andygoodliff

6 Words: A message from Emmaus

We had hoped. We had hoped that we would be married next month. We had hoped that she would rally and get better. We had hoped that I wouldn’t lose my job. We had hoped that there might have been a way to forgive. We had hoped that the move meant a fresh start. We had hoped that it would be all over by now. We had hope that he was the one to redeem Israel. We had hoped.

Three words that capture a truthfulness about our lives at some point, perhaps today. There’s an honesty in these words, there’s no pretence; there’s a facing up to the reality that we are people who invest hope in things, in each other, in God. We invest hope that everything will come together, that we will find a way to overcome a problem, and when it doesn’t, we know the bitterness of hope lost, dashed. We had hoped. When hope gets lost, we head home. Two sad companions are heading home to Emmaus.

Stay with us. Stay with us for lunch, for dinner, or for a few days. Stay with us, let’s enjoy time together. Stay with us or in the language of the King’s James: abide with us. In other words don’t go just yet. Those moments you don’t want to be over, you want them to linger on for just a little bit longer. Stay with us. When there’s a shared moment of joy or discovery or intimacy, something tangible which transcends the usual, and you want to hang on to it. Stay with us. This is an invitation, but perhaps also an invocation. There’s a longing here. Hearts are burning in the presence of the one with them, although the two companions are perhaps not yet fully aware of it.

The whole gospel is found in the word ‘with.’ The mystery of God with us. We long to be with God and with each other. Its why this virus is so devastating, not just in death, but in isolation and at its worst isolation in death. The gospel is the promise of God to stay with us, even in death. Stay with us.

I was reflecting on these six words. We had hoped. Stay with us. Something happens in the space between these two sets of words. We might call it a conversion or the beginnings of one. Outside the day is almost over, but a new day is beginning for these two companions. We live between ‘We had hoped’ and ‘stay with us.’ And the difference from the first to the second is Jesus. The two companions, downcast, without hope, tell their story and then Jesus tells them their story again.

Into our lives comes Jesus, not always recognisably, and we lay out our story, with its hurts and disappointments, with its confusion and tragedy. We had hoped we say, naming the silences. And then carefully, patiently, Jesus begins to tell our story again, in a way that it is now not just our story, but our story in a bigger story, a bigger story that begins, ‘In the beginning God created…’; a bigger story that speaks of Abraham and a promise, Moses and deliverance, Ruth and faithfulness, Hannah and prayer, David and a throne, Isaiah and a suffering servant, Jeremiah and a new covenant, and more; a bigger story of a baby born in Bethlehem, who grows up and is anointed by the Spirit, who ministers healing, and announces good news, and this same man enters Jerusalem on a donkey, is arrested in the night, is crucified, and is buried in a tomb, and is now risen; into this story our story gets re–written. Its still our story but its told from another perspective, its woven together in a different way that doesn’t overlooked our disappointment, our tragedy, our hurt, but embraces them, heals them, transforms them.

For at the heart of the bigger story is the tragedy of the Jesus the crucified one, but Jesus embraces the cross, the cross is transformed from a means of death into a source of healing. This is what these two Emmaus road disciples do not get, (and we probably struggle to get too.) When Jesus tells the story, the cross becomes God’s strange gift that is revealed through the resurrection. And what this means is that if the cross can become a gift, the brokenness, the hurts, the disappointments, the tragedies of our lives can also become gifts in the beautiful, surprising, grace-filled purposes of God for the salvation, the healing, of all creation. A story of the blessedness of brokenness.

When the gospel meets our story our response, our prayer, is ‘stay with us.’ Our hearts are burning, our eyes are opening, our ears are hearing. Here is a new beginning. To be with Jesus a moment is to want to be with Jesus forever. We discover what it means for Paul to say ‘I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.’ (Phil 3.8) We are recipients of a new ‘living hope’ and its ‘inexpressible and glorious joy’ (1 Peter 1.3, 8) What we hang on to is that Jesus does stay with us, by the Holy Spirit,by the living Word that is the scriptures, by the sharing of bread and wine, by the friendship and fellowship of the church, by the entertaining of angels unaware. When the eyes of these two companions are opened, they don’t stay in Emmaus, but rush back to Jerusalem, and the church doesn’t stay in Jerusalem, but continues to makes journeys. Conversion is an on–going thing, We are Christians, but we never stop discovering the truth of that. We still say ‘we had hoped’ and we still say ‘stay with us’ and Jesus continues to meet us in the middle, helping us see and understand, and keeping a fire burning in our hearts.

