Lent Readings

[Tuo]

In previous years I've posted a prayer a day for Lent. This year I thought I'd try to do the same thing but with Bible readings. I'll be using the Anglican lectionary for this year, but will choose just one passage, and may only post part of it - just to keep the length manageable. Come and join in (add thoughts, comments, prayers, whatever) if you'd like to.

Day 1: 10th February - Psalm 103, 8-14

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy,
slow to anger and of great kindness.
He will not always accuse us,
nor will he keep his anger for ever.
He has not dealt with us according to our sins,
nor rewarded us according to our wickedness.
For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so is his mercy great upon those who fear him.
As far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our sins from us.
As a father cares for his children,
so does the Lord care for those who fear him.
For he himself knows whereof we are made;
he remembers that we are but dust.

'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return'. The psalmist reminds us of our weakness and frailty, but only in order to remind us that God's love for us is always greater than our ability to mess up; that just as a parent loves her or his children - not despite their vulnerability but because of it - God loves us and forgives our mistakes, and that whenever the fragile edifices of our lives and our selves seem to be about to crumble to nothingness, God can rebuild us and make us whole again. May this Lent be a time of rebuilding. And, in refashioning ourselves from the dust, may we also try to find ways to support those around us as they too work to reshape themselves anew.

well, I would not have denied Jesus in the courtyard, Oh no... I would have been so far on the way back to Galilee you would not have seen me for dust and I would not have had chance to deny him in the courtyard.

Peter was pretty brave to go into the courtyard in the first place.

good job people are forgiven and given second chances.

And third, and fourth, and fifth....

Yes, absolutely BES and Edith: there's hope even for the worst and weakest of us, and Peter, in the end, is so far from being either of those things.

March 24th: Maundy Thursday - John 13, 1-17; 31-35

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supperJesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God,got up from the table,took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him.He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’Jesus answered, ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’Jesus said to him, ‘One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet,but is entirely clean. And youare clean, though not all of you.’For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you?You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am.So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.Very truly, I tell you, servantsare not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them.If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.

When he had gone out, Jesus said, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.If God has been glorified in him,God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once.Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, “Where I am going, you cannot come.”I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Maundy Thursday seems to me to be about a paring back to essentials, ready for what is to come. In many churches altars are being stripped and the churches themselves are being pared back to essentials. Everything is being taken away, only to be restored in a great chorus of alleluias on Easter Sunday. But for now that seems impossibly remote... and instead what we are offered for comfort here - played out in a different way through the symbolism of washing the disciples' feet - is a reiteration of the two greatest commandments: love God and love one another. Love God by loving one another. And let that love be known and visible so that everyone who sees it will see in it Christ's example and God's love. May we let ourselves be washed by that love tonight. It strikes me that there is humility in accepting the act of washing as much as in doing the washing; even that (at least in our colder climes) there's a banal parallel of the stripping of the altars in the stripping off of shoes and socks and the baring of feet to be washed.

And when everything else has been stripped away one thing remains... the body and blood of Christ. (In my church, at least, I know that people are contemplating the body and blood of Christ in silent prayer even as I type.) What remains, then, is Jesus himself, visible to us in the Eucharist, but also in one another, and above all in love. Let us love one another so that everyone will know that we are Jesus' disciples.

March 25th: Good Friday - John 19, 28-37

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfil the scripture), ‘I am thirsty.’ A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.’ Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. (He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, ‘None of his bones shall be broken.’ And again another passage of scripture says, ‘They will look on the one whom they have pierced.’

In this passage the awfulness of the events commemorated on Good Friday emerge with horrific clarity: the simple human need expressed in 'I am thirsty'; the casual violence of the way in which the soldiers break the legs of the crucified men in order to expedite their tidying-up before the Sabbath (...and, yes, I know that breaking their legs also hastened their death, which might be considered kindness rather than cruelty in the circumstances, except that the motivation is clearly not to relieve suffering); the simplicity and finality of 'it is finished'.

As Oma noted the other day, there has been a circularity about these readings, a returning again and again to the same themes. So I remember when I wrote towards the beginning of Lent about the idea of being 'perfected', linking it to the linguistic meaning of 'perfection' as 'completeness', and I wonder if we could turn that on its head today and translate 'it is finished' as 'it is now made perfect' - that is: 'I have done what I came to do, and have done it fully and completely'. Understood this way, 'it is finished' is not a signal of defeat or giving-up, but of victory, fulfilment.

