Lent 2022

''LORD, TEACH US TO PRAY''

For each week during Lent, our Vicar, Rev John Poole, is providing some themed reflections. You can read them on this page.

Lent 5 Reflection

This coming Sunday, the fifth in Lent, marks a sort of mood swing in the Lenten journey. We now start to look more intensely towards the Passion, the suffering and death of Jesus. Not for the first time, if you recall our Lent course last year (still available on the website with the imaginative graphics) and a journey through Holy Week the previous year, both following the account as told by Mark, the first to write a Gospel, I would like today and next week to offer some perspectives on Jesus’ death on the cross.

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Lent 4 Reflection

This Sunday, the fourth Sunday of Lent is also Mothering Sunday. As it would be a big shame to focus on it entirely with our scheduled Gospel reading being Jesus’ great parable of the Prodigal Son (which is read on Sunday only once every three years), I thought I would this week offer a Lenten reflection for Mothering Sunday.

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Lent 3 Reflection

This Sunday’s overall theme focuses on the Lord’s compassionate love and how we as Christians are called to reflect that love in our own lives. An important part of Judaism that has been retained in Christianity is the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. At one time they formed part of the introduction to Anglican Eucharistic worship either in full or in summary. The Summary of the Law, as it is known, is still retained as an optional introduction to our worship. The problem with the commandments is that they were able to promote the twin evils of lip service and fear, especially all those ‘thou shalt nots.’ In our relationship with God we have to be motivated not by fear but by love. We do not have to keep the commandments so that God will love us. God already loves us, and that is precisely why we keep the commandments.

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Lent 2 Reflection

Today we will think about the Lenten observance and indeed our Christian life as a journey or pilgrimage. We follow Jesus on his journey to the cross and to resurrection, to death and to life, meaning for ourselves a process of transformation. Living in Christ is involves dying to the old ways and standards of life which are controlled by the self, culture, group identity, wealth, possessions, and whatever other ‘gods’ obstruct our call to enjoy a Christ life, a God-centred life. Lent is a time for us to reflect, repent (turn around) and recommit to the Christian journey, finding the faith and courage to trust in God and to follow the Way of Christ more deeply.

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Lent 1 Reflection

Lent is observed in the forty days before Easter. The number forty is based on the days that Jesus spent in fasting and prayer in the wilderness after his baptism and before he began his ministry. It is calculated by omitting the six Sundays, which are of Lent but not technically in Lent. So traditional Lenten disciplines can be relaxed on the Sundays if so desired, although we try our best to ‘tone down’ our Sunday worship with useful little conventions like avoiding the great Easter word ‘Alleluia, ’and omitting the Gloria in excelsis at the beginning of the Eucharistic liturgy.

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Lent 3 Reflection and Prayer

The Gospels tell us, with variations in the story, that Jesus was crucified between two other criminals. Mark and Matthew specifically call them ‘bandits,’ meaning insurgents, guerrillas or freedom fighters, depending on your perspective. Their presence adds stress to crucifixion as a specific form of execution reserved for those who refused to accept Roman imperial authority, and it was always public to serve as a deterrent – ‘this is how we deal with those who oppose us.’ Crucifixion was not used for ordinary criminals, certainly not thieves, as these two characters have often been called. We also read earlier, that another bandit, Barabbas, was released in place of Jesus. Jesus suffered the fate of one who opposed the imperial regime. He was executed. Crucified.

Mark, followed by Matthew, includes a striking scene as Jesus dies. The Roman centurion (and for Matthew, the soldiers with him) declare that ‘Truly, this man was Son of God.’ It is remarkable because, according to Roman imperial theology, Caesar, the emperor was ‘Son of God. He was also Lord, Saviour, the bringer of peace on earth. But here through its representatives, the Roman Empire testifies against itself. It affirms that this man Jesus, crucified by the empire, is the Son of God. Thus, the emperor, Caesar is not!

The three Synoptic Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke) all record that when Jesus died, the curtain of the temple was torn in two. As with the darkness covering the land for three hours, this reference is best understood symbolically rather than something someone remembered happening. It has two meanings. Firstly, it is a judgement on the temple authorities who had collaborated with the Romans to bring about the death of Jesus. Secondly, while the temple curtain signified a barrier between the people and God, which could only be bridged by the mediation of priests, the death of Jesus signified that access to God was now clearly available to all. In an important sense, Jesus had replaced the temple in his own person.

