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At a difficult time I wrote out in thread the Hebrew script for 'Shalom'. It is a beautiful word, gathering into itself a rich cluster of other words – welfare, well-being, peace, harmony, health, contentment, security, goodwill. It presupposes friendship, or the wish for friendship, based on trust and sustained by faithfulness.

I often finish an email with my own version, "Shalom the noo!"

This morning the news brings this word back to mind, as a prayer, as a word repeated in the presence of God as intercession, in a world where intercession between nations seems to have failed and to fail again and again.

When I finished the script for Shalom I had no idea what would provide the background. Until I read again Isaiah 35, which has long been a passage that is itself stitched into my way of thinking. It's hopefulness and sense of purposes beyond our own, and a power beyond the political powers that shape so much of our world. The promise of streams in the desert, crocuses in blossom in the desert, and a path, indeed a motorway to travel towards shalom.

So that's what I stitched, a river, the first crocuses, a wilderness with 'recovered greenesse', and right at the heart of it those lovely Hebrew letters formed to spell out 'Shalom.'

So we pray for the peace of the nations, and if words are hard to find, offer the word 'Shalom', the desire of the heart for all that the word contains to grow into reality in our own times

I've never bought into the easy, and quite lazy, naming and shaming of the apostle Thomas as 'doubting Thomas.' He's the disciple who argued they should all go to Jerusalem and die with him. For whatever reason he wasn't with the gathered disciples when Jesus first came, stood amongst them, said 'Peace be with you', and proved he was alive.

When Thomas said he wouldn't believe till he saw and touched Jesus, he was asking for no more than had already been given to the others. Incidentally, Thomas didn't say he needed to hear Jesus, though it was hearing, not seeing that opened Mary's eyes. 

I think the clue to understanding the resurrection stories in John lies in the imagination applied to the text, and demands of us far more psychological understanding than we usually bring to our interpretations of what happened. Centre, front and inescapably there, in the consciousness of all those who loved and followed Jesus is the combination of shock, grief and loss.

Peter couldn't face going into the tomb. If Jesus was still there and dead he didn't want to see him. If Jesus was indeed risen then Peter wasn't ready to meet him. The Beloved Disciple did go in, saw Jesus wasn't there and believed – but he still had no evidence and Jesus was elsewhere. Mary simply thought Jesus body was stolen. It's not only tears that blur her vision; grief closes down her perceptions, the defensive inner denials that are grief at its most raw. Until Jesus spoke her name.

Then there is Thomas. Passionate, courageous, intelligent and realistic Thomas, not to be taken in by the wishful thinking of others. What is telling about John's telling of the story is that Thomas who had demanded to see, and touch and invasively poke the wounds of Jesus, did none of these things when the time came. Jesus invited Thomas to touch the evidence, but Thomas is far ahead of such needs for proof. His confession, "My Lord, and my God." are the crowning words of faith in the entire Gospel and of John's art as a storyteller of the Gospel. 

The Gospel of John starts with "In the beginning was the Word", the creative, light-shining, life-giving Word. And Thomas saw that Light of Life.  "And the Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us, full of grace and truth," and Thomas was persuaded and won by that same grace and truth. Throughout John there are signs of Jesus as the Word of God, water into wine, the feast of the 5,000, the raising of Lazarus, and now Thomas was seeing in the risen Jesus the new wine, the bread of life, and the resurrection as promised.

The words of the Word, and the signs of the Son of God, are concentrated and connected to this One who stands this side of resurrection and says, "Peace be with you." John draws us, his readers, into and through the story, to this point, when finally and fully Jesus is addressed in the fullness of his deity, "My Lord and my God." That is the cry of recognition from hearts that believe the deep truths that intersect in the story of the light that shines in the darkness, and the darkness doesn't get it, cannot extinguish it, and recedes before the Light of the world.

Painting is by Fra Angelico, Mary Magdalene and Jesus. 'Noli me tangere'. 

 

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Galatians 5.22-23)

I've read those words hundreds of times, it might be thousands. Most times I've prayed them as I read them. Often, too often, they have been prayers of confession that whatever fruit there might be is unripe, maybe even unformed.