Later perhaps we will look back on this time, this time that perhaps has shaken our hope, that is troubling and testing, and be able to say ‘were not our hearts burning within us while Jesus us meet us in our homes, in our daily walk, in our workplace?’ That we might be able to see that this time was a strange gift of God to us. This is my prayer for you, And I ask you to pray the same for me. Amen.

A Short Word for Easter Sunday 2

I wonder what kind of week you have had. I wonder how quickly the songs of Easter joy died away in your household. I wonder if Easter itself has felt like no more than a brief interlude in the present difficulty. Easter is a season and yet we often treat it as if it was only a day. The shops start selling off their Easter Eggs and we go back to whatever is normal and carry on as if nothing remarkable happened. Except this year of course for lots of us we don't. In the Easter narrative there are 50 days during which the risen Jesus appears to his followers. And 50 days are only the beginning for these disciples working out how the world has changed and their lives have changed. But we can tick it off in a day.

In the church the Sunday after Easter is traditionally called Low Sunday. The exact reason for this is unclear but it seems in part to be a recognition that the highs of Easter celebration couldn't last. It probably fits very well with where we are at the moment. We are still in Easter, we are still a people who believe that Christ is risen, but after all the drama that began with Palm Sunday and ended with Easter Sunday, this Sunday we are struggling to keep it all going. Every year I find myself asking what difference does Easter make, even more so this year. What does it mean to proclaim the Easter news that Jesus lives?

At no point in the resurrection narratives is anyone looking for the risen Jesus. They expect him to be dead. Mary and the women going to find the body. The rest of the disciples are in a locked room. Cleopas and friend is skipping town for Emmaus. Later Peter and friends are off fishing on the Sea of Galilee. There is never a point where anyone says, ‘ah, I’ve been expecting you Jesus.’ When Jesus dies everyone thinks, ‘that’s it.’ And so when Jesus turns up there is shock, fear, disbelief, and joy.

I read something this week that said the resurrection of Jesus is like a wound,[i] a wound than never quite heals, its something we live with, and we might say also we live from. It’s like Jacob got his limp after wrestling with the angel of God. If wounds can be ever considered good, this is a wound of the best kind, but it is a wound. We live with this reality that Jesus is risen; it accompanies us, comforts us, challenges us, astonishes us. One poet speaks of seeing Jesus’ body as the ‘wound of knowledge.’[ii] Easter is a reminded that Jesus is both the crucified and the risen one, we know Christ in both the cross and the empty tomb: a wound of knowledge. We know and we don’t know, we understand and we don’t understand. The resurrection of Jesus stands as the marker in which all hope and joy is found, but we never grasp the fullness of its implications, we never embrace the totality of its newness, we never comprehend wholly what it is say ‘I have seen the Lord.’ Easter is a wound that marks our lives, the world is not the same, we are not the same, but we live in what feels too often like an untransformed world; we might say we are an Easter people living in a Good Friday world.

We receive this wondrous wound that Christ is risen amidst the wounds of our current time, which we are living with and we want to be over. These wounds which are a continuing source of pain and anxiety. Life is always carrying its wounds, its pain and suffering, but where we can perhaps overlook them, they are more visible this year jarring with the Easter alleluias that we are meant to be singing and feeling. As I said this is Low Sunday.

‘You, Lord, keep my lamp burning, my God turns my darkness into light.’ (Ps 18.28) That perhaps is a verse for now. The God of Easter, the Risen Jesus, keeps our lamps burning, keeps our hoping living, keeps our faith breathing, keeps our alleluias ringing. The shadows are near, but they do not totally envelop, because God shines his light, the light of Christ. ‘Easter is the promise that the absence of God has been penetrated with light, and the silence of the early morning is no longer hollow, but hopeful.’[iii] As we wrestle with the glorious wound of Easter and the wounds of our current lives we hold on to the Light, the light that filled the tomb, the light that filled the world, the light that God has shone on us: the light we name Jesus; Jesus wounded, crucified and risen One. The light shone in the darkness and the darkness could not put it out.

