First - A thought for Ash Wednesday ….

The ashes speak to us of our mortality; and it is no bad thing to remember that.

But to recognise that death lies ahead of us is not to be morbid in spirit; it is to be both realistic, and profoundly hopeful. Realistic, as creatures as part of a creation that is time-bound and subject to decay. Hopeful as creatures of grace,  if you like born from the font, knowing at least in part how to rejoice in God.   And so as we look ahead, we find we are further forward on our pilgrimage than “when we first began.” And we look forward to that time when our rejoicing,  our joy, will be complete.

As we enter Lent,  it is natural to think about our sins,  our weaknesses,  our shortcomings.  And I have plenty. But I will just share with you something I have learnt, and am still learning. We do not make good progress by dwelling on our faults. We progress by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus. That is what those readings from last Sunday about “transfiguration”  had to tell us. If we focus our lives on the glory of God, then almost as by a magnet, we will be pulled towards the divine likeness, and we shall be changed.

Second - Lent 1

Genesis 9.8 – 17:  the covenant with Noah

Psalm 25. 1 – 9:   the blessings of God on those who keep his covenant

1 Peter 3. 18 – end:   our redemption in Christ

Mark 1.9 – 15:  Jesus preaches the good news,  and calls us to repentance

Saved for a purpose …. 

Sometimes I find that Christians talk about salvation in ways that sound rather selfish : that is all about “me” and the Lord. And while it is true that God cares  for each one of us, we are created for community and for communion, not just to sit on our own little shelf feeling OK. So I am going to tell you how I saw this at one particular moment, in a way that I had not seen it before. And my jumping-off point is our passage from 1 Peter chapter 3.  Now if you think about it, this passage must have been chosen as it picks up on the story of Noah. Our first reading from Genesis brings us the final part of his story, with God announcing a covenant, a promise to preserve humankind.    

I don't think the passage from 1 Peter is one that I would happily throw at most congregations to toss around in a discussion group without any prior study. It is complex, and it challenges us to be able to distinguish between the deepest meanings of scripture, and the narrative within which these meanings are contained.  I am not one of those who take Noah and the flood and the ark literally, spending my summer vacations on trips to Mount Ararat to unearth the ark. No doubt there is a historical “flood kernel” to the story, and other flood stories crop up in ancient Near Eastern literature.  But that is not the point.   The point is that humankind tests God to the very limits of divine endurance -  if there are such limits -  but in the end, God's nature is to be compassionate and forgiving and to offer second, third, and even seventh chances to humanity.  He cannot do away with what he has made, with the works of his own hands.  Rather he reaches out with promise and blessing, and hope for the future.

Similarly, in 1 Peter, I am not going to argue about a physical hell into which Christ descends in the time between the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  I learnt from a great 19^th century theologian,  F. D. Maurice, who was thrown out of my old college,  King's in the Strand for his beliefs, that “hell”  is not a place,  but a state of being. It is what happens when we are without God. But 1 Peter is saying something very important, even if our view of the world does not have heaven on top, earth in the middle, and hell underneath.  1 Peter is saying that God in Christ takes infinite trouble to rescue humanity from its own failings,  its innate tendency to selfishness and sinfulness,  even to the point of reaching back into the beginnings of human history before “the Word became flesh”  in Jesus.  And it is not just “humanity and its failings”  it is us who need rescue, here and now, in our brokenness and lack of wisdom and self-centredness and reluctance to reach for the light. Even if  “we go down to hell”  in the words of the Psalmist, God reaches out to us in the darkness;   he rescues us from our private and individual hells. We are so good at building them, but they quickly become our prisons. We need the Christ who breaks down the gates of hell and sets us free.   

I love the fact that in the Orthodox church the most favoured Resurrection icon is not a picture of Christ rising from the tomb with a flag (as it is in the West ),   but Christ descending into the  underworld  (Hades or “Hell” ) to rescue Adam and Eve. For in Adam and Eve we see ourselves.  Christ is rescuing us,  raising up our fallen humanity,  reaching out to us in the darkness.  “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.”  This morning I was at All Saints Iwade, and looked once again at the pre-Reformation glass in the Lady Chapel window representing the crucifixion, where there is a skull at the foot of the Cross.  Adam's skull, for according to Christian tradition, Adam and Christ died in the same place, that the blood of Christ might flow down in redemption upon his first human creation.*  This is poetry, not history; but sometimes poetry has a greater reality than history. I hope you will take a moment to look at one representation of the icon of the Resurrection, by the monk Gregory Kroug, see : 

http://www.feastoffeasts.org/

 - scroll down to see the wall painting by monk Gregory Kroug, and further to see some notes on this. Light shines from the figure of Christ as he reaches into the darkness to raise up Adam and Eve/fallen humanity/ you and me. He treads such depth in his compassion that the shape of the halo is distorted, almost as if the pressure of gravity is unbearably great. 

Now to my particular moment. Some years ago I was to speak at West Malling Abbey about this icon, about the love of Christ in raising up fallen humanity,  and this being the Resurrection message. The night before, I suddenly woke up and found myself wide awake, and I realised I had missed something :  “I have raised you up, so that in turn you go and raise up in my Name your brothers and sisters.”  We are not saved just for ourselves, but for others whom God loves as much as he loves us. This is the message of the footwashing at the Last Supper in St. John's Gospel -  go and do thou likewise ! A message which has been captured beautifully in the words of St. Teresa of Avila :