For us, as we reflect on the death of Jesus, we must understand that it provides us with a powerful symbol of transformation. We too, as Christians are on a journey to death and to resurrection. While that is central to our faith and hope for sharing the fullness of life with Christ once our earthly life comes to an end, it also signifies a pattern for our life in this world. Being Christian calls us to live a life in which we gradually die to sin - to the old life of convention and compromise, in order to rise, following Christ to a new life centred in God, thus living by the intention of our baptism. St Paul puts this very strongly in his letters, particularly to the Galatians where he writes, ‘With Christ I am crucified and yet I am alive, no longer I, but Christ lives in me.’ (Gal. 2: 20)

The most important meaning of the death of Jesus is as a revelation of supreme love of God for us. Without this understanding it does not make much sense. Paul and the other early Christians saw Jesus as the decisive revelation of God. In Jesus, his life, love, teachings and healings, all that he was about, we see what God is like. In Jesus’ passion for the kingdom of God and his challenge to the powers of his day at the risk of his own life, we see the depth and breadth of God’s love for us. The incarnation, God coming among us in the person of Jesus was an act of divine generosity, of compassion and solidarity with humanity and all our experiences. The death of Jesus reveals that God is with us not only in our life but also in our suffering and death.

In life and death, Jesus is the clearest sign that God is passionate about us, that God wants us to live in union with him, and while we are on this earth to work in partnership with him to heal and to transform this world.

Next week. What does it really mean to say that Jesus ‘died for our sins?’

A Prayer

God of life, let us hear again today the Good News, that through your living image, Jesus Christ, love is stronger than death. Help us to walk with him the way of the cross, the way from death to life, in this world and in eternity. Give us hearts of compassion for one another as you are compassionate towards us. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

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Lent 4 Reflection and Prayer

It is always good to hear British TV broadcasters just occasionally using the proper name for this Sunday, instead of the imported ‘Mothers’ Day.’

Mothers’ Day is an American invention and tradition, also followed by Canada and Australia. It has a completely different history to the British Mothering Sunday. Its origins are noble enough. The idea of a special day for mothers grew out of the suffering of so many of them in America when their children, soldiers and others, were killed in the Civil War. Mothers’ Day Work Clubs were formed as a reaction, to support the grieving women. A feminist activist called Anna Jarvis organised a campaign, asking for a national holiday to celebrate the lives of all mothers.

They settled on the second Sunday in May. But Anna was horrified to see how it quickly became commercialised. It was good that people should buy their mothers a present, but there was no need to spend as much on it as the advertisers encouraged them to. As for the shops that wanted their customers to buy an expensive card to send, Anna said, ‘A printed card means nothing, except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world.’ She then spent all her money campaigning against the travesty which her vision of Mother’s Day had become.

Mothering Sunday had developed in the British Isles centuries before the American Mothers’ Day. It was originally the Sunday nearest ‘Lady Day,’ the common name for the Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Blessed Virgin Mary, which is celebrated on Friday 25th March. This Sunday, conveniently, is the Sunday nearest Lady Day, although long ago Mothering Sunday became fixed on the fourth Sunday of Lent regardless of the date.

The Lenten fast was taken seriously in the old days, and many people ate very little in the days between Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. But on this fourth Sunday, mid-Lent (more or less), or Refreshment Sunday, as it was also called, a little let-up was permitted. Many apprentices and young workers who lived with their employers to learn a trade were allowed to go home on this day. So were many live-in domestic servants. They had little money, so they stopped on their way to gather flowers from the wayside to give to their mothers as a thank-you present when they reached home. Mid-Lent Sunday or Lady Day itself was also the time when many people from outlying parishes would travel to their cathedral, the ‘mother church’ of the diocese, and celebrate and give thanks for Mary and her call to be the mother of Jesus, and in a special way, mother of the Church.

So Mothering Sunday is a reminder of an older, homespun era when simple things were best, and a demonstration of love was more important than the materialistic obsessions of our own times. As on Mothering Sunday we give thanks for our own mothers, we have also to remember the situations where thoughts of mother or motherhood are not happy ones. Many will recall their mothers who have departed this life, perhaps tragically or while still young, and they still grieve. There are those who are not mothers but would dearly love to be. Some have mothers who never loved them, maybe who abandoned or abused them.

