As part of our Lenten devotions, we are
invited to follow Bishop
Paul's call to Christian mission and vocation in the
diocesan rule of
life.Last
week, Father John called us
to the first of the tasks – called to pray.
Our second week in Lent, we think of the
second task, the call
to read.That
is to read holy
scripture.This
helps us to get to know
God better and to draw closer to him.With
prayer, we have conversation with God, but to have a
better understanding of
God, it is vital to also read the bible.The mind can play tricks, where we think we know
the bible, the stories
often seem familiar, but we can be mistaken.There are
faults in our memory, shaped and
distorted sometimes by other things – such as our daily
experiences, or other
writings, be they books newspapers or magazines.In the current
world, with access to internet
and social media, it is sometimes hard to remember where
we read
something.Which
is why we need to keep
going back to our bibles.Keeping our
minds open to the word of God, re-reading the familiar
passages and reading the
unfamiliar passages, perhaps for the first time.
We may think that we
remember the words of the Gospel writers,
but it is important to go back and re-read them again,
to check our memory.
In today's gospel reading
from Luke, we hear that here is a
group of pharisees, that are well-disposed towards
Jesus.They
warn him that King Herod wants to kill
him.Herod
is King of Judea, but he is
also a vassal of the Roman empire, a servant to the
regime, a puppet king.
Our perception, our usual
understanding of the Pharisees is that
they are enemies of Jesus.But here,
they are trying to help and protect him.The world is not necessarily black and white,
with the pharisees always
being bad.
And what of King Herod? He
is not fully a sovereign king.He is not
authentic, not true to himself or
to God, though he is a Jew. The submission he gives to
the Roman empire is the
loss of integrity – the corruption.He
collects the taxes from the people of Judea and gives
them to Rome.
Jesus is the true king of
the Jews, who will not be corrupted,
who is above earthly desires and the enticement of
worldly power and
wealth.There
is a sense that the
Pharisees recognise this and want to protect Jesus from
Herod and the
corrupted, false power that he represents.
Of course, the Pharisees are more often
described in the gospels
as themselves part of the corrupted and the corrupting
power in Judea.They
too, later on, see the threat to their
power, coming from Jesus.For they too
are part of the imperfect, worldly power structures.They have
their status and vested interests
to protect and preserve.
Jesus, in today's gospel,
wants to protect the people of
Jerusalem.He
wants to gather the
children of Jerusalem together ' as a hen gathers her
brood under her wing'.
This – to protect them from
the worldliness of the place where
throughout the centuries, the prophets have been
rejected and stoned, for their
efforts, for speaking truth to power.
The metaphor of Jesus, as
the hen, gathering and protecting the
children, is the enveloping lover of God.Here, as the hope and promise of God's love.In reading
this passage from scripture, the
reading is a prayer – as we draw closer to Jesus,
meeting him in the gospel.
The bible draws us in,
close to God, as we read, as we discover
his presence, his call to us, as his people.
At times, at those dark
times, especially, we reach for our
bibles.Recently,
I was away, staying in
a hotel for a week in Birmingham.It was
a difficult week – daily learning in the classroom, as
part of my job, with
evening revisions.Then at the end of
the week, an exam.The task seemed
insurmountable – the tiredness overwhelming.I was tired from the week before, from doing the
day job.
At that moment, one night
in the hotel, overwhelmed, I reached
for the Gideon's Bible. I can't remember all that I
read.I did
read some psalms and use the Gideon's
themed index.What
I read, somehow, just
calmed me.Like
plunging into cool
water, submerging the senses, forgetting the racing
thoughts and panic, worry
and sense of losing my grip, through tiredness.
With the word of God, with
the absorbing of the words of
scripture, we have a new narrative.One
that can be heard above the constant worldly, earthly
noise.The
worldly narrative - the commentary of
newspapers, television entertainment and opinions of
everyone – which can be
too often the background noise, drowning out everything
else, including God.
In the quiet moment,
reading the bible, God's voice is
reasserted.But
we need to give him
space.There
needs to be time set aside
– when we wait on him, to be informed by God, comforted
by him and inspired by
him.
The world and our
understanding of it will be transformed, with
the kingdom of God being established and made ever
stronger.
Sermons from St
Faith's 