Hello everyone
LENTEN REFLECTIONS —WEEK 4
The weeks leading up to Easter seem to be flying by. We are halfway through Lent and discovering something about the more obscure characters mentioned in the New Testament. We only have time and space for seven characters at a rate of one per week. There has been a positive response to the content and style of the material we are using which makes me wonder whether it would be beneficial to cover one or two more or all the remaining stories after Easter.
Opening Prayer
Lent is a time to learn to travel
Light, to clear the clutter
From our crowded lives and
Find a space, a desert.
Deserts are bleak; no creature
Comforts, only a vast expanse of
Stillness, sharpening awareness of
Ourselves and God
Uncomfortable places, deserts.
Most of the time we’re tempted to
Avoid them, finding good reason to
Live lives of ease; cushioned by
Noise from self-discovery.
Clutching at world’s success
To stave off fear.
But if we dare to trust the silence
To strip away our false security,
God can begin to grow his wholeness in us,
Fill up our emptiness, destroy our fears,
Give us new vision, courage for the journey,
And make our desert blossom like a rose.
From – ‘Waiting for the Kingfisher’ – Ann Lewin
Simon Iscariot
Simon Iscariot (John 6:71,13:2,27; see too Matthew 27:3–10)
His name appears only as the father of Judas, the thief, the betrayer. It places Judas the Everyman in a time and a community, a man with a family, perhaps one that loved him. Judas was not like Barabbas, the ‘son of a father’, the anonymous troublemaker who gained his freedom at Jesus’ expense, the Everyman without the family that gave a person identity, belonging.
Was Simon Iscariot, named three times, a follower of Jesus, sympathiser, even, later, a witness? Was he a man visited, prayed with, by the more patient, large-hearted followers of Jesus? Did they include another bereaved parent, Mary, mother of Jesus? Or was only his name known, this man who had lost his son to a life on the road with an itinerant preacher, and then lost his reputation with a son branded as thief, traitor, and suicide?
Did Peter seek out Simon to tell of his own failing, and the meeting that followed? In the turmoil around the teachings of Jesus, Simon lost his son. When an adult child goes wrong, there may be regret, grieving and attempt to reason, a determination to stay by them, whatever trouble they bring upon themselves. Judas was not a disowned Barabbas. He’d fallen in love with the words of a wandering preacher, and died a lonely death, cast aside, betrayed by the godly people who had used him.
What can we say to a parent whose son has taken his life? That earth has no sorrow heaven cannot heal? That God understands, encompasses all? That it is a tragedy, whatever someone has done, however their life has spiralled beyond control? However much others tempted and taunted him and will not take their share of blame?
Did the parents ask if God betrayed him, though the manipulation of the priests and handwashing more rigorous than Pilate’s?
What can we say to the grief for a life cut short in loneliness, by one for whom the burden of life had become too heavy to bear alone? What do the parents say of those who let their son lose hope and left him to his pain? Is God there in the small hours, when the world sleeps and the grieving wake, remembering the boy who will not wake again? When they ask if there was something left unsaid, some way to reach him, to say that there is always a way out, a way round the hardest fear, a way home. ‘And always a place for you here. If Jesus wears you out, take respite here. If love has worn you out, rest your wounds here. If you took the wrong path, we too will share your shame, and be with you as you turn.’
After you died, trapped in cold metal tubes, machines and staff who saw the science not the soul; when your thwarted breath slept forever your story took its route, for good or loss. And though it took a time as you got used to having died, I sensed that somewhere far you lived a while the life you never had, and live also in all the love you left and all the loss.
Belfast Covenant, 1988
That dark Good Friday with the heavy air
beating our anger as the gutters poured,
soaking the poisoned streets, the extra mile
torn to harm, our arms scarred vision stained,
souls drained, our feet leaked blood that streamed,
streamed on the pavements with no hope spared;
that afternoon with faith subdued,
price paid, spirit dulled in the trickling lull
of dank chapels dripping psalms, we came,
under iron cloud, lifting eyes to the hills
where, sudden, full, unbidden, three rainbows showed,
grew, glowed, bowed over the city waste.
We give thanks …
For the friends and families who stay by people in pain, all the way.
For those who support the sinner, the criminal, the social pariah, opposing the actions but regarding the humanity.
For those who work in the emergency services and deal with the aftermath of violent death, for the Samaritans and other organisations that seek to help people avoid suicide and self-harm.
We pray …
For all families who have lost a loved one by suicide, those whose loved one has harmed themselves alone, and those who have taken others to their deaths.
We pray… for all those caught up in war and violence, in the troubled places of the world and in our own land.
For those entrapped by addiction and the lifestyle that drives people into darkness, debt, depression and disordered values. For those who feel their life has no value, that others suffer from their living, that they may find again the
value Christ places on them.
We pray… for those in the hardest situations, who believe that the only way to keep their integrity is to end their
lives. We pray for all those caught up in war and violence, in the troubled places of the world and in our own land.
Our own prayers …….. Lord’s Prayer ……
KEEP SAFE …. KEEP PRAYING……
Peter