We must also use Mothering Sunday to give thanks for all who nurtured us, gave us a life and support and encouragement to become who we are, whether they are family or not.

Some single parents are fathers bringing up their children alone. They have to be mother too. Not easy.

Coming in Lent, the most appropriate Gospel passage for Mothering Sunday, if it is the main focus of the day, is the story of Mary at the cross (John 19: 25 – 27). Certainly, it is an appropriate text for those who have lost children, the experience that inspired Anna Jarvis to work for the support of those grieving mothers of the victims of war. It is to such as these that it speaks most of all. It is an experience that remains all too common, not least in Ukraine and Russia today.

This is a special scene in the Passion story. It reminds us that love inevitably involves suffering, because when we live unselfishly and others are the focus of our lives, their sufferings as well as their joys become ours too. And here we can be reassured that even the mother of all mothers, the handmaid of God who brought the Saviour into the world, also knew the tragedy, the heartbreak of the cruel loss of her child.

We know, of course, that the story does not end with the cross. It ends with life. We have the advantage of reading it from the resurrection side of Easter. In Christ, we can know that God will raise us from despair and death, both in this life and beyond it. The cross is the ultimate symbol of the love of God for us all, a love that has not limits.

In motherhood at its best, we can experience something of God’s incredible and unfailing love. And our response must be that as members of Mother Church, called to bear Christ in our lives, we have a special ministry of care and kindness, of nurture and encouragement, and yes, of mothering, to one another. Let us accept it and live it as we give thanks for all that the word ‘mother’ means for us.

A prayer for Mothering Sunday, the alternative Collect for Lent 4:

God of compassion, whose Son Jesus Christ, the child of Mary, shared the life of a home in Nazareth, and on the cross drew the whole human family to himself: strengthen us in our daily living that in joy and in sorrow we may know the power of your presence to bind together and to heal; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen

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Lent 3 Reflection and Prayer

This Sunday’s overall theme focuses on the Lord’s compassionate love and how we as Christians are called to reflect that love in our own lives.

An important part of Judaism that has been retained in Christianity is the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. At one time they formed part of the introduction to Anglican Eucharistic worship either in full or in summary. The Summary of the Law, as it is known, is still retained as an optional introduction to our worship. The problem with the commandments is that they were able to promote the twin evils of lip service and fear, especially all those ‘thou shalt nots.’ In our relationship with God we have to be motivated not by fear but by love. We do not have to keep the commandments so that God will love us. God already loves us, and that is precisely why we keep the commandments. We are to aim for the higher, better way by trying to reflect and represent something of God’s love for the world, for everyone.

One of the reasons why Jesus was angry with the traders in the Temple and many others is because they were minimalists in the faith; they were content to keep the rituals and the customs, but they had no sense of justice. They were simply functioning out of duty or tradition. If they prayed, it was probably just with their lips but not their hearts. They supported the religion of habit and show, which was so far removed from what the great Temple and the Law, the commandments represented. No wonder Jesus was furious with them

.Jesus taught and demonstrated a new and more challenging law or commandment. In fact, it wasn’t new at all, but its meaning had been watered down over the passage of time. Jesus taught that all God’s laws, the Ten Commandments and all the other precepts, could be reduced or summed up in just two. Really it could be said to be one single commandment in two inseparable parts: that we love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love our neighbour, our fellow human being, as we love ourselves. By following this rule of life sincerely, all the commandments would be observed without us having to think about them.

It is what is in the heart that truly matters. This is the emphasis of the gospel and the thrust of all Jesus’ teaching. The heart is the inner self, who I really am, and is the source from which all our thoughts and intentions flow. And this true self is the person who matters to God. It matters to God that we live in a right relationship with God, and consequently with one another in every area of life, that is, with integrity, compassion, fairness, forgiveness when required, and most of all, love – love in its fullest, unselfish and inclusive sense.

May we find courage and confidence to continue to live out in our lives the faith we profess with our lips. May God’s grace enable us to live and grow in a Christian life that comes truly from the heart.

A Prayer

Compassionate and patient God, we are reluctant and slow to make the change of heart we need to live fully as your children. Give us time and grace to understand the extent of your compassion, mercy and love which your Son Jesus showed in its fullness. We ask you to accept us in our poverty of faith and raise us up to live and proclaim your persistent and unconditional love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

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Lent 2 Reflection and Prayer

This Sunday (Lent 2) in our Old Testament reading we will meet Abram, whom God would rename Abraham, meaning ‘the father of a multitude.’ He had set out to follow the directions of an unknown God. It involved a journey, a migration to a new country. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that Abram set out ‘not knowing where he was going’ (Heb. 11: 8). He was already well past retirement age, but he bravely obeyed the call of his God, and because of his humility and courage God said that Abram would be a blessing to all the tribes on earth.

