Holy Week

Don’t give up before Easter.
We have come so far
Don’t give up before we get there.

This is an ongoing story
We don’t say, ‘Goodbye and see you again next week.’
It’s not as simple as that.
Next week, none of us might be here
fickle as a crowd at Passover

This is the story everything moves towards:
stables and wildernesses, mountaintops and bedsides.
So far the gospels have simply been introductions;
introductions to this story of the cost of love.
Everything leads here.

Let us not let Jesus do this on his own.
Let us accompany him.
Let us be here as he faces the temple and the anointing,
the betrayer and the denier,
the bread and the wine.
Let us not let Jesus face these on his own.
It is the least we can do
in response to what Jesus does for us:
giving of himself,
completely.

So this service does not end today
but continues tomorrow and each day this week.

You cannot have Easter without the passion:
stones don’t roll unless the tomb is filled,
dawn doesn’t break unless the darkness rolls in,
resurrection doesn’t happen unless crucifixion is first.
You cannot know how to celebrate Easter
without first living the passion.

So let us journey with Jesus this week
Just as we expect him to be here for us
may we be there for him
to keep the faith alive.

May we hold on for him
when he has to let go
This is a journey of faith
may we have the hope to travel it.

Go now
come back soon
it has only just begun.



copyright Roddy Hamilton

"Who is this?"

Been spending more time with gospel narratives in my continuing quest to "see Jesus more clearly"; the passage where Jesus walks on the water (following on from my previous post) and when Jesus is asleep in the boat during the storm and the disciples are fearful.

It's an interesting thing but I've found on many occasions during my retreat, that as I pray with passages or themes that God "gifts" me with an experience of the thing I'm praying with. The really curious thing is that I often don't see it until I start to reflect back with my Spiritual Director (who I meet weekly - the exercises are a guided retreat), and it becomes blindingly obvious - in an "Ahh! that was what that was all about!" kind of a way.

I realised that on reflection, what had been a very difficult week on many fronts, was an experience of buffeting from many quarters. I was in a storm and so reflecting on what Jesus was doing during this time was very helpful.

What did I see?

Well I saw that if God appears asleep - it doesn't mean he doesn't care, it just means he's not worried.

But I was also conscious that God defies our easy characterisation of him. We try and resolve the "Who is this?" question by trying to impose some order on God. We try to contain him in some way. "It must be a ghost." Ghosts we understand, but a God who walks across a lake, through a storm, well that's a whole concept we can't seem to get our heads around. Because God is surprising, unexpected, uncontainable. When we try to impose restrictions on God we actually bind ourselves.

Jesus walks across the water, defies the disciples categories and then Peter... I love Peter - he dares to meet God in the storm; to meet God in the place of non-restriction; to meet the unbound God. He asks to come to Jesus in the storm, on the water, to come to where God is. Jesus says "Yes. Come!" I imagined at that point that there was joy from Jesus and maybe just a hint of relief. Someone wants to defy the easy categories and walk out to where I am; someone who is willing to take a chance, cast off the self imposed restrictions.

"Do not be afraid, take courage. I am here"

I sat on the bus travelling to Glasgow (again) and gazing out at the blue, blue sky; lifted my eyes to the hills and saw the snow shining in the sun, the trees almost ready to come to life - the tiniest buds forming; saw the geese flying across the sky; the dull green of the grass almost ready to shake off the restrictions of winter; felt the warmth through the window. And suddenly I was longing to be out in it, just like Peter, didn't want to be confined by the bus, to be gazing out from behind the glass. Longed to be in the midst of it - in the storm, where the life is.

And I heard Jesus shouting over the wind and the waves "Yes. Come!"

"Who is this?" is not a question I answer once - it is the journey.

Seeing Jesus More Clearly

The 'grace' that I am seeking in the second 'week' of the Exercises is the Ignatian prayer - that I might "See Jesus more clearly, love him more dearly and follow him more nearly". As usual Ignatius has real insight - to see Jesus more clearly is the thing that helps us to love him more, and as we love him more, then we seek to follow him more closely.

In practice this means that I have spent the past couple of months imaginatively contemplating passages from the gospels that show me Jesus. Last week I had a few passages that I was meditating on through the week, but one of them stayed with me and each time I came to pray, the images from this passage would come to me. They become like memories, powerful experiences of Jesus. The passage was Matthew 14.13-21 and I saw it in 3 parts.

Firstly - I was in a grove with Jesus and the disciples, we were eating and talking and laughing, it was hot but there was a breeze from the lake and the trees provided shade. We looked up and were being approached by some people, as they drew nearer we recognised them - they were friends, the disciples of John. Jesus and the others rose, greeting them with a kiss and inviting them to sit.

They told us that John was dead.

They began to tell us how it happened - Herod's boastful promise, that he never expected to have to keep, but his bluff was called and it was more important to him to save face than do the right thing. John's disciples had just come from burying John and had come straight away to find Jesus.

I watched Jesus face. What was he feeling?

Sorrow and grief - John and he were inextricable linked from before their births. Cousins, only 6 months apart; both with miraculous conceptions. John, who Jesus grew up with as a boy travelling together to Jerusalem for Passover; John who Jesus publicly aligned himself to in his baptism at the beginning of his ministry; John who he spoke warmly of and defended; weeping over Jerusalem because they killed the prophets; encouraging John in his imprisonment - the blind see and the lame walk. John the prophet to his Messiah.

Anger - that John should die in so pointless a way - for the vanity of a man who was corrupt and weak.

And something else - Jesus realising that this went further because it fore-shadowed something that he knew he would face one day soon.

"As soon as he heard, he left in a boat for a remote place, to be alone"

Jesus weighed down by sorrow, anger and a sense of his own life coming to an end - looks for a place to be alone, to pray.

Secondly - Yet when he gets there he is confronted by crowds of people. What is his reaction? He wants to be in a remote place because he needs time to grieve, to reflect and to come to terms with his cousin's death. What is his reaction?

He has compassion on them.

Not only does he feel compassion - he embodies compassion by healing their sick; by staying with them until evening; by feeding them rather than sending them away hungry. He demonstrates his care for his disciples - making sure they get into the boat to cross the lake; and then waiting himself to send the people home.

In his grief, in his anger, in his turmoil he puts the needs of others before his own. He doesn't count equality with God something to be grasped, he humbles himself. He is not among us as someone who is served but comes to serve. Jesus, the very image of God, embodies radical, costly love.

Thirdly - I stayed with him on the shore as the darkness gathered and the stars appeared and the last of the people made their way home. A breeze was beginning to spring up - quite softly. He stands alone, looks out over the lake and sees the boat with his disciples getting smaller as it moves away from him. Only then he turns and begins to climb. When he has climbed some way up the hill, he sits down. He is alone. He thinks about John, allows himself to dwell on his memories; he turns his face to the Father and the Holy Spirit and lays himself bare. He knows what he has to face and it comes to him - full force - he knows where this is leading. He stays with this and takes comfort from the Godhead - loses himself in that relationship; the love and community within God. And stays there until eventually the wind begins to whip at his clothing. Then he looks out and sees the boat being tossed on the rising waves.

Jesus rises and pulls his head covering around him and makes his way down the hillside towards the lake. A storm is rising; he sets his face and walks into it.