The good news about the risen Jesus, is he can come to us. Today light a candle, say a prayer, share bread, give thanks, read the gospel, make a phone call, be patient, take courageand trust in God, and then repeat it again tomorrow. Let this be your Easter routine.

 

[i] Benjamin Myers, Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams (T & T Clark, 2012).

[ii] R. L. Thomas. It was the title of Rowan Williams first book (1979).

[iii] Maggi Dawn, Giving it Up (BRF, 2009), 211.

Seeing the Other Side: A message for Easter

I wonder if you can remember a time when you were not tall enough to see. In front of you is a wall, and perhaps a parent or an older sibling is able to see over it, they can see what’s on the other side, they can tell you about it, but you want of course to see for yourself, so you say, hey can you lift me up, I’d like to see too?

Our lives might be thought of as a series of walls that at one point or another we can’t see over, and either we need someone to help lift us up, or we just have to be patient, never easy, and wait until we grow tall enough. Some of us perhaps feel like we’re still waiting! As we get to see over each wall, we find we can get to a point that we can climb over, and then at some point there is another wall and we’re back needing help or having to wait. Some of us find some walls impossible, some of us will always need help, and so sometimes we have to find another way round.

Eventually we all meet a very big wall. This wall is bigger than all of us. None of us can see over it. None of us, even when lifted up can see the other side. This wall feels permanent, fixed, solid, but we know, we feel, that there is something over it. We might call this wall Death. We know about Death, some of us learn about it fairly early on but most of the time the wall is in the distance far off, and we don’t have to think about it, and there are lots of other walls to try and see over, climb over, cross over, to distract us.

Right now the wall called Death feels close, it feels very near. For some of us it feels like it’s surrounding us on every side and it’s all we can see. We are overwhelmed by Death, to the extent that we are trying to find ways to protect our children from the news, and perhaps also ourselves, because its all too much to take in. We are confronted by Death, standing over us, casting a shadow over our days. We don’t want to die. We don’t want those we love to die. The shadow of Death though is not shifting. I don’t say this to add to our overwhelmed–ness, but to name the reality, the usually half-whispered reality, which is currently becoming a louder reality. We cannot get away from this wall.

And yet. And yet. And yet there is Jesus. I want to tell you about Jesus. Jesus was probably no taller than you or me, and he knows this wall named Death. He met death in a horrible horrific way. Death was a sentence given to him. Jesus has faced the wall we call Death. He has stared Death down, He has felt its terrible blow, He has experienced taking a final breath. Death put him in the ground, sealed up tight, locked down. Jesus’ story is like every other story, but — the good news hinges on a but — but the thing about Jesus is that God has shown him the other side, God has lifted him up, raised him up, to see the joy and life beyond the wall, beyond Death. Jesus has climbed over, gone ahead, and walked in the light, and grace and beauty of the other side, and he comes back to tell us about it, to say to us he has seen future, he is living the new creation.

He is the older sibling who says, I can see, its ok, I know what there is on the other side. Jesus, is the Brother who says: I am the Living Hope, I am the Good News, I am the Way and the Truth. I am the Resurrection and the Life. What we celebrate today is the wonderful joyful glorious news that this wall surrounding us is no longer something to fear. We are now confronted by Grace. Jesus has made us a window, and he lifts us up, raises us up that we might glimpse through, that we might have Hope, that we might have Life, even now.

This is Easter. This is the news I share with you, I proclaim to you. It’s my charge today, to help announce the joy that is the risen Jesus so that hear it, feel it, grasp it, so that your pulse quickens, your hearts beat a little faster, your hands clap, your feet even dance, your voices sing alleluia. We are asking God to Easter us.

Today once again we are invited into Hope, we are invited into Life, we are invited into Faith that Jesus is already on the other side, and has made us a way to join him. Do not be afraid says Jesus. See the new horizon. See the new reality. See the new creation, the promised land. Death will meet all us, but we see the glory, we feel the joy, we taste the freedom of Death undone and we know, we believe, we have faith that the death and resurrection of Jesus, means Life for us, that nothing can separate us from Jesus, nothing can separate us from the love of God, not even Death. Christ is risen! Alleluia! He is risen indeed. Happy Easter!

Reflections for Holy Week & Easter

The Baptist Times are hosting a series of reflections for Holy Week and Easter Week in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, which I've co-ordinated.