Abram’s journey was particularly risky and would no doubt have been considered crazy by his people and even his family. For it seems that no one else knew this God whose word he was apparently obeying. In a world where people worshipped many gods, Abram’s God was an unknown God.

His situation is familiar enough today. For so many people, the whole idea of God, faith and spirituality is a complete unknown, a no-go area. Putting your trust in an unknown or uncertain Being, Spirit, Presence, whatever, whose existence or reality is not obvious can easily be met with incredulity, ridicule and even outright hostility from some of our contemporaries for whom the material world and universe is all there is (without seriously thinking how and why it is here, something that science alone cannot answer). It is bad enough for some of them that you go to church. But to suggest that you are going to do this or that in life because you are obeying or testing God’s call, can cause some people to think that you have ‘lost the plot,’ and may even have serious mental health issues. Don’t worry, I was ‘sectioned’ a long time ago!

I hope we are all aware that the reality of God cannot be proved, certainly not by any scientific or philosophical method. But the witness of so many people throughout history, of sound-minded saints, mystics, theologians and ordinary seekers, strongly suggests that God can be understood, known and experienced, if people are serious in their search or enquiry. Then it’s a question of whether others are able discover that experience for themselves, or at least accept the validity of the experience of others. Many will dismiss it by pointing to the problems that religion apparently causes in the world, or the less-than-ideal behaviour of some people they know to be so-called religious, or the old favourite, whether there can possibly be a God (as they understand the concept) when there is so much suffering in the world or in their own experience. There are no doubt many people currently blaming God for not stopping the Coronavirus pandemic or even for not intervening to prevent Russia invading Ukraine!

It is still quite widely assumed that we Christians and other ‘God-botherers’ worship some super controlling daddy figure in the sky, with or without a white beard, and who has now shown that ‘he’ can’t be relied on. Karen Armstrong puts the problem succinctly in her excellent book, ‘The Case for God.’ Reflecting on her own early experience she says, ‘Many of us have been left stranded with an incoherent concept of God. We learned about God at about the same time as we were told about Santa Claus. But while our understanding of the Santa Claus phenomenon evolved and matured, our theology (our understanding of God) remained somewhat infantile. Not surprisingly, when we attained intellectual maturity, many of us rejected the God we had inherited and denied that he existed.’

The journey towards God and a growth in knowledge and faith has for so many people never got off the ground, and their understanding is stuck somewhere in a pre-primary school world of thought, which makes God easy to dismiss.

Our awesome task as Christian disciples is to present another and bigger picture of the reality of God, one that has the capability of challenging and moving the doubting and the unbelieving. First and foremost, we ourselves need to be humble enough to continue seeking the way, following the directions which lead to God, the Sacred, the Wholly Other, call God what you will. This is where our daily and weekly spiritual exercises are so important, the constant seeking and growing in God and being nourished by God through prayer and contemplation, scripture and sacrament and other useful faith-based activities, on our own and together.

The most significant revelation of God in the world has been experienced in human form, in the person of Jesus. We should therefore only expect that further revelations of God’s presence and activity should also be made known in human lives, not least through those who follow Jesus and together are called to be his living visible Body on earth. If we are Christ-ones, Christians, if we are faithfully following Christ and striving to live as he taught and showed, then with or without an emotional spiritual experience, we have been born again in the Spirit of God with the capability of revealing God’s likeness and God’s values, for we are God’s children. We have been given this rebirth most of all so that our lives will make a difference to the world, will help God transform the world. ‘God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God and God lives in them.’ (1 John 4: 16) It should become clear that we best reveal the reality of God by the quality of our living, loving and doing, right here in our everyday normality.

Abraham left his home and familiar surroundings to follow the directions of an unknown God. Because of Jesus Christ, we have a much bigger advantage than he did, the assurance that God is not only very close to us but is living in us, working through us, and drawing us ever deeper into our identity as children of God and the experience of our true humanity.

