Going Around With A Dirty Face

I am wearing the ashes as I write this: This is the first day of the season of Lent and we start Lent by having our foreheads or hands marked with ashes.

The ashes are created from burnt palm leaves. When Jesus rode into Jerusalem the people cheered him, waving palm leaves. A week later Jesus was crucified and the same people decided that because he was dead he could not be the savior that they had hoped for.

Palm leaves decorate the church on Palm Sunday. When lent starts those palm leaves are burnt and their ash mixed with oil. This is used to anoint the people who are beginning 40 days of preparation before they celebrate the triumph of the resurrection.

In all different parts of the world people are wearing the same sign as I am. They are members of different families of the same faith, but in reality we are all one; members of the family of God. Today I wear the ashes and am a sign of that unity.

The lights were dim in the church; we lined up silently to receive communion and the mark of the humiliation of Christ and of our repentance. All the people in front of me in the line were old like me, some of them frail. The piano played quietly in the background and I thought that none of us needed the ashes to remind us that one day someone will pronounce ‘Ashes to ashes and dust to dust.’ You can forget about that in your forties but it’s hard to avoid when you’re eighty.

Suddenly the people at the back of the line began to sing, strong voices that swelled out of the darkness at the back of the church. I turned and saw that there were younger people behind us.

It seemed to me that my generation is a mighty wave raised up and towering. We finally recognize ourselves and know that we have been influential; we have resisted evil together and gathered all manner of good as we swelled and increased. Now our mighty wave is about to crash and roll splintered on the sands of time. But the voices of the younger people behind represent another wave gathering strength, when we have receded this new wave will stand where we were and tower over all the forces that try to resist. Living water has sprung in the hearts of believers in many different places and streamed over the dry and dusty soil, uniting they have become a might ocean.

Bitter disappointment

The subjugated heavily taxed people of Israel thought that their promised king had come, but now they are disappointed, Jesus is reigning from a cross instead of a throne. The hope of the Jews is being slowly executed. Over his head, as he hangs on the instrument of torture is the identification sign that Pilate the servant of Caesar has written, “Jesus the king of Israel.’ There hangs their king, the man who had made them hope again, dying like a common thief. There is spite born of disillusionment and disappointment as the people sneer and call out, “If you are the king of the Jews come down from there”

For the two people being executed at the same time the disappointment is greater because it is more urgent; “Save yourself and us" one of them demands, pain and anger fill his mouth with curses. He has been waiting for the mighty miracle that would prevent them all being killed that day. There has been no angels, no miracle. There is not even an answer to his cursing. He is going to die disappointed. The sneering crowd must learn to live with disappointment.

The other man being executed at the side of Jesus makes a request, “Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” His words fill me with pity because his petition is so weak. He has nothing to bargain with! He cannot make promises because he will die today. He cannot claim to be deserving of remembrance because he has confessed to a crime that carried the death penalty. All he can do is ask. His request is stripped of all that would give it strength: no mediator, no court of appeal and no time to elaborate.

Jesus who had refused to answer Herod the powerful, answers this completely powerless man. “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” Amongst all the grieving disappointed people of Israel one man has hope and through the painful hours of death looks forward to the future.

Luke chapter 23 verse 43

No emotions required

Faith really is a gift. Let me give an example: My friend Joan tells me that she has a spare ticket for a Christmas Carol Show and invites me to come with her. I show up, Joan hands in two tickets one for her, one for me, and we sit down and watch the show. Faith in Joan meant that I believed she had the tickets, I believed the show was the time and place she said, and I went along. In the same way faith in Jesus means I believe he was/is speaking the truth and I believe him to be trustworthy.

There are no prerequisites: If faith were a mystery than only mystery solvers could receive faith. If faith is a goal then only certain people can make the journey.

Faith is a gift because the object of my faith is trustworthy, not because I worked up some strange emotion called faith.

Emotion does accompany faith but it comes as a result of God's faithful response to our decision to believe in him. Ecstasy sometimes accompanies faith but it is not required and usually happens to us after some great evidence of the trustworthiness of God.

So if you're working up your faith, rest. The greater part of todays world has found that God can be trusted. God can be relied upon. That's a starting point. Faith grows but you are not asked to grow it before you receive it.

An hour in church

I saw it again today! I’d lost the sight of it but not the reality. In fact I’d lost sight of it for longer than usual. Because economic disaster and the suffering and starvation of many people had dominated my thoughts and the vision had grown faint

I had gone to church reluctantly, weary after a virus infection, I wanted to sit and read my Bible at home (with emphasis on the ‘sit’)

The sight broke on my vision slowly, like when a mist clears and the mountains become visible again. I was listening to the words of the prophet Micah, what does the LORD require of you, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? Listening to the preacher’s brilliant interpretation of that as a requirement that we love Tenderly, Trustingly and Tenaciously, when all at once it appeared to my inner eye. The concreteness of the walls and pews remained, but I saw the Kingdom (realm) of God.

The mists began to clear as I listened to the exposition and as I looked at the citizens: first the little children being the kingdom of God in grade school, then the young people, learning by living the ways of the kingdom. I saw the old and sick carrying their testimony to the goodness of God. I heard what many of us hear: the innumerable host who lived and died before we did: they were singing. in an ecstasy of realized hope, about the powerful love and mercy of God. There was the echoing resounding voice of a prophet reminding me that the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our God and the good-will of God will be the chosen life-style of all its citizens, and that this is our future. Hope returned! God longs to do good to us and the only obstacle to his life changing power is our own fear of the changes he will bring.

Like Paul, I only saw dimly, as though I were looking through a thick glass But I also felt it all around me in the intensity of the worshippers, in the knowledge that their loving-living will spread the kingdom in ways we never thought possible to times and places beyond our imagination.

The church has only one hour a week to teach us the kingdom but after that comes a week of living and being the citizens of the kingdom. The kingdom of God, the realm of Love comes within us when we accept and live out the good-will of God to all people. What a difference an hour makes.