THE Royal Wedding
April 30th, 2011Putting the Passion back into Easter
April 25th, 2011Everyone remembers the title of the recent Mel Gibson epic, ‘Passion of the Christ’. The word “Passion” is used to describe the events of Easter. It encompasses the hours before Jesus was arrested, the trial, and crucifixion of Christ. Mel Gibson’s movie is the modern day equivalent of the Passion plays which were performed around Europe since the 18th Century in order to tell people the message of Easter. These plays were commemorative and celebratory and every town acrossEngland had their own version, local people, local church, local plays.
If Passion is supposedly at the heart of what we call “Holy Week” why is it that we are so indifferent towards this celebration? Easter is treated like the understated little cousin of Christmas. We give it a courteous nod, thank it for giving us three days off work and then hurry past it and on into a blissful hot summer. Christmas however, is firmly circled in our calendar. We plan for it, we long after it, we save for it, we go broke for it, we cook for it, we even sing about it, but Easter? It doesn’t have much of a rich tradition for us. Are we being robbed of the chance to celebrate the greatness God gave us? After all, Easter is the fulfilment of the promise, it’s the reconciliation, the hope restored, it’s the gift of communion and relationship with God! It’s one of the biggest reasons to celebrate that we have.
And if we can be accused of side stepping Easter what can be said of other long lost traditions? We seem to be almost afraid to acknowledge any of the pre-cross celebrations that occurred in the Old Testament. What happened to the feast of tabernacles? Why aren’t we reminding ourselves each year about the importance of not lingering in the metaphorical desert? Why don’t we mark the Passover, and celebrate the day with thanksgiving that God delivered us from captivity inEgypt and still fulfils His promise even now by delivering us from chains that bind us today. These moments are our history as much as the history of the Jewish people who experienced them. They might have been born into a rich culture but we were REBORN into it.
Our God is a God of celebrations. He likes a party, celebration is important to Him. On the day that each of us were saved and acknowledged Jesus as Lord in our lives there was a party thrown in heaven just for us, where the angels sung and rejoiced at our salvation. (Luke 15:10). We shouldn’t be afraid to celebrate His wonder.
As much as we must remember the sacrifice made for us we also need to remember a Jesus that went to a wedding party in Cana and had FUN! And a Jesus that didn’t want to miss celebrating the Passover even though He knew He was soon going to have to go through the hardest trial of His life. He is the Jesus that tells us heaven will be like a huge banquet hall.
When we celebrate we create a culture around ourselves and we say “this is important to us”, in a time when the world is broken and hungrily seeking identify and culture sharing with them the rich and vibrant history that we have inherited in salvation offers them the same invitation to Gods party.
One thing that struck me this Easter is that we must put the passion back into our celebrations and our history, because every time we celebrate we remember the goodness and glory that is God. And every time we share our passion for His promise we are sharing the same passion that Christ showed us on the cross.
Every Christmas, every Easter, every Passover, every feast of the tabernacles, every glorious day that we get to tell the greatness of God should be celebrated with joyful praise and in remembrance that God, is indeed good. All the time. In every situation.
Happy Easter
April 22nd, 2011Today, Jesus died on the cross for us, the ultimate sacrifice so that we could come again before God in right standing and relationship.
Five years ago I was baptised into that promise.
Happy Easter!!!
Communion
April 22nd, 2011Tonight is the night that Jesus sat with His disciples at the last supper and broke bread with them. He fellowshipped with His brothers for the last time, they were His last moments of “normal” before the awful day of his crucifixion.
Tonight He broke bread and shared it with His men and gave us what we now call communion today. I try and imagine what this must have been like, in a stuffy top room still baked in the days heat, men squashed and perched around a table listening hungrily to their teacher, not realising fully or even at all that the next day the man that they have watched do miracles would be dead.
And I imagine Jesus and the weight He must have felt on His shoulders, knowing soon that He was about to be betrayed, knowing soon He was about to drink from a cup that He couldn’t pass to anyone else, knowing that His fate would be agonising and brutal. As Jesus the human, was He scared? Did He feel so completely and overwhelmingly isolated and alone that evening as He looked between the brothers He loved.
He knew He only had a few hours left to spend with them, to teach them all He could about Himself, His Father and His promises.
And tonight, 2000 years later, in a stuffy room still filled with the days heat, 12 of us stood and broke bread together in remembrance of Jesus, and drank wine in remembrance of the new covenant that was about to be completed.