What is required of us is that we choose to follow this road, and when sometimes the way is not entirely clear or we have strayed from it, may we have the humility and the courage to seek again our loving God’s directions and discover again the joy of life in its fullness and freedom, the life of the Spirit, life in God.

A prayer:

Let us pray that this Lent we may turn again and more deeply to God and to one another.

God our Father, your Son Jesus has given us a clear path in life to follow and a bright view of how our struggles, our efforts to change ourselves and our world, lead to life and to victory over death and pain and evil. May he strengthen us to join him in his passion that we may also share in his glory and bear witness that our faith is good news of joy and light and life. We ask this in his name, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

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Lent 1 Reflection and Prayer

In the early Church, candidates for baptism at Easter prepared for it by a period of study, prayer and fasting. Also, those who had committed some grave sin and had been excluded from the Church used this time for fasting and penance before being readmitted to the Communion and fellowship of the Church at Easter. This history explains the central characteristics of Lent: self-examination, penitence, self-denial, prayer and study, all of which form an important part of the season’s main thrust: preparation for the celebration of Easter.

In due course, whole congregations saw the benefit of joining the candidates for baptism (the catechumens) and the penitents by keeping these days as an annual spiritual time of renewal, a sort of springtime or ‘spring clean’ of the spirit, especially so that they would be ready to renew their baptismal promises along with the newly baptised at Easter. Hopefully, the disciplines formed during this season would lead to some new resolutions or practices for the Christian’s whole life and not be undertaken as some sort of seasonal ego trip.

Lent is not so much about giving certain things up, or taking extra things on, useful though such disciplines can be. It is primarily a time to look at the whole of our Christian life, individually and corporately, and prayerfully assessing what changes need to be made, things to be repented of or better habits or practices to be adopted.

I can always remember my theology professor beginning an Ash Wednesday sermon by singing the praises of G. K. Chesterton, philosopher, lay theologian, writer (probably best known to the wider public for his Father Brown stories), and how he was a great apologist for Christianity, and had a deep Christian faith himself. The only problem with him was, said the professor, that he drank too much. I think his girth suggested that his eating habits followed the pattern of his drinking. When a lady asked him during the First World War, ‘Why aren’t you out at the Front?’ Chesterton replied, ‘If you look at me from the side you will see that I am.’

Lent is an exercise in growth, but not that kind of growth! It is about ensuring that we get the balance right in our Christian life, and that involves body, mind and spirit. Discipleship does require discipline in order that that we can identify and remove those things in our lives that hinder our growth in Christian faith and witness. Most of all it about coming closer to Christ. It is all about him and if it is about us at all, it is about the looking at the quality of life we have as his followers, people who are called to be his body, his physical presence, his voice in the world.

The supreme symbol of our observance of Lent is the cross, the symbol of our Lord’s own self-giving and suffering. We have an opportunity today to be ‘ashed,’ following the ancient custom of receiving the mark of the cross on our foreheads with the ashes of last year’s palm crosses. Those of us who would like to receive the sign of ashes are reminded that it is merely an external, an outward sign of something that must be happening on the inside, in our hearts. What matters is that we wish to be more faithful to the gospel, more Christ-centred.

And so, in turning again to the Lord, we are summoned to love – to love him more and to be more aware of his love for us and for everyone. And another part of our observance and commitment today and throughout Lent is to prepare ourselves to celebrate the awesome events of Holy Week, the Lord’s passion, and then to find true joy and renewal in the great miracle of Easter – those ultimate Christian celebrations of God’s love and closeness to us, his people.

So let us heed the word of God that comes to us today through the prophet Joel: ‘Come back to me with all your heart.’ Or as St. Paul say, ‘Be reconciled to God.’ May our reception of the ashes of repentance, and of the sacrament of life be a sincere act of recommitment, individually and as a Christian community, that we turn again or turn more deeply to the Lord. When Easter comes may we be able to reaffirm our baptismal faith with a fresh heart and a new resolve, and so find ourselves further along the road as disciples of Christ, and more confidently and visibly reflect his presence and his love in our lives and for the sake of the world he loves so much.

A Prayer for the beginning of Lent

Let us pray that this Lent we may turn again and more deeply to God and to one another.

God our Father, you know how often we try to go our own selfish ways. We ask you not to allow us to live and die for ourselves alone or to close our hearts to others. Help us to see ourselves and life itself as precious gifts from you. Make us receptive to your word and your ways that we may grow to share the mind and heart of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

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