Words that Jar … and Challenge
Our Gospel and Epistle readings, his morning, challenge us in our love for Christ and our spiritual complacency. They make us look at Easter and the days that follow in ways that carry Lent forward in our pilgrimage with Christ.
In the Gospel
In the Gospel (Jn 12:1-8), we see the extravagant love of Mary and the sinful greed of Judas Iscariot, but it is Jesus own words that really jar – “the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” Jesus puts worship of him above the needs of the poor.
Of course, it is not either/or, he is not saying do not meet the needs of the poor. And there is something about the timing here (they will not have many more moments to worship him in the flesh). Still, Jesus could have been worshiped in other ways and the money saved for the poor, but Jesus honours Mary for her extravagant Gift in a way that challenges our love for him.
Nothing matters more than loving and worshiping Jesus with all we are and have.
Perhaps we have to ask ourselves; what is the relationship between the two great commandments?
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”
This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it:
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself.”
On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets. (Matt 22:37–40)
The first is ‘first and greatest’ because comes before all others and all others must flow from it. If we do not love God truly and absolutely, we cannot truly love our neighbour. Too many people think that loving their neighbour is enough, and see Jesus merely as a good example to follow. But Jesus calls us to love God in him with everything we have and are – so what’s left over to love our neighbour? The answer, in Jesus, is more than we could ever have imagined.
In the Epistle
Then, in the Epistle (Phil 3:4-14), we see Paul laying aside his Jewish heritage, with all its real privileges and blessing, in order to seek Christ. We might understand his laying aside a reliance on legal obedience to pursue a righteous based on faith, but he is saying much more than this – his very birth-right as a Hebrew, must not get in the way of his pursuing and having Christ.
And, then, we might expect his new faith to be his confidence in Christ, but even this he lays aside in a daily, all or nothing, pursuit of knowing Jesus Christ. Whatever this relationship with Christ is, he (even Paul) has not yet arrived, but is still seeking, pressing in.
There is sort of Christianity that claims more than it actually has, and more than it is willing to sacrifice to pursue. Paul challenges us to look again at our complacency in the face of what God is calling us to.
The New Way
A New Thing, a New Way
And, all this echoes the reading from Isaiah (Isa 43:16-21).
In this reading, God highlights what he has done for his people, calling to mind their extraordinary rescue from Egypt. He is the Lord;
who makes a way in the sea, a path in the mighty waters, who brings forth chariot and horse, army and warrior; they lie down, they cannot rise, they are extinguished, quenched like a wick
(Isa 46:16-17)
But, having brought this to mind, he says “Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.” Open your eyes, he says,
“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”
(Isa 46:19)
This new thing is a new way … in the desert. It’s a way that calls his people to leave the past and come out to a desert experience.
In the mosaic law there was a festival commanded after the final harvest – the feast of Booths or Tabernacles (in Jewish Sukhot). In it, the people were to come out of their homes and build booths or tents, remembering their experience in the wilderness. Isaiah speaks of something like this, but greater, a real leaving behind of history and comfort to make a new wilderness journey.
I am the Way, the Truth and the Life
As we approach the trials and journey of Holy Week, we will hear again Jesus’ words to his disciples:
“I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life”
(Jn 14.6)
He is the new way, that God speaks of in Isaiah, a desert way that calls us to embrace the cross (taking up our cross) and follow him.
As we come towards Easter, we will have an opportunity to follow him (to walk with him) and – as Paul says – to “share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death”. And, on Easter Day, we will rejoice in his resurrection and the new life that he owns and shares with us in his resurrection glory, as he pours his Spirit into us.
Easter People – who embrace the Cross
And, often, we will move on from Lent and Holy week, to live in that new risen life as if it has all been accomplished. In Christ it has, of course, but not in us.
We are Easter People, living in the good of the resurrection … but there is no Easter, no resurrection, without Good Friday and the Cross. And Jesus still says to his Easter People “take up your cross and follow me”.
That’s why Paul, who has experienced more of the new Easter life than most of us will experience this side of Glory says things like this:
“that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
(Phil 3.10-11)
Or, when he writes to the Corinthians
“I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”
(1 Cor 2:2)
You might expect him to want to know nothing but Christ resurrected and glorified, but no, it is Christ Crucified that he seeks amongst them.
Knowing Jesus; through dying to live
One day, for us, it will all be accomplished;
“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”
(1 Jn 3.2)
But now we are still pursuing this – counting everything else as rubbish compared to this – and Jesus calls us to follow him, by picking up our cross. He calls us to seek his life by laying down ours.
Paul’s words describe and extraordinary faith:
- One that is so confident in Jesus and his way (his upward call), that Paul is willing to give up everything to follow him and come to know him.
- One that is so unconfident in himself that he pursues this way, each day as if is the first, as if everything depends upon pressing on; through suffering and dying with Jesus “if by any means” (what and extraordinary phrase) he may obtain this life in Jesus.
How does our faith, our life, compare to this?
How much does our life show a passion to truly know Jesus, whatever it may take?
God is calling us, in Jesus, to something more and higher – it’s the “upward call of God” that Paul speaks of. And, we are to content with where we are, and what we have.
As we draw towards the end of Lent, we may feel that there is light at the end of the tunnel at Easter. But there is something in me, something of God’s call, that wants to extend Lent into Easter and beyond; in prayerful seeking, in hungry reading of God’s word, in cross-embracing living …
that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead and gain Christ Jesus, our true goal and treasure.