And yet. Such a description of moral formation and character construction was never meant to be an exam paper, a set of criteria with which to demonstrate our failures and supplement our existing feelings of guilt and shame.

As with everything else in Christian experience, the fruit of the Spirit is sown in grace and harvested in the life of those who are in Christ, who live by the Spirit, and whose first confession is of grateful praise for the love of God in Christ. 

Paul's letter to the Galatians is a charter for Christian freedom. The heart cry of Paul to these new Christians is "For freedom Christ has set you free…for you were called to freedom."(5.1,13). Paul is not guilt-making or using shame as a lever when he lists the fruit of the Spirit. Like the good pastor he is, he is encouraging the Galatians to stand firm in their freedom in Christ, and to trust the work of the Holy Spirit to weave the strands of Christ-likeness into the tapestry of their character.

The fruits of the Spirit are listed in contrast to 'the works of the flesh'; and that list is much longer, describing the attitudes and actions that threaten every possibility of community. What makes the difference in Christian character is the great reversal, the freedom from works of the flesh, the call of freedom to a life lived in Christ, and the promise of the fruitfulness of life in the Spirit, in the community of Christ, and in our witness to the world.

In what I've always thought of as the pivotal verse in Galatians, Paul describes our existence in Christ as cruciform in shape, enlivened by faith in the risen Christ and in Christ's faithfulness: "I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." (2.20)

The fruit of the Spirit displays the character of Christ crucified and risen, as his life is lived in us and through us by the power of the Spirit. In Romans 5 Paul says exactly how and why this is so: "Hope does not disappoint us, for God's love has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. (Romans 5.5)

The last thing Paul intends by listing the fruit of the Spirit is that those moral dispositions should be a further check-list of our failures. They are to be looked for as the natural outcome of God's gifting grace, Christ's reconciling love, the Spirit's liberative power. 

Instead of seeing the fruit of the Spirit as mere aspiration, what we'd like to be but never will, or even worse, as a hit list of our chronic failures, take to heart Paul's advice to another group of Christians whose behaviour was at times far from exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit: "He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ." (Philippians 1.6)

We are called to live into the freedom of Christ, to walk and live in the surrounding environment of the Holy Spirit. Crucified with Christ, and living by faith in the faithfulness of Christ, knowing that the Son of God loves us and gave himself for us, we live in Christ and Christ in us, and the fruit will appear.   

 

 

 

 

Monday

John 20.15-16 “He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).”

The way someone who loves us uses our name is, quite literally, unforgettable. Mary’s grief had closed her eyes to the possibility of Jesus’ resurrection. Speaking her name opens her eyes, and unlocks new possibilities of hope, joy and a future. To believe Jesus rose again, to really believe it, is to look on the world with new eyes, through the lens of resurrection. In such a world, with God, all things are possible.

Tuesday

John 20.17 “Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

Of course she wants to hug Jesus, and to hang on to him, in that most human gesture of relief and new hope. But the risen Jesus cannot be tied down, limited by space and time, and the realities of everyday life. For the believer in the risen Jesus, the resurrection is the reality that now shapes and refreshes the colour of every other reality. “Heaven above is softer blue, earth beneath is sweeter green / something lives in every hue, Christ-less eyes have never seen.”

Wednesday

John 20. “Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.”

This is the first eyewitness testimony to the resurrection, and it is a woman who tells a truth that reconfigures creation and announces a new creation. “I have seen the Lord!” In Greek, three words that declared life had changed forever. “Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered.” The last word belongs to God, and it is a word of life that banishes death’s finality, of light that overcomes darkness, of love that has refused to take no for an answer. “In Christ all God’s promises are yes.” Yes!

Thursday

John 20.19a “On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 

When we’re scared we lock doors; either physical doors to keep harm out, or closed eyes as we hide the outside world and hope to stay hidden from harm ourselves. Fear is a deeply embedded emotion we all recognise, a source of anxiety that robs life of joy and peace. So what does Jesus say to the locked up and locked in disciples? Jesus the shepherd of souls, meets their fears with words of psychological precision. “Peace be with you.” As he promised, “My peace I leave with you…let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.”

Friday

 John 20.19b “After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.”

