Jesus: walking towards the pain; towards the darkness

First preached as a sermon at Croydon Minster on the Second Sunday of Lent.

‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’. (Luke 13.35)

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This Lent, as you may well have gathered, I have been intrigued by, and pondered on, the figure of the prophet Jonah.

Famously, Jonah was called by God to undertake the task of calling the people of the vast, and violent, city of Nineveh to repentance: to turn from their violence and walk in the ways of peace as the Lord intended. Jonah was having none of it. He headed in the opposite direction and hopped on a boat to Tarshish across the oceans.

In contrast, in our gospel this morning, Jesus walks towards the pain and anguish of the world and not away from it.

He walks towards the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. Jesus is under no illusions and resolutely faces that reality.

I don’t know about you, but I would most likely incline to the Jonah option in the face of such a challenge. There is a basic element of self-preservation in the instinct to recoil in horror, to turn and walk away from the dangerous, the shocking or the strange.

Elsewhere in St Luke’s Gospel, the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10.25-37) describes precisely the human instinct to hurry away, albeit dressed up in apparently justifiable religious terms: the priest and the Levite had services to get to, and couldn’t defile themselves beforehand; never mind that a man was lying bloodied and bruised in the gutter. The Samaritan of course was moved with pity and was drawn to the injured man and was not repelled by him. Little wonder then that interpreters have said that we can see the figure of Christ in the Samaritan, the one from outside, who has walked towards the shocking who acts in an unconventional way and breaks through human fear and ritual sensibilities.

That is a social challenge: not to turn away from our neighbour but to embrace their pain to bring healing and peace. Jesus is absolutely clear about his healing ministry of body, mind and spirit: ‘Listen’ he says, ‘I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work’. (That reference to ‘today, tomorrow and the third day’ also rings resurrection bells to us, expressed as it is in the Creed ‘and on the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures’).

And there is an inner aspect to this: being moved with pity. Christ’s walking towards the pain and anguish of the world and human lives comes from his understanding of his mission and task in the world, to bring all people to the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

To respond in faith to the overflowing love of God drives us out into wild and testing places, reflecting Christ’s trials in the wilderness.

This inner aspect draws on the faith, hope and love - as Fr John reminded us last week - that comes from God.

We go inwards in faith, hope and love to turn outwards with faith, hope and love.

There is no substitute for spending time simply reflecting on faith, hope and love. When we allow faith, hope and love to set the bearings of our thinking and speaking and acting then we find we can only walk in the way of Jesus Christ. This isn’t primarily an intellectual exercise but a movement of the heart.

Prayer is the place that this movement of the heart can happen. By that I mean time - consciously, intentionally - given over daily to be renewed and re-purposed under God.

In a busy, swirling world - with deadlines to be met, things to be done, people to see - that will always be a challenge. The wisdom of the ages is that our capacity to engage with the world and, indeed, ourselves, is best served by pausing, pondering, reflecting. As someone put it to me the other day, in beautifully simple terms: ‘Stop. Look. Listen’. That was a road safety slogan, and depending on your generation you’ll remember it as the Green Cross Code man or Hedgehogs. But ‘Stop. Look Listen’ is no bad motto for Lent, and indeed the whole Christian life. ‘Stop. Look. Listen.’ and then move forward on the path.

Jesus practices ‘Stop. Look. Listen’ as he goes about his ministry. His time of fasting and prayer in the wilderness was precisely that. In the Gospels he goes away to a quiet place to pray before moving on: ‘Yet today, tomorrow and the next day I must be on my way’ (Luke 13.33). He places himself in the presence of the holiness of God, as in the Transfiguration, before turning to face Jerusalem and his death. And in the Garden of Gethsemane – in his final ‘Stop. Look. Listen’ moments - he opens himself fully and finally to the Father’s will, as he stares into the darkness of what is to come.

This has very real and immediate application. In pastoral ministry priests and lay ministers are often faced with questions from people such as: where is God in this dark time? has God abandoned me? I don’t feel anything, where’s God?

The response is that Jesus Christ has walked towards their pain and anguish and not away from it. Jesus cried out from the cross: ‘my God, my God why have you forsaken me?’ That cry of abandonment is heartfelt and speaks for us. It is the ultimate moment when the love of Jesus Christ draws our pain into the very heart of God, such that we can say: Jesus Christ is with you in this pain; your tears are his tears, you are loved, cherished, precious.

‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’. You and I will be a blessing if we come, with Christ, towards the world’s pains and the bruised lives of men, women and children as signs of God’s healing and reconciliation.

Last week in Christchurch, New Zealand, we saw the exact opposite: one coming in hate and to kill - 'woe to the one who comes in hatred' - we go out as a blessing in the name of the Lord.

‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’. You and I will know blessing if we turn and come towards the throne of grace, into the presence of the Living God, day by day in prayer, when we stop, look and listen and, most especially, when we come to receive the broken body of Christ and his blood poured out for us from the cross in bread and wine.

‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’: it's sung at every Eucharist, and we will hear that phrase again, on Palm Sunday, applied to Christ who enters the city as its Servant King, yet a city that will kill him.

This is walking the Way of the Cross, the way of life: being Christ-like and not Jonah like, facing the darkness of the world so that light may shine, for which we ask his healing, strength and protection:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me;

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger.

Christ the heart of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger;

And to Him be glory forever and ever;

and to Him be glory forever.

‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord’. Amen.

© Andrew Bishop, 2019