Category: Seasons

Turning point

A reflection for Good Friday

Good Friday is a day on which I often feel torn. It’s in many countries the start of a long bank-holiday weekend, so the ideal time to visit friends and enjoy the time together. Yet, today of all days in the year, I find it hard to enjoy myself. I feel disturbed: somehow it feels inappropriate to have fun. Yet, should I really let this event from the past – an event at which I was not even present – control my feelings, rather than what is happening today, in the present?

foot of the cross

I suspect that this is a feeling to which many can relate, particularly in a time of grief. When we mourn the loss of a loved one, it can feel wrong to continue with our daily tasks. It can become hard even to eat, to get up, let alone to read the newspaper or to smile at a funny comment. For me, it is one of the most compelling reasons that the famous line in the poem ‘death is nothing at all’ is plainly wrong.

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The last day

A reflection for Maundy Thursday
John 13.1–17,31b–35

Today is Maundy Thursday. The word Maundy comes from the Latin ‘mandatum’, commandment, as this is the day on which Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment: “that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another (John 13.34). This day is the last day of Jesus’ life as a free man. After his last supper with his friends, when he washes their feet, breaks the bread and blesses the wine, Jesus will go out to pray. It is here that he is betrayed by Judas and taken by the authorities to be crucified the next day.

Modern Brazilian Painting of the Last Supper (2013), 'Christ and ...I suspect that for many of us this year, the thought of death and dying has been in our minds. Maybe today is an opportunity to think a little bit about our own mortality. For those of you who know me, I am not the person to make it too heavy, but there is a time and a place to consider the transition from our earthly life, shared with those whom we love, to our heavenly life, where we will find ourselves in the presence of God.

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Keep going

A reflection for Wednesday in Holy Week
Luke 22.54-end

As I already wrote in an earlier reflection this week, accepting our own limitations is one of the spiritual challenges that we face in these weeks of uncertainty, loss and isolation. A letter written from Italy in the Guardian last week put it rather well and in Luke’s Gospel this morning we hear the story of Peter, the disciple who epitomises our inability to be committed and faithful.

Vicente Manansala - Man with Rooster, 1963, Watercolor | Artistas
Vicente Manansala – Man with Rooster, 1963, Watercolor | Artistas

I am sure that I am not the only one who finds it very easy to relate to Peter’s story in which he denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed. Peter was one of Jesus most faithful followers; knowing that he would deny Jesus must have grieved him deeply. Indeed, it had a great impact on both men, as we hear that also Peter himself wept bitterly when he realised that Jesus’ predication had come true.

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The rules have changed

A reflection for the Tuesday of Holy Week
Luke 22.24-53

In countries across Europe exam boards have decided to cancel all school exams. In England this means that pupils will get teacher-assessed grades this year. There has been much controversy over the decision to cancel the exams, rather than postponing them, and the debate on how precisely teacher should assess their pupils is still on-going.

No more exams? | The New Times | Rwanda

Some have mentioned that cancelling the exam was unfair: you cannot change the rules of a game this late on, so the argument goes. Pupils have a right to exam-assessed grades, as this is the goal to which they had worked. This comment made me think. Of course, it is not fair to change the goal posts at this late a stage. Most of us will remember the indignant feeling as children when our peers did exactly that: changing the rules of the game we were playing. However, we also have to admit that some situations require the rules to change, and we find ourselves in one of those situations.

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Significance

A reflection for the Monday of Holy Week
Luke 22.1-23

I have to admit that yesterday’s speech from the Queen made me cry. Indeed, particularly when she referred to her first radio broadcast together with her sister in 1940. However, being honest, the words ‘The Queen’ on the screen and the camera shot of Windsor Castle were enough to set me off. Talking to a couple of friends afterwards, I was not the only one.

BBC - The first Queen's speech ever broadcast was in WindsorWhy does a speech like the one on Sunday has the capacity to move people so profoundly? I would like to suggest that it is because it reminds us that we matter; that we are part of a story with cosmic significance and each have a part to play. That story is the story of humanity, the story of God with us.

The story transcends our time and space: it is not just a cultural phenomenon which can be explained entirely sociologically – although others may disagree. To illustrate: notwithstanding my great respect for Queen Elizabeth and having sworn an Oath of Allegiance to her, she has not been my Queen from young age, as I grew up in The Netherlands. So we see, at least for me it is not the language of nationhood, a belonging to the Commonwealth, that matters, but something greater.

