The pattern of love...

Therefore, when Christ came into the world, he said:

"Sacrifice and offering you did not desire,
but a body you prepared for me;
with burnt offerings and sin offerings
you were not pleased.
Then I said, 'Here I am - it is written about me in the scroll -
I have come to do your will, my God.'"

Hebrews 10.5-7

Sacrifice is one of those divisive terms in the Scripture, upon which edifices of theology have been erected, building up, and demolishing, elaborate and at times oppressive doctrines of atonement and satisfaction. But actually it is quite simple, as Jesus' own life demonstrates. Sacrifice is to do the will of God, and all other sacrifice takes place within that overarching purpose; and it is so in our own lives as we go on seeking to become more like our saviour.

All that we are to become reflects Jesus' own choices at every turn, finally shown in the olive grove at Gethsemane when he prayed, "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done." (Luke 22.42) It is this sacrifice which is present again with us in every Eucharist; but it is the choice that is ours in each of our own lives.

This sacrifice of choice, if I may be forgiven for using the phrase, lies at the heart of our following Christ, but it is not necessarily and in every case a choice, like Jesus', for personal pain and deprivation - inevitable though that may be somewhere along the line. It may in any particular case be a choice for something we want to do. A priest who wants to serve a country parish may in fact be called so to serve; just because she does not want to be a missionary in some far-off place that does not mean that that is necessarily God's will. I think our choosing God's will is likely to be found in much smaller choices than this: the discernment is likely to emerge unsought, almost, from the concatenation of little choices, each one quite simple - if not necessarily easy! - in itself.

The pattern of love is to move towards trust. This is what lies at the heart of all our following - as Jesus was prepared in his love for his Father to move towards trust even at the cost of his life, so each of us moves towards him in trust; and so the Kingdom is built out of our small acts of trust and love, one by one; imperceptibly, often, but inevitably (Hebrews 12.28).

Judging…

We spend an enormous amount of energy making up our minds about other people. Not a day goes by without somebody doing or saying something that evokes in us the need to form an opinion about him or her. We hear a lot, see a lot, and know a lot. The feeling that we have to sort it all out in our minds and make judgments about it can be quite oppressive.

The desert fathers said that judging others is a heavy burden, while being judged by others is a light one. Once we can let go of our need to judge others, we will experience an immense inner freedom. Once we are free from judging, we will be also free for mercy. Let’s remember Jesus' words: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged” (Matthew 7:1).

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

---

A brother asked Abba Poemen, “If I see my brother sin, is it right to say nothing about it?” The old man replied, “Whenever we cover our brother's sin, God will cover ours; whenever we tell people about our brother's guilt, God will do the same about ours.”

The Paradise of the Desert Fathers

Among the many things people discuss giving up for Lent—chocolate, social media, TV, beer, biscuits, swearing—it’s odd that judging others appears so infrequently. But then, of course, I really mustn’t judge people who give up funny things for Lent, must I?

In the light of the Cross…

God's love for us is everlasting. That means that God’s love for us existed before we were born and will exist after we have died. It is an eternal love in which we are embraced. Living a spiritual life calls us to claim that eternal love for ourselves so that we can live our temporal loves—for parents, brothers, sisters, teachers, friends, spouses, and all people who become part of our lives—as reflections or refractions of God's eternal love. No fathers or mothers can love their children perfectly. No husbands or wives can love each other with unlimited love. There is no human love that is not broken somewhere.

When our broken love is the only love we can have, we are easily thrown into despair, but when we can live our broken love as a partial reflection of God's perfect, unconditional love, we can forgive one another our limitations and enjoy together the love we have to offer.

Henri Nouwen, from Bread for the Journey

It is only on the Cross that we see God’s perfect love for what it is. At the Stations of the Cross this afternoon somehow the eyes of my heart were opened to see the account of the Crucifixion as if for the first time. What became clear to me was not so much the physical suffering of our Lord—plain though it was to see—but the infinite love he bore for us, right into and throughout that final agony. Somehow, his very wounds become the love he bears for all that is made, and for every heart that weeps, or has ever wept since time began.

Strangely, perhaps, it is in that last account in John’s Gospel of Jesus’ days on earth that it is most obvious that he is God. I can’t explain this; only it was shown me more clearly than I can possibly write it down. Jesus is Lord, the Christ, the Son of the living God—and it is the Cross that shows it, beyond all uncertainty.

Desperate measures…

It is a world-shattering disclosure that the stream of life is a single stream, though it takes various forms as it spills over into time and space. This disclosure is made to anyone whose discipline sends him on high adventure within his own spirit, his own inner life. By prayer, by the deep inward gaze which opens the eyes of the soul to behold the presence of God, a person feels the steady rhythm of life itself. We seem to be behind the scene of all persons, things and events. The deep hunger to be understood is at last seen to be one and the same with the hunger to understand.

Howard Thurman, with thanks to inward/outward

I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. (Jesus, in John 14.6)

Sometimes, I think, we underestimate the metaphysical element of our faith. If all we had was a social Gospel, or an ethical handbook, we would be blessed, certainly, but our faith would have no meaning beyond this little life we live in. Annie Dillard once wrote:

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

(Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982)

We are not “sufficiently sensible of conditions.” This is a life and death thing we have embarked upon; the God we worship is the unseen, unheard source of all that is, yet he gave himself to be born of a young Jewish girl in a country province of an occupied nation, far away from anything or anyone that mattered. What part of this do we not understand? Our faith is nothing if not a desperate measure, a mad leap into the glory of a love unthought of, a hope unthinkable no matter how long, or deep, the thought.

Mercy. If it were not for his mercy, the mercy of that inconceivable sacrifice of the Cross, we would have no hope at all. As it is, we do have hope—and faith, and love, limitless, unending. And the greatest of these is love.

Costing not less than everything…

It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms open. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence.

Morris West, with thanks to inward/outward

---

It seems to me that this comes very close to Jesus’ remark in Matthew 16.24-26, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

We are not our own. Our very life has been given to us, and what do we have to offer in return but our life? God will receive that gift more tenderly than we can imagine, and will keep it more surely than any human defence. All things come from him, and of his own do we offer him (1 Chronicles 29:14).

Beyond this, all is thanksgiving; as Eliot said, “A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)…”

Maundy Thursday…

The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born… we gradually get closer to what really has to be sacrificed—our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb! We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die. And it is not other humans (firstborn sons of Egyptians), animals (lambs or goats), or even “meat on Friday” that God wants or needs. It is always our false self that has to be let go, which is going to die anyway.

Richard Rohr, from Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, Saint Anthony Messenger Press.

Slowly the sun begins to set over the hills behind the sea. I cannot understand how I have been blessed to live in this most beautiful place, this little liminal town on the bay at the very tip of the Isle of Purbeck, filled with sea-change and the pure light of an endless sky.

In a few minutes I shall walk down to St Mary’s Church for the Maundy Thursday evening service. I’m a little hungry, and as puzzled as I always am about how the Lord of all could have gone through these days of Easter for someone like me, for people like us all. God’s good hand is there in all of the creation that lives around us, the air we breathe, the gravity that turns the worlds. Through Jesus all things were made – it was his hands, the maker’s, healer’s, gentle hands, that were nailed to stained and riven wood, in a real place, on a recorded date, in bloody fact.