Passion Sunday 2019

A London business man, (Lindsay Clegg), told of a time that he was selling a warehouse. The warehouse had been empty for a long time and was in bad condition. When showing a potential buyer around he said that he would get new windows to replace the broken ones, make sure any structural work needed was done and generally just tidy the place up before the sale went through.

The potential purchaser replied that he could forget about dong that work as he didn’t want the building, he just wanted the site where he was going to build something completely new... We sometimes underplay this but that is what God is doing in us. He is making a new creation. There’s always a danger of taking analogies too far but in effect he wants us to offer our lives and the permission to build..

Today on this Passion Sunday we move a little closer to the cross and the reflection on the sacrifice and love of Jesus and our readings this morning offer a challenge as to where we’ll take our journey not just through the rest of Lent but into the future as well... 

The reading from Isaiah (43:16-21) has God’s promise that ‘I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it ?’ New things are often viewed a bit suspiciously in church, but these are God’s promises so we can’t really argue !

And the new things that he is doing involve bringing life - water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert... Isaiah is considered perhaps the prominent Prophet in the Old Testament and 4 times he mentions new life (42:9,43:19,48:6,65:17) and when he speaks of new life he’s not just talking about minor changes but is promising things people had just not imagined and certainly never planned. God is the supreme artist ready to design things way beyond our imagination for our world and for our lives.

In this passage from Isaiah the words were addressed to the children of Israel who had failed God miserably. I read recently that every time He blessed them with good things, they returned to Him evil things:

1. God gave them the Temple - they gave Him idol worship

2. God gave them His commands - they lived like they were suggestions.

3. God gave them wealth - they used it to abuse the poor

4. God gave them Himself - they gave Him nothing except rejection.

The children of Israel did not deserve to receive anything from God. Yet He still loved them and He wanted to help them change. And years later when Jesus came to live on earth, he gave the same promise but this time to a much wider audience - he would make all things new for everyone who let him... 

When we follow Jesus we’re encouraged to look forward with confidence as God has done everything we need for our salvation. Too often we worry about the past, we worry about situations or people that we’ve struggled with about the things we’re not really ready to change or the people we don’t really want to forgive or seek forgiveness from and all kinds of other things which hamper our relationship with God and with others. If we spend too long looking behind, we’ll miss what’s in front of us and ultimately crash !

So we need to be ready to trust God into the future, confident of his power to transform us so that we can be the people he wants us to be, the people to whom he has promised fullness of life,,, 

And Paul was one of those people who experienced transformation in a dramatic way. As he says in the reading we heard from his letter to the Philipppians (3:4b-14), materially he had it all, he was a good faithful Jew and a Roman citizen with lots of power and presumably a good bit of wealth, but he gave it all up for Jesus - not grudgingly but with a determined  commitment that whatever he’d been and whatever he’d possessed meant nothing when compared to the riches of knowing the love of Jesus...

And as we’re drawn at this time of year to the cross then we’re drawn to evaluate what we think of God’s love for us and how we respond to that love... It’s relatively easy to talk about in a comfortable church and in a country where faith is allowed out in the open but what about through the times of suffering such as Paul talked about ? What about when our faith means truly allowing God to transform us... 

Then we had the gospel reading (John 12:1-8) with Jesus eating dinner at the home of his friend Lazarus. Martha, Lazarus’ sister served but his other sister Mary took some expensive perfume and anointed Jesus’ feet. This was incredible in many ways - first it wasn’t the place for women to sit at the feet of men, secondly she let her hair down to wipe Jesus’ feet, something considered incredibly inappropriate at the very least and then of course there was the extravagance - this was expensive perfume as Judas Iscariot was ready to point out...

Mary may not have even known the significance of what she was doing but Jesus saw this in reference to his coming death - his anointing was special. It was not a case of depriving the poor, following Jesus and his example must always lead us to stand up for those who struggle to stand for themselves, but this was a moment that recognised who Jesus was and is, and it was a moment when Mary extravagantly gave something back to Jesus and again, as we approach the cross once more we are asked what do we give extravagantly to God in terms of our time, our talent, our money and our whole lives... 

As churches, as Christians, we are called to shine for God - on our logo we’ve adopted the words in this church, ‘Shining brightly in the heart of the city’ and at a conference I attended some years ago now (Llandudno - The time is now), the closing speaker (Mark Clavier) said the whole church should ‘Reach higher, shine more brightly and be a beacon of God’s love to show the world who we are and why we are...’

From our readings today I think we’ve received firstly a challenge to be confident in our faith, to trust God who can do anything. 

Secondly, we’ve been challenged to allow God to transform us to be the people he really wants us to be, and finally, we’re challenged to answer the question of what we think God has done and is doing for us and what we’re giving him in return... In short we’re asked what the death of Jesus on the cross and his resurrection really mean to us ?

As we move closer to the cross, as we recognise the love of Jesus who so willingly gave his life for us, and his power to transform things and situations into new and better creations than we can even envisage, as evidenced by his resurrection and the millions of changed lives since,  may we long for God to transform us and may we offer ourselves as lights shining brightly for the glory of God and the extension of his kingdom. Amen