The leastness of Christ...

We live in a debilitating dichotomy. We hear the images of Jesus being the lamb, the lamb led to slaughter; and Jesus being the servant kneeling with a towel and a basin, washing feet as he gets ready to go to the cross; and the weeping Christ, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. We want to believe we, too, are moving toward this sort of surrender of power and control, wanting no person to feel the weight of our authority. But we don't yet embody it. We don't yet live as though the way to God, the way of fulfilment, is the downward way. We spend our best thinking and energies on the upward way and are distressed if we are not recognized or appreciated.

The closer we get to the end of life, the more meaningful the symbols of weakness become. I've noticed this time and time again: people of power, the closer they get to the end, the more they appreciate the images of weakness. Jesus didn't live a great life but end that life poorly. No, the crowning of his life was the death that he died. The poverty, the leastness of those final hours, the death, is the glory.

N. Gordon Cosby, from a sermon on September 24 1989, with thanks to inward/outward

I haven't found anything that has so clearly described what God has been showing me during this strange and at times terrifying Lent!

Once again, apologies for being so bad at keeping up this blog. Jan has been in hospital for major surgery, and is coming home this afternoon. This isn't a confessional type of blog, which is why I haven't said more day by day about the extraordinary mixture of emotions this has involved - but I would be grateful for your prayers, for us both...