Eye Witnesses
Opening Prayer
Here I am Lord,
Listening
Speak to me
within my heart and soul.
I am listening.
Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians 2:14
‘in Christ, God leads us from place to place’
Reflection
You have to ask yourself; what would you do if you had just risen from the dead? After all you had gone through and suffered –then to return to those people you thought were friends; who had said that they would stand by you and didn’t. Who had seemed to understand and didn’t. Would you be walking in the dust and dirt of a country road; would you be eating fish; would you be cooking fish?
Almost the absurdity of this proves that Jesus is not just human – our pride, our ego would not have allowed us to do this; our feeling of superiority would have got the better of us. At the very least, we would have floated gracefully above the ground, a banquet would have been magicked out of thin air. We would have looked like the god we though we were.
But if Jesus had done this; if the Christ that he became had done this; what would that have said? That it’s ok to be poor until you are not poor, that it’s ok to be the underdog until you are not the underdog, that coming nearer to God means being better than other people? That it’s ok to be human until you are divine and then being human is not good enough. But Jesus never stops being human and his divinity is no more or no less and he will not belittle himself by belittling us.
So he shows us that the journey continues and he is still there taking part in it all - the dusty roads between the world and the Kingdom, the sharing of food, the serving of others. He seeks us out in hidden corners and when we are about our work; when we are confused, when we are doubtful and when we are scared.
There is no place he will not come looking for us. He finds us no matter where we hide; he tells us not to be afraid and he leads us out.
He is always the Way; the lodestone. Only instead of a few hundred people in a dusty middle-eastern desert, he now leads all who hear his call; across time, across space; the guide to Kingdom and to the Father of us all.
Contemplation
Follow
These post Resurrection days can seem to drag. Why doesn’t Jesus simply eclipse the disciples with his radiance as the Holy Spirit is able to energise them all at Pentecost?
Well, maybe that would be just too much of a shock to the system. After all, if you have just taken the Lenten journey the disciples took, with all their hopes and dreams shattered, their fears realised, their friend and Lord executed; to have him back must have been beyond belief. But he was not back for good – they still weren’t going to get the ‘worldly’ Kingdom of wealth and honour, in fact their world was going to get decidedly worse.
Would Christ the ‘King’ have been a better image than Christ the fisherman – I don’t think so. If Jesus was ever doing to leave his message with them then it had to be as the man they knew – so they would know that it had not been an act, a game.
Christ needs to remind them (and us) that it is not finished; that there is a journey ahead of them and that he will be with them, leading them on; so where better than in the places where they are experiencing their fears and their doubts?
A forty day Lenten journey is not so easily reversed, and we should not feel tempted to try. The walk into Easter taught us things we needed to know; we should not lose sight of them in our rush to move on.
Closing Prayer
May the blessing of the Sacred Three
The Father who gave us the Word
The Son who is the Word
The Spirit who opens the Word within us
Be with us today and evermore.Amen
Here I am Lord,
Listening
Speak to me
within my heart and soul.
I am listening.
Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians 2:14
‘in Christ, God leads us from place to place’
Reflection
You have to ask yourself; what would you do if you had just risen from the dead? After all you had gone through and suffered –then to return to those people you thought were friends; who had said that they would stand by you and didn’t. Who had seemed to understand and didn’t. Would you be walking in the dust and dirt of a country road; would you be eating fish; would you be cooking fish?
Almost the absurdity of this proves that Jesus is not just human – our pride, our ego would not have allowed us to do this; our feeling of superiority would have got the better of us. At the very least, we would have floated gracefully above the ground, a banquet would have been magicked out of thin air. We would have looked like the god we though we were.
But if Jesus had done this; if the Christ that he became had done this; what would that have said? That it’s ok to be poor until you are not poor, that it’s ok to be the underdog until you are not the underdog, that coming nearer to God means being better than other people? That it’s ok to be human until you are divine and then being human is not good enough. But Jesus never stops being human and his divinity is no more or no less and he will not belittle himself by belittling us.
So he shows us that the journey continues and he is still there taking part in it all - the dusty roads between the world and the Kingdom, the sharing of food, the serving of others. He seeks us out in hidden corners and when we are about our work; when we are confused, when we are doubtful and when we are scared.
There is no place he will not come looking for us. He finds us no matter where we hide; he tells us not to be afraid and he leads us out.
He is always the Way; the lodestone. Only instead of a few hundred people in a dusty middle-eastern desert, he now leads all who hear his call; across time, across space; the guide to Kingdom and to the Father of us all.
Contemplation
Follow
These post Resurrection days can seem to drag. Why doesn’t Jesus simply eclipse the disciples with his radiance as the Holy Spirit is able to energise them all at Pentecost?
Well, maybe that would be just too much of a shock to the system. After all, if you have just taken the Lenten journey the disciples took, with all their hopes and dreams shattered, their fears realised, their friend and Lord executed; to have him back must have been beyond belief. But he was not back for good – they still weren’t going to get the ‘worldly’ Kingdom of wealth and honour, in fact their world was going to get decidedly worse.
Would Christ the ‘King’ have been a better image than Christ the fisherman – I don’t think so. If Jesus was ever doing to leave his message with them then it had to be as the man they knew – so they would know that it had not been an act, a game.
Christ needs to remind them (and us) that it is not finished; that there is a journey ahead of them and that he will be with them, leading them on; so where better than in the places where they are experiencing their fears and their doubts?
A forty day Lenten journey is not so easily reversed, and we should not feel tempted to try. The walk into Easter taught us things we needed to know; we should not lose sight of them in our rush to move on.
Closing Prayer
May the blessing of the Sacred Three
The Father who gave us the Word
The Son who is the Word
The Spirit who opens the Word within us
Be with us today and evermore.Amen
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