Thomas wasn’t the only one who needed proof, who had to be convinced. In the aftermath of their anguished witnessing of Jesus’ crucifixion, the unmistakable evidence of his death by Roman execution, the disciples now witness the wounds, the identity marks of their Lord, the Crucified Nazarene. That word overjoyed is an understatement; Luke says “they disbelieved for joy.” This news is both too good to be true, and too true not to be believed – then lived into for the rest of their lives.

Saturday

John 20.21-22 “Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”  And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” 

This is John’s account of the disciples’ Pentecost. As at the creation God breathed into the first humans, so Jesus breathes upon them the promised Comforter, the Spirit who will enable and direct them, energise and teach them the things of Jesus. They are commanded to receive the Giving Gift, the Spirit of Truth, the Paraclete, who will be by their side no matter where they are, as the “Lo I am with you always.”

Sunday

John 20.23 “If you forgive anyone their sins, they are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

These difficult words about who can and should be forgiven, are words spoken to disciples commissioned to preach the good news. Only God forgives, and the basis of forgiveness is faith in Christ, and trust in the faithfulness of Christ as Saviour and Lord. To hear the Good News of God’s invitation to life, and to reject it, is an act of self-judgement, a refusal of mercy because there is no sense of being in the wrong. Forgiveness is an act that saves a relationship, enables reconciliation, and makes the heart right. That is God’s work and gift, to whoever sees in Christ their own sin crucified, and God’s love reaching out to them, to ransom, heal, restore and forgive.

Grace is a hard word for Christians to take seriously. In the past couple of weeks I have heard that blessed word used and misused and even implied but absent. The problem seems to be the radical nature of grace, our too easily yielding to the temptation to put conditions on the unconditional, our inability to take a gift at its true value, let alone at its face value. Grace is a word that requires a humble heart to understand it. As soon as grace is critically analysed, coherently rationalised and carefully explained, we betray what P T Forsyth calls our 'lust for lucidity', and therefore give in to our all but irresistible attraction to name, control, comprehend and encircle mystery with our thoughts.

Grace isn't so easily domesticated. But in much that passes for evangelical spirituality there is an alarming absence of grace as the source and resource of all Christian living. Even the great slogan 'justification by faith' can be so triumphantly trumpeted that its champions forget it is condensed, compacted theological shorthand, which once it is allowed the expansiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ, is found to contain realities of much greater dimensions than a polemical formula has any right to hold – to merely begin with, love, grace, reconciliation, that trinity of divine attributes gathered into the true shorthand of the Gospel of the love affair of the Triune God – "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit", and that rich eternal life of God, overflowing in creation, redemption and renewal of a fallen world.

Monday

John 20. 1-2 “Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!””

We know these stories by heart, at least our heart does. But for those first followers this was grief added to grief. “They have taken…” It was a natural assumption. The powers that be make sure the dead stay dead, and forgotten. Those words of the broken-hearted, “We don’t know…” And still, about the ultimate things in our own lives we don’t know either. But Jesus is risen! And that makes all the difference. We read these stories after Easter Sunday – live into them, they are your stories too.

Tuesday

John 20.3-5 “So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in.”

Mary ran to Simon Peter and the others, and they ran to the tomb. There’s a lot of running, urgency, people desperate to see and to know. Faith in Jesus is about seeing the light and knowing the truth, and recognising the One who is the Light and the Truth. Those strips of embalming linen are evidence, but of what? We are in this story and we know perfectly well. Jesus unbound, life let loose in the world, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it! Look for the Light!

 

Wednesday

 John 20. 6-8 “Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed.” 

 More evidence, but Peter who ran slowly, could also be slow on the uptake! We’re not told what he thought, he’s silent, dumbfounded, in that difficult place of wanting to believe the impossible but not sure where it might take him. Then ‘the one Jesus loved’ went inside and ‘saw and believed.’ Are we Peter or this loved disciple? The truth is we can be either or both, and the Risen One loves them both, and loves us, for this is our story too – for when we believe, and when we find it hard to believe.

Thursday

John 20.9-10 “(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)” Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.”

Truth is they wouldn’t know until they saw him and heard him. We will never get our heads round the resurrection. This was an event that recalibrated all other events. “Death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered!” In the communion of saints, take time to imagine the confusion of those first disciples as grief struggles to hope.