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Rolling up our sleeves

A reflection for Palm Sunday 2020

Possibly the most important thing I have done in my life, I did on a Palm Sunday. I was on my way to church, particularly looking forward to receiving a fresh green palm branch, sprinkled with the water of Baptism. As I cycled the short distance from home to church, I passed a friend, also member of our congregation, who was talking to a young woman.

Alternatives to palm branches for Palm Sunday

Something made me turn around, and ask if they were ok. The young woman had fallen of her bike and my friend, who was training as a medic at the time as well as being church warden, said it would be better for her to be checked out at the hospital. I offered to pick up my car and drive her, and that is what happened. She wasn’t badly injured, and it took a little persuasion to tell her not to go home. After having dropped her of at A&E, I went back to church, just in time for the last hymn – and the coffee!

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Preparations

A reflection on the Eve of Palm Sunday 2020

As I am writing this, it is the Saturday before Palm Sunday. This year, Holy Week will be very different from the previous times we have prepared for our Easter celebrations. Our experience this year will bring us closer to the experience of the first followers of Jesus: they too saw a crisis unfolding in front of them, without knowing where it would lead them. I suspect that this is the first time that we really share in their uncertainty, rather than knowing the outcome of the story already.

One of the questions I asked myself today was what the disciples were doing on the day before Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem? What were they doing to prepare for the unknown as they travelled towards the city?

Palm Sunday in art--Aleteia

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The Question that has an answer

Sermon 29th March 2020  Fifth Sunday of Lent: John 11.1-45

It is hard to believe, but in two weeks’ time it is Easter Sunday. That means that today, liturgically, Passiontide begins. As someone put it, we move from the desert to the Cross. The reading we hear this morning, the raising of Lazarus, has also been called the Easter story in miniature. The more closely one looks, the more parallels can there be drawn between the overarching Gospel narrative and these verses in John’s Gospel.

This morning, I would like to have a look at some of those parallels, particularly those that resonate with the situation in which we find ourselves today. Those of you who know me a little bit, may find it surprising that I am quoting the British Prime Minister, but he was right when he bluntly said ‘It will get worse, before it gets better’.

raising of lazarus

That it will get worse, before it gets better is precisely what we see in the Easter story too. During Lent, during this Passiontide, the closer we come to Easter, the closer we also come to Good Friday: there is no escape.

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Share your loo roll!

Sermon St Mary’s Marlborough, Sunday 15th March 2020
Third Sunday of Lent: Romans 5.1-11 & John 4.5-42

In our Gospel reading this morning, we hear the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. Jesus speaks about the living water and the food to eat of which the disciples do not know. The language is typical for John’s Gospel, with a focus on the spiritual elements of our faith. As we gather here this morning in the midst of the Corona virus crisis, I wonder what those words mean to us? In the last few days, I suspect our focus has been very much on our ‘physical’ needs, so to say: how do we stay safe and how do we make sure that we have enough to eat and to drink if we don’t have access to food as we may be used to?

Image result for coronavirus prayerThe challenge that Jesus puts before us as he speaks to the Samaritan woman is timely for us: those who drink of the water that I will give you, will never be thirsty again. Surely, this is going too far; surely now our focus should be on ourselves and our own safety? Or do we dare to be challenged and think what it may look like for us to leave our water-jars at the well to go and tell people about the living water? So this morning, I would like to think a little bit about how we can have a genuinely Christian response to our crisis. It comes with a disclaimer: it is no official health advice, but rather food for thought in these challenging times.

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Trust in the Lord

Sermon St George’s Preshute on the Second Sunday of Lent
Genesis 12.1-4a and John 3.1-17

Our readings this morning invite us to think about what we trust and believe. And it is not just an academic exercise to make us reflect on our beliefs, but a challenge how we act upon those beliefs, how we let the light of God’s promise illuminate the unknown that lies ahead of us. Let us start by looking at the person of Abraham, or Abram as he is still called at this point. In some ways he is the founder of our religion as well as Judaism and Islam. At the age of 75, God tells Abraham to leave his county and go to the land that He himself will show him. Abraham goes, just as God has told him.

Image result for nicodemus

Abraham believed in God’s promise, and for him that is enough to take his wife and other relatives, all his belongings and to go to a yet unknown land. God’s promise alone is enough for Abraham to go. Not many of us will question that this is a courageous thing to do, and I wonder how we would feel if God asked us at the age of 75 to go to a different country, away from home with only the assurance of God’s blessing.

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