Meditation for 12th April 2022

Journey – Lent 2022

In our early married life, David was employed by HSBC. We moved fairly frequently. We couldn’t chose where we went… we could have refused.

In fact, Jenny and I met years ago, in Cambridge. Our journeys took us other places with work, before reuniting, unexpectedly, on the steps of St. James in 1986!

A new direction.

The journey of discovery continues…

The Lent Course has been great for me. I am learning a lot!

It challenges those taking part in Andrew Ollerton’s Bible Course to: Explore the BIG Story.

It shows how the all the books, characters and events fit together. Genesis, 1800 BC – Revelation, 90 AD.

The basic outline illustration, gives a sense of a great journey. Showing over nearly two thousand years, the growth and development of Christianity. All this progressing through learning and change, suffering and exile to the experience of prophecy and revelation.

Our faith and our own journey through it’s phases of development and maturation has, for each one of us, included mixed experiences of learning, love, socialisation, ministry, joy, and understanding. I include illness too, loss of independence, death and grief. Our journey will always have to confront and will certainly be challenged, by an uncertain future.

Sadly, painfully, we pray for those whose journey is terrifying. The Ukraine is facing turmoil and conflict. They have witnessed the destruction of all that was familiar. They have been uprooted by war and exile. Where and when will it end? What does the future hold for Ukraine, and other nations, who are confronted by these great horrors and uncertainties? Help and support from other countries is frustrated by complicated political alliance. We pray that God’s peace will prevail.

Some people choose to journey in order to explore: space, ice laden Polar regions, oceans and dark continents. Individuals and teams have chosen adventure and exploration, pitting their skills in testing theories and knowledge in new world areas and beyond. We recognise the famous names of Florence Nightingale, who’s lamp of faith lit the lives of war wounded young soldiers and did so much to create nursing skills and standards. Ernest Shackleton,  Polar explorer. A model for leadership in extreme conditions. Martin Luther King, Baptist minister, American civil rights activist: ‘I Have a Dream’.

Many of us find ourselves journeying through work, family development, and ministry. Learning, nurturing and supporting others in a variety of ways.

Our journey sometimes taking the form of Pilgrimage, alone or with others. For instance, the famous pilgrimage route in Spain, is the Camino De Santiago. There are of course, others closer to home.

The journey is sometimes unknown or a foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature or a higher good, through experience. It can lead to transformation, after the pilgrim returns to their daily life.

At this time in Lent we now enter the period of Passion Tide.

Jesus’ journey from His birth, in a stable in Bethlehem, has reached His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Known as Palm or Passion Sunday, this marks the beginning of the close of His earthly journey. In the days that followed Jesus taught in the Temple. He also performed the act of cleansing the Temple: ‘ You have made a ‘den of robbers’’

Luke 19.46

He shared the Passover meal with the disciples. As false trials took place, Jesus was mocked and flogged. ‘And when they came to the place that is called The skull, there they crucified him’

Luke 23.33

Then He hung on the cross in agony from 9am to 3pm. But there he spoke his most powerful words.                                                                        

Andrew Ollerton

‘Father forgive them’

Matt. 23.34

‘My God why have you forsaken me?’

Matt. 27. 46

‘It is finished’

John. 19.30

Resurrection! ‘He is not here, for He has risen’

Matt. 28.6

Now, for all of us, we can move forward as part of this bodily resurrection, a new creation.

‘I pray also for those who believe in me… May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me’

John 17.20-23

Our journey, as one with the Trinity, goes forward. The tasks are clear. We are commanded to forgive, accept and love.

John 17.20-23

Jesus, following the resurrection, spoke plainly to Peter. 

We too must follow the Lord’s instructions to Peter, and ‘Feed my sheep’.