These are the ones currently posted, and I'll add the others as they appear.

Holy Week — Let us follow Jesus

Scattered yet gathered

Clanging gongs: the perils of cheap talk

Broken and poured out

Waiting 

Footwashing and love

Christ died for our sins

The day of nothingness

Silence in the face of mystery

Covid 19: Lazarus or Jesus?

Resurrection in the time of coronavirus

What difference does Easter make?

Measuring Time with Jesus: A Homily for Palm Sunday

Palm Sunday
5^th April 2020
Belle Vue Baptist

We are living in strange times, unique times. Some might even suggest apocalyptic times. Time is different at the moment. For some time feels slower, for others there is new busyness. We are trapped by this time, we can’t go backwards, we can’t go forwards, all we can do is dwell in the moment. We are waiting for it all to be over. We are waiting for the next news bulletin, the next announcement of the number of those who had died. We are waiting to see how close this virus might come to us and to those we love. We are consumed, overwhelmed, plagued by COVID-19. We measure our days in terms of the lockdown.

Listen to the Psalmist:
            ‘Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress;
            my eyes grow weak with sorrow,
            my soul and body with grief.
            My life is consumed by anguish
            and my years by groaning.’ (Ps 31)

We recognise what he is feeling.

Today is Palm Sunday and just by calling it Palm Sunday it is a reminder that our lives are also measured by a different time, God’s time, and we are the beginning of the climax of that time, when all time is caught by the events in and around Passover in Jerusalem in AD 33. We are catapulted back in time to the arrival of Jesus riding on a donkey as it climbs up into the city. A crowd cheering words from the Psalms: ‘Hosanna’, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’ Branches waving, cloaks being laid on the ground. A cacophony of noise. This journey to Jerusalem has been slowly made from Galilee, passing Jericho and Bethany, a growing crowd accompanying. The reputation of Jesus of Nazareth going before him.

I wonder how Jesus felt? I wonder how the disciples felt?

There is a definite purposefulness about his arrival. This is street theatre designed to be noticed. There is nothing quiet about this coming. Jesus knew his time was coming, his hour was approaching. The road laid out at his birth, at his baptism was coming to an culmination. We can well imagine Psalm 31 were part of Jesus’ prayers.

‘Into your hands I commit my spirit.’
‘My times are in your hands.’
‘Let your face shine on your servant.’
‘Let me not be put to shame, Lord.’

Every year we tell this story of Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Each year we are drawn into the events because here we learn the mystery of grace, the mystery of Christ, of how God has disrupted our time. ‘This week the church of Jesus Christ gathers around the heart, the centre, the guts of its claim to know the truth.’ [i] ‘What we see and hear in the passion and death of Jesus is the decisive intervention of God to deliver his children from the unspeakable fate of ultimate abandonment.’ [ii] ‘The testimony of the Gospels, the testimony of the Christian Church, is that in this event, in this godforsaken death, the cosmic scale has been conclusively tipped in the opposite direction, so that Sin and Evil and Death are not the last words and never will be again.’ [iii] Into our time God comes to redeem and rescue on a donkey, with bread and wine, with garden tears and heavy heart, a crown of thorns and a wooden cross, and in a stone–cold tomb.

This is his story. This is our story. We measure our lives with this story. We have been baptised into it.

In our current predicament, in this time of the virus, we hear the Psalmist and we hear Jesus, declare, ‘But I trust in you, Lord; I say, ‘You are my God.’ We walk the way of the cross, the way of death, and sing Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. We follow Jesus asking him to save us, to deliver us from Evil.

We can sing hosanna today because this time does not define us. We can sing hosanna today because Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again. We can sing hosanna today because our time is in God’s hands and he holds us in life and death. We can sing hosanna today because the Jesus, who enters Jerusalem, who carries the cross is the same Jesus we worship today.

Passionate God,
draw us into your time
as we wonder at the faithfulness of your Son
who carried the cross
to free us from fear,
and deliver us from Death.
Help us cry hosanna
and commit ourselves to
Your great mercy
In the name of Jesus our Lord
Amen.

 

[i] Fleming Rutledge, The Undoing of Death (Eerdmans, 2002), 14

[ii] Rutledge, The Undoing of Death, 15

[iii] Rutledge, The Undoing of Death, 15