Except, of course, that it doesn't feel like that at the time, to Jesus' disciples. Good Friday feels like an ending, like completion in a negative sense - the end of everything that Jesus had seemed to represent. And it seems to me that it's important to recognise this and not to 'fast forward' mentally to Easter Sunday, in the knowledge that it'll all work out OK in the end, because we will all (probably) have times when we feel as if it's all over, when we feel hopeless and helpless and even useless. Knowing this makes Easter Sunday all the more meaningful, while contemplating desolation and hopelessness is not comfortable or enjoyable, but it is real... and what Jesus' death shows more than anything else, perhaps, is his engagement with our human lives in all their reality... even to the point of death.

here
I found this link in the iBenedictines' blog this morning, a fascinating article about the Annunciation (Christ's conception) and Good Friday (his death) falling on the same day, today, 25th March. It doesn't happen often and there is a lot of symbolism around beginning and end falling on the same day.
Talk about circularity

That is fascinating, Oma - beautiful and thought-provoking. Thank you for the link.

26th March: Easter Eve - Job 14, 1-14

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,
comes up like a flower and withers,
flees like a shadow and does not last.
Do you fix your eyes on such a one?
Do you bring me into judgement with you?
Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
No one can.
Since their days are determined,
and the number of their months is known to you,
and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass,
look away from them, and desist,
that they may enjoy, like labourers, their days.
For there is hope for a tree,
if it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
and that its shoots will not cease.
Though its root grows old in the earth,
and its stump dies in the ground,
yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put forth branches like a young plant.
But mortals die, and are laid low;
humans expire, and where are they?
As waters fail from a lake,
and a river wastes away and dries up,
so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
or be roused out of their sleep.
O that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!
If mortals die, will they live again?
All the days of my service I would wait
until my release should come.

I was intending to go on today with the story of the Passion, but Oma's link has encouraged me to post this less obvious passage from Job. It builds on the image of the tree, which is such a vital biblical image - perhaps the central image of salvation history, from the Tree of Knowledge which represents human disobedience, to the tree as an image of Mary's fruitfulness, to the tree as an image of the Cross. The passage's imagery also reminded me of the imagery we've seen in other passages that I've posted this Lent (from Jeremiah and from the psalms) of trees growing by the water, nourished by God's love. And it adds to all these the idea that a tree, even when it seems to be utterly dead, may yet embody the possibility of regeneration. Here this possibility is contrasted with the lives of human beings who, as we (think we) know, once they are dead, tend to stay dead. The passage asks who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? We might rephrase this (in line with earlier discussions on this thread) to ask how a mere human being can be made perfect. And we might answer, in hope, that through God all things are possible. And, as we wait and watch and hope today, we might pray to somehow pick up the scent of God's life-giving water, so that we may be roused from our sleep, given a second chance, reborn...

That's another lovely interesting passage tuo, thank you. Job, another part of the Bible that I've hardly read at all... But I have finally finished 'the Bible from scratch' this week which means that at least I now know how it all fits together, and the bare bones of what is what. Next task to finish my 'most important bits' reading plan...

It's been such a good experience reading this thread, and thinking about these passages with you (and with everyone else who's been reading them); thank you for doing it, and for keeping it up all Lent. It seems like yesterday that I was stressing over whether I'd get to church on Ash Wednesday, and here we are at Easter eve. It's my first real Easter (not counting when I was a child) - because I date my (re-)conversion to Pentecost last year - so this Lent has been really important for me, and this thread has given me so much to think about.

It's been an emotional waking up - feeling earlier because of the clocks going forward:

So may I post one referene this morning, from John 20 where Jesus, risen Jesus, meets Mary and calls her by her name so that she recognises Him. She has not come out of her grief, no more than I have come out of my grief but He is risen and lives for ever. Hallelujah.

hugs lovely oma. May the God of love enfold you in his arms and you know his peace and comfort today. I shall be thinking of you lovely.

Oh Oma, what a bittersweet post: grief and loss never really go away, I think - you just learn to live with them to some degree. Sending love to you, and to anyone who's feeling the pain of loss this Easter.

So, we've come to the end. Thanks to anyone who read all or part of the way through Lent with me. It has been a really lovely thing to do - sometimes hard, especially when I have been very busy, and when the readings didn't immediately speak to me... but I have always found something to reflect on, something that has helped me in some way - cheered me, comforted me, made me think...

I'm going to comment on today's passage briefly before posting it, as I think that the text really speaks for itself. As Oma says, it's the moment when the risen Jesus calls Mary by name that is always so striking on reading this passage. She recognises Jesus because he calls her by name, but he was there all along, and she just didn't know it. I know that this describes the journey to faith of many of us: Jesus never went away, but we became, for whatever reason, unable to recognise him, unable to see him for who he is. And then, miraculously, unexpectedly, amazingly, joyously, problematically, he called us by name, and, however tentatively, in that moment of recognition there was something that couldn't be ignored and that was hard to resist. May we all, today and always, know ourselves to be known by, called by, loved by the risen Lord.

27th March: Easter Day - John 20, 1-18

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to their homes.

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ When she had said this, she turned round and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbouni!’ (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, ‘Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” ’ Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

Christ is risen! Alleluia, alleluia!

Thanks so much tuo for this thread. I have found it really useful