Friday

John 20.10-12 “Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.”

This is a long story, but stay with it. Grief and sorrow can’t be rushed, a broken world takes time for the pieces to fall into place again, and it can never be the same place. Easter morning still has Good Friday in vivid memory. For each of us, the joy and hope, the newness of the world and the glory of love and life and light bursting from the tomb, depends on that one pivotal moment when the eternal purposes of divine love repeat the first words of creation, “Let there be light!” And there was light!

Saturday

John 20.13-14 “They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

The suspense is unbearable for Mary. She doesn’t know what we know. To ask a broken-hearted woman “Why are you crying?” is either heartless ineptitude, or they know something she doesn’t know, but is about to discover. The Lord is taken away, she doesn’t know where he is; she turns round and sees Jesus and didn’t recognise him. This is authentic detail, grief at its most real and confusing. And we feel for Mary. But we also know, she is about to face unbelievable truth – and believe it!

Sunday

John 20.15-16a “Jesus asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Mary still can’t see clearly or think clearly. This is love at its most desperate, and grief at its most controlling. Only the speaking of her name will free her to love and hope again. We know, don’t we, how life changes when Jesus speaks our name? 

Here might I stay and sing:
  no story so divine;
never was love, dear King,
  never was grief like Thine!
    This is my Friend,
      in Whose sweet praise
      I all my days
    could gladly spend.

Never is a long time. Never before, and never again, can there be grief and love like that of Jesus on the Cross. The song of Love unknown, the Saviour’s love to me, tells of a love blazing with such holy mystery, that a lifetime of praise is only the beginning of a song that will find full orchestration in the music of Eternity.

Today is the day of resurrection, and in this last verse rather than “stay and sing” at the tomb, we are sent into the world to gladly spend all our days in the praise and worship and telling of our dear King, our Friend, Jesus. Holy Week is the story of our lives, the call to take up our own cross and follow the Risen One who goes before us. No story is so divine – “love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be. 

Prayer: Lord, call us once again, and strengthen us to take up the cross. Give us grace to follow you today, and entrust to you all our tomorrows. Saviour, go before us to show the way, and walk beside us as our Friend, Amen.

In life no house, no home
  my Lord on earth might have;
in death no friendly tomb
  but what a stranger gave.
    What may I say?
      Heav'n was his home;
      but mine the tomb
    wherein he lay.

On Holy Saturday Jesus lay in someone else’s tomb. God in Christ is homeless, lifeless, the lips of the Word sealed in silence. But the finality of death is not the final word. “We see Jesus…crowned with glory and honour, that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man.”

Those last three lines are like the three first pencil lines of light heralding dawn, the new day, a world made new. But not yet. That question of the baffled, speechless heart is the ultimate rhetorical question – “What may I say?” Nothing. “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my life, my soul, my all.”

Prayer: Lord, it is “hard for our words to stretch to the measure of eternal things without breaking beneath us.” As well stand under Niagara with a bucket, as try to capture in words the meaning and mystery of your love for all you have made, including me. Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift. Amen

The image is William Blake's pencil sketch of the Trinity. I have always found this to be a deeply moving depiction of divine love, both intimate and cruciform.

They rise, and needs will have
  My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they save,
  The Prince of Life they slay.
    Yet cheerful He
      To suffering goes,
      That He His foes
    From thence might free.

The whole hymn grates with irony. They save a murderer, and take the life of the Prince of Life. The word ‘cheerful’ seems so out of place when describing how someone undergoes suffering, and not for his friends but for his foes.

Holy Week is about an upside down world, where nothing is as we think it should be. Hosanna becomes Crucify, and in a holy mystery lovelessness becomes loved, then lovely. How that happens, only God knows!

Prayer: Lord, we do not ask to understand a love that willingly suffers for the sin of humanity. Enough that your love should be known by us, and made known to others, in all its incomprehensible mercy and grace. Amen.

The image is a tapestry I designed as a gift to a friend more than 10 years ago. It is based on the an cient image of the Lamb of God who conquers through the sacrifice of love.

"Behold the Lamb of God, who carries away the sin of the world…the Lamb in the midst of the throne…"