Sunday Worship on the Second Sunday of Lent
Welcome to our Worship on the second Sunday of Lent. Our Sunday service has now resumed at St Thomas' Church, but if you, or members of your family, are in a vulnerable group you are strongly advised to remain at home to worship. This morning's Worship is led by Revd Richard Hawkins, who has kindly agreed to share his reflection here. If you can't be with us in person, you'll find everything you need to worship from home here on this page, or you can find links to other services on our facebook page - Leesfield Parish .
Our first hymn today is "I Cannot Tell Why He, Whom Angels Worship"
Today's Gospel
Mark 8.31-end
Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’
Reflection
Jesus said, "You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things, " (Mark 8,33b)
In T.S. Eliot's play Murder in the Cathedral, Archbishop Thomas Becket has to choose between self-sacrifice and self-preservation. Henry II’s four knights are approaching Canterbury Cathedral to make Becket recant his stand against the king: the alternative, Becket knows, is death.
Becket's priests urge him to bolt and bar the cathedral doors as he would against "the lion, the leopard, the wolf and the boar". But Becket refuses, saying, "I give my life to the law of God ... unbar the door. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. Now is the triumph of the Cross. Open the door! I command it!" So Eliot's Becket chooses to think in God's way, not in a human way. His choice is to take the way of the cross.
Jesus informed the disciples that as God's Messiah, his "anointed one", he was going to have to "suffer many things .. be rejected.. and be killed". Peter was utterly confused. He had no notion of a suffering, self-sacrificing Messiah. He held the view of most Jews that when the Christ came he would conquer Israel's enemies and reign in triumph over them. Knowing that this view prevailed and that as God's Christ he had very different enemies to conquer and very different triumphs to win.
Jesus saw Satan at work in Peter's naive wish to protect him and told his leading disciple to try and think more as God thinks. Jesus had come to defeat the sinfulness and heal the brokenness of flawed humanity. His triumphs were to be the victories of truth over falsehood, forgiveness over revenge, self-giving over self-interest. He knew that this was God's way of thinking, God's way of rescuing humankind. What he didn't need was the constant distraction of having to fight off attempts by people to make him into their idea of a Messiah, complete with crown and magnificent white horse.
So he calls the crowds to him. He needs them to know the consequences of being his disciple. He tells them that following his way would inevitably incur immense effort, expense, suffering and even, for some, death. God's victories are often won only at terrible cost. Just as Christ is to go the way of the cross, so must his true followers. While for some it would mean actual death, for all it means the death of self-centred aims and desires and the acceptance of Christ's way of unremitting, self-giving love. His way must be their way.
However, Christ's way also has its own special blessings and rewards, let's remember. Those who live only for themselves lose out grievously. They become prisoners of their own selfishness - isolated in their self-obsession, dominated by their own selfish agenda, diminished through their unwillingness to give. By contrast, the way of self-giving love actually opens lives wide to the love and friendship of others, to life's deepest joys and satisfactions. And to point up the ultimate triumph of our Lord's costly way, Jesus does not shrink from describing the searing shame and ignominy that falls upon those who repudiate his way - a prophecy of Peter's very own triple denial that still lies in the future.
Putting it simply, if we keep ourselves to ourselves, that's all we get. Furthermore, life at its best is not found in grabbing at wealth, power and status. In such grabbing we lose our true selves, says Jesus.
Our Lord calls us to choose the way of the cross by overcoming evil with good and by thinking and living in the way of God's grace. It is a costly assignment often wounding, always challenging. But this is the way our living, loving God transforms us and meets our deepest needs. Christ wants us to find abundant life by following his way - it may deny us ease, but will give us glory.
Christ's way is found in simple things, like bearing insults when collecting for a Christian charity: or refusing to join in illegal practices at work: or giving sacrificially of our money to help the needy: or finding new ways of engaging with friends, family and fellow congregants when we are in lockdown and socially distancing; or finding joy in new and different forms of worship on line or on Television.
On 9th April 1945. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hanged at Flossenburg concentration camp. He had chosen to oppose Hitler and so sealed his fate. In July 1944 Bonhoeffer had written. "It is not the religious act that makes the Christian, but participation in the sufferings of God in the secular life." Few of us are ever faced with the choices of a Bonhoeffer or a Becket, but in less dramatic ways we are all called by our Lord to think and act in God's way.
Let us reflect on how Jesus calls each and every one of us to think and act in God’s way.
Our Prayers
Merciful Father, open my mind to hear the teachings of your son Jesus,
Help me to know your truth and follow your will.
Close my ears to the voice of Satan and let him not blind me to your will.
Give me the strength to take up my cross
and follow you in faith and the confidence of your everlasting love.
In Jesus' name, I pray.
Amen.
Today's final hymn is "Take Up Thy Cross, The Saviour Said"
