Weekly Reflection

 

Dates: 22nd to 29th March

Lent 5

Passion Sunday

 

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-5, 10-11, 14; Psalm 130; Romans 8:6-11

 

1 The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”  I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.” 4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.               11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.”

 

1 Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord;

2     Lord, hear my voice.

Let your ears be attentive

    to my cry for mercy.

3 If you, Lord, kept a record of sins,

    Lord, who could stand?

4 But with you there is forgiveness,

    so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

5 I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,

    and in his word I put my hope.

6 I wait for the Lord

    more than watchmen wait for the morning,

    more than watchmen wait for the morning.

7 Israel, put your hope in the Lord,

    for with the Lord is unfailing love

    and with him is full redemption.

8 He himself will redeem Israel

    from all their sins.

 

6 The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. 7 The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. 9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. 10 But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. 11 And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you.

 

Today begins the two-week period of Passiontide, when we focus on the suffering of Jesus.  We can also reflect seriously on our own sins; on the fact that  in so many ways we have failed Him by our lifestyle.

 

Many people say that they are “not good enough to be Christians”; we need to remember that the Church is a hospital full of sick people – God’s Church is full of redeemed sinners – people who have responded to God’s call because they know that they are not good enough yet, but who have committed their lives to Jesus because they know their need of God and of His Spirit in their lives.  You probably know the children’s Christmas Carol “Away in a manger”; this finishes with the line, “And fit us for heaven to live with thee there.”  None of us is fit for heaven until we have repented of the past and received Jesus personally as our Lord and Saviour, and accepted all that means; repent literally means to turn round.

 

So does this mean that, once we have stopped, repented of our past life, turned round to follow Jesus and started on the road as a Christian, we are then clean and good for the rest of our lives?  Sadly it isn’t that simple; we are still human and we still fail.  This is why we regularly confess our sins in church and receive God’s forgiveness so that we can move forward.

 

God was very loving and gracious when He created us; He gave us Free Will.  And all too often we use it to go our own way instead of God’s way; the down side of Free Will is that we so frequently use it to further our own ends instead of choosing God’s way.  You only have to look at almost any chapter of the Bible to see how God’s people have failed through the ages, and that is no less true of us today.

 

Which is why we need a Saviour, to open the way back to God.

 

So how does this relate to Passiontide?

 

Jesus came to earth to show us what God is truly like, but also explicitly to give His life to atone for our sins[1]; this involved Him in severe suffering on the Cross out of His immense love for us, physical and emotional.  During these two weeks we do our best (poor though it may be) to identify with Him, draw close to Him, and turn our lives round, and to grow towards being a truer disciple.

 

We shall see next week on Palm Sunday how human beings can be utterly fickle in their response to His call – we fête and celebrate Him one moment, and the next we shout for His death.  Even strong but impetuous Peter, who was first to confess Jesus as Messiah and was given charge of the faithful (“On this rock I will build my Church” – Matthew 16:18); at the end in Pilate’s courtyard he denied that he even knew Him (Matthew 26:72).

 

The amazing thing is that whatever our story, whatever our background, Jesus accepts us just as we are; to quote Oliver Cromwell, “warts and all”.

 

Oh, how we all need a Saviour!

 

Lord Jesus, we thank you for coming to earth to suffer and to die so that we could be reconciled to the Father; we can be set free fron the slavery of sin which would forever ban us from eternal life with you. Praise you Lord!

 

 

[1] Much has been written  about the theology of the Atonement and we shall not go into that detail now; I am taking it as a given here.