I stood and wept. Overwhelmed by the idea of how hollow and frightened Jesus must have been becoming in those last hours before His arrest. Knowing that even in His fear He still taught us, had more to reveal to us. His sacrifice for us was so beautiful, so selfless, and must have been a huge and awful burden for Him to carry.
I think of how that sacrifice changed my life; I looked about me to the faces of my “family” the other members of the worship team at tonight’s practise. We were all there because of Jesus, because of what He did for us exactly 2,000 years ago this night.
Communion has never been so tangible and poignant to me before. This was THE night, the night it all happened.
I have been following a site this year that sends you text messages in real time the events of Holy Week. There was been so much activity tonight from them and perhaps this is why this Easter in particular has been a different experience, a deeper experience. I am conscious of how this weeks events unfolded, and as I prepare to go to sleep tonight I am also conscious of what tomorrow brings.
Tomorrow is a beautiful day for us, but it is laced in sorrow and heartache. I can’t imagine anyone could ignore those feelings if they truly immerse themselves in their imagination of how tomorrow will unfold for Jesus. The end is glorious, but the journey to get there includes betrayal of His people, public torture, insurmountable pain and agony and then a slow humiliating death, his hands and feet pierced, and a thirst in His mouth that He cannot quench.
And tonight, as Jesus finishes His last meal with His brothers, He is moving on now to the Mount of Olives and to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray fervently to His Father to be spared tomorrows fate.
And before I sleep tonight I will spend a few minutes praying with Him, praying for those that don’t know Him yet.
In the beginning
April 13th, 2011This is a little sombre to write about as my first post, but my blog has been here a week and I haven’t made time to write about some of the topics I want to address.
It is quite my own fault then that this is my first entry.
I just found out that my childhoods best friends dad passed away several days ago. I still keep in contact with my ‘bestie’ although our relationship has never been as close as it was before I left to go to university. Despite the inevitable drifting our relationship has experienced as we’ve grown into adulthood I still attended her wedding last summer and watched her dad walk her down the aisle. He was as proud as punch.
It was strange to relate to him on an adult level. We got on very well, but this post isn’t about a digital epitaph to him as a person now but to mention a legacy that he sowed into my childhood which shaped the person who I am today- that he, sadly, was probably never aware of.
When I was about 9 or 10, Michael, my besties dad got saved. I didn’t know what that meant at the time or even if it was phrased that way back in the late 1980′s but after a long period of depression Michael had been befriended by someone at the local village church and had decided to go along where he ultimately gave his life to God.
The significance of this was lost on me as a child, I had no idea of it’s meaning only that my best friend started to going to ‘Tuesday Club’ and that they played games there and often did cooking! And it meant me and my bestie could hang out after school!
And that was how I joined church. The journey into adulthood was much longer and more complicated than that but at 10 years old when my best friend did something, I did something.
It was how I also became a vegetarian!
I remember watching Michael get baptised in the little blue pool that built down into the stage. I was so excited to learn that there was a hidden ‘pool’ under there. Right after he got baptised my bestie was baptised, she had borrowed my summer dress for the occasion. It floated out all around her and everyone applauded when she was dunked under the water, and then we all went to have a special
buffet supper in the hall behind the church afterwards. I really wanted to get baptised too.
And that was it. we settled into a routine of Sunday school and Tuesday club until our teenage years when she decided that church was lame and I carried on because I had my own Sunday school class and I loved the children.
When I left my village to go to university it felt like leaving those routines behind me was a natural part of growing up and moving on and I didn’t think any more of it.
When I was 24 I met another young adult at the gym. He was telling me how he played guitar in his church band and he invited me along.
I still think, to this day, that I wasn’t put off by this invitation because I’d been to church as a child and although I thought it’d be a really boring waste if my Sunday I said yes to
be polite.
Five years later and I can still remember how blown away I had been by this ‘new’ church. There was no 80 year old organist or fuddy old women with their hair in buns. This church was vibrant and powerful. Everyone was under 30. It was relevant to me!
Its really been in the last five years that I’ve learnt what church is but I will never forget those small village beginnings that started with Michael giving his life to God in a little plastic blue baptism bath and Tuesday nights, running up and down a church hall with my bestie.
Test mobile post
April 6th, 2011This is a test post from my iPhone.
