and Redeemer,

who died for our sins

and rose again.

In you alone we put our hope,

God the Spirit, Teacher and Comforter,

who moves us to sing

“Our God reigns!”

In you alone we put our hope. Amen

Lent

“This is how you are to pray: ‘Our Father in heaven, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven.” Matthew 6:9-10

There is a mirror image of Jesus 40 days in the wilderness and our journey through lent. In addition to fasting, as we explored 2 days ago, the place of prayer was a crucial part of Jesus sojourn in the desert. Our text for today comes after the disciples came to Jesus with the earnest request, “teach us how to pray.”

Through their journey with Jesus the disciples would often have seen Jesus redraw to pray.

William Barclay, the great Scottish New Testament scholar says of this request, that Jesus pointed to two important facets of Prayer.  “He insists that all true prayer must be offered to God. The real fault of the people whom Jesus was criticising was that they were praying to men and not to God. A certain great preacher once described an ornate and elaborate prayer offered in a Boston Church as "the most eloquent prayer ever offered to a Boston audience." The preacher was much more concerned with impressing the congregation than with making contact with God. Whether in public or in private prayer, a man should have no thought in his mind and no desire in his heart but God.

He insists that we must always remember that the God to whom we pray is a God of love who is more ready to answer than we are to pray. His gifts and his grace have not to be unwillingly extracted from him. We do not come to a God who has to be coaxed, or pestered, or battered into answering our prayers. We come to one whose one wish is to give. When we remember that, it is surely sufficient to go to God with the sigh of desire in our hearts, and on our lips the words, "Thy will be done”.

A 4-year-old son Jonathan was trying to learn the Lord's Prayer. He learned by listening at church each Sunday.

His father recalled how on one Sunday as they were praying the Lord's Prayer, the boy could be heard above all the others, praying, "Our Father who art in Heaven, I know you know my name."

Praying the Lord’s Prayer in the knowledge that God know’s my name makes each word prayed an intimate conversation of unsurpassed love.

Prayer

Our Father in heaven,
let Your name remain holy.

Bring about Your kingdom.
Manifest Your will here on earth,
as it is manifest in heaven.

Give us each day that day’s bread

—no more, no less—

And forgive us our debts
as we forgive those who owe us something.

Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
But let Your kingdom be,
and let it be powerful

and glorious forever. Amen.