“Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus …who, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Today we have begun Holy Week, the climax of Lent. We look at the Passion throughout this week because it is both history and it is the archetypical story that is at the foundation of our souls and of our culture. We are shaped by the Passion even if we don’t understand it. …
Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. This week has been a horror as the violence we hear of so often in the news in other places has come close to home here in Utrecht. We pray for the families suddenly torn apart unexpectedly by loss and grief and for those struggling to recover wounds to their bodies and to their souls.…
“When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to others to be fasting, but to your Father, who sees in secret, and your Father shall reward you openly! “ Today we enter into Lent – it is often observed as a time of greater prayer and fasting and almsgiving (or service) – and I will speak about that a little later. What is a living human being?…
God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. [Galatians 6:14] Today is the most solemn day of the Christian year. We have prepared ourselves for it with an almost forty day fast. We have intensified our focus on the Cross by veiling it for the past two weeks in church services. Last night we have stripped away all other furnishings in the church except this Cross, that we…
On this Holy Thursday we commemorate Jesus washing the feet of his disciples and the institution of the Holy Communion at the Last Supper. I find the Gospel accounts of that last night with the disciples, to be one of the most moving and revealing passages of Scripture. The gift of Holy Communion to me, is the core of what the church has to offer, for all who are hungry and thirsty and who long…
How much more shall the blood of Christ… purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. [Hebrews 9:11-15] Lent is a pilgrimage to Jerusalem with Jesus. On that journey, in the last few weeks, we have had these confrontations with demons – first Jesus himself, with his temptations by Satan in the wilderness, and showing us in these core responses to the devil in his fast, how we can see through the…
O woman, great is your faith: be it done for you as you desire! We are now into our second week of Lent, into a kind of wilderness if we are practicing some kind of spiritual discipline. The fast can make us a little more agitated, and yet if we are motivated by love, by drawing closer to God and to our neighbour in our agitation, we should also be seeing some new life, a…
Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Lent has been a time in the Church year for us to pause and to look up at God but also to examine ourselves to see obstacles to drawing nearer to God and to be aware of signs of new life in us from Him. It is about growing in love, as Ineke pointed out last week. The…
“Your Father, who sees in secret, shall reward you openly! “ Today we begin the Church’s season of Spring, the Lengthening of days, the attention to the signs of new life in our midst. Outside this week there are snow drops, crocuses, daffodils, the magnolia blossoms are ready to explode. We are to look for a parallel in our own souls: signs of the renewal of love or of the buds of new love ready…
I have very mixed feelings about Good Friday. Feelings of guilt, shame, and thankfulness. All those mixed together. Perhaps you share these feelings. 1 Appearance beyond human semblance Throughout the Gospels we meet with a Jesus who was attractive to be in touch with; people came to him by day and by night, men, women, children, educated and non-educated. But …. on this Good Friday, we remember Him as the one no-one wanted to look…