Everyone is most welcome to join us for our Sunday Eucharist at St Thomas' Church at 11 am or at St Agnes' at 9.15 am. Some of our Covid precautions remain in place to keep everybody safe, but we'll be singing a couple of hymns and offering refreshments after the service, and Sunday School is now back at St Thomas'.
Our first hymn this morning is "Bread is Blessed and Broken"
Today's Gospel
John 18:33-37 Jesus before Pilate
Pilate then went back inside the palace, summoned Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“Is that your own idea,” Jesus asked, “or did others talk to you about me?”
“Am I a Jew?” Pilate replied. “Your own people and chief priests handed you over to me. What is it you have done?”
Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”
“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
Reflection
I have borrowed this week’s reflection from a new website that I came across called refectionary.com. It is written by Fay Rowlands (aka Mother Clanger) and I am sure you will find it enjoyable as well as thought provoking.
I love the Lord of the Rings films. Mostly because I love the books, but it certainly helps to have drool-worthy Aragorn flashed across the screen from time to time.
He’s an interesting fellow, Aragorn, or Strider as he is known when we first meet him. If you don’t know the stories, he is introduced as a shady character, a lone wanderer with a non-too-glorious past. Who is he? Can we trust him? What is the secret he is hiding? Two thousand pages later, he turns out to be the rightful king of men and he Gets The Girl.
No-one would have believed that at the start – he neither looked like a king, nor acted like one. But appearances can be deceptive, as we see in today’s reading. Jesus and Strider have a lot in common.
All the time that Strider was wandering around Middle Earth in a grubby cloak, he was the king. It didn’t matter if people knew that or not. It didn’t matter if they acknowledged his authority or not. They could reject him, insult him, try to kill him. Yet he was still the king. Sound like anyone else?
A lot of people were confused about Jesus. They had heard about his being a king, supposedly, but he didn’t dress like a king, he didn’t talk like a king, he certainly didn’t act like a king. So perhaps he wasn’t a king, not really.
If not a king then what? Maybe we can dismiss him as a good teacher. Then we can pick and choose the nice bits he said and agree with them, but ignore the harder stuff. If he’s not a king, we don’t have to obey when we don’t fancy it. We can keep our own little kingdoms.
That certainly would make things easier. When Strider was found to be the rightful heir to the throne of men, not everyone was pleased. The appointed stewards, who had been keeping the throne warm for the last few generations, were none too pleased at the thought of losing control of their kingdom – even though they were only looking after it for the long-awaited king.
It was the same with Jesus. When he turned up and started fulfilling prophecies of another long-awaited king, there were plenty of ‘stewards’ who had become quite used to their borrowed thrones and were not keen to move aside.
Pilate – he had a throne to defend, but he needn’t have worried. Jesus was not after earthly power, although everyone from Satan in the desert to his disciples thought he should be.
The religious folk – They certainly had a kingdom to protect. They had been maintaining the faith of the children of Abraham for centuries and they were not about to let some jumped-up messiah carpenter from the ill-educated north start rocking the boat.
We find it easy to wag a finger at them from the safety of 2000 years, but would we so easily see the truth had Jesus been ruffling feathers here today? These people we criticise for their blindness were the church elders, the well-respected theologians, the conference speakers, the ministers, the house-group leaders of the day. Let us make sure we are not building our kingdoms when we seek to build his.
But what about the smaller kingdoms? We are all stewards of our own little domains. How easy do we find it to hand the reins of power to the rightful king when he asks for them back? The rich young man of Mark 10 wanted to keep a firm grip on the reins of his riches, and money can so often be the place where it is hardest for us to let go.
The uncomfortable truth is that Jesus is king, whether we like it or not. If we welcome him with rejoicing or if we fight to keep the power we think is ours, he is king. If we gladly bow in worship or if we turn our backs and ignore the commands we don’t like, he is king. If we freely offer all our gifts and possessions back to the one who gave them or if we snarlingly guard them as a dog his food bowl, He Is King.
Fay Rowlands
Our Prayers
Almighty and everlasting Lord
Let us remember that Jesus is our king
The Lord of our lives and master of all kingdoms great and small.
As we bow in worship before Him,
help us to put aside delusions of our own power
And submit to Jesus’ will.
Give us the courage to devote our skills, time and possessions,
to serve our Lord and remember that we belong to Jesus.
“It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”
Amen
Our final hymn today is "Christ Triumphant, Ever Reigning"
