The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying, “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.” [Matthew’s Gospel 21:9-11]

The chaos as peace invades. We have so little language for it; we are barely articulate. A monarch, a prophet, a leader, who brokers peace in his living.

We watch and remember as monarchs and dictators, sociopaths and narcissists punctuate their rhetoric with missiles and the language of punishment. We are more accustomed to this than the other; we have learnt how to deflect bullies, or hide from them.

However, this one who comes, unarmed and disarming, is something entirely different. We are not sure how to respond, so amongst the crowd we cheer the theatre of his arrival, and assume he will survive as long as a tyrant’s whim, or social media post.

We listened as Jesus invited us to reimagine how we might live in our world. We watched as those outcast were gathered with love, and offered life.  We barely dared to hope that turning our cheek and forgiving and forgiving and forgiving might be the new way of offering – and celebrating – life.

We acknowledged that Jesus talked of the costs of bearing witness to such a life as this.

The bullies’ culture is addictive. We know it leads to despair and eventually destruction; we know that we cannot sustain the tyrant’s favour forever. The simple fact is that we know how this poison works because it has been present since Cain murdered his brother. The despots have taught us that their way is the only one.

Then this Jesus and the donkey. Confronting power with powerlessness. Conscious that this act will arouse all the violence of empire and corruption. Not just Pilate and Herod and the corrupted priests, but the system which cannot tolerate questions, or prophets, or alternatives.

If it was our decision, we would retire gracefully, or retreat politically, in order to choose a more suitable battleground. Jesus will have none of it. He reclaims the temple for worship and justice, offers his most powerful teachings, fully aware of the consequences.

We watch as those who call for peace and justice in Gaza and Ukraine and Iran are ridiculed, disappeared, or extinguished. The offspring of Herod’s corruption and Pilate’s political self-interest are present in every age.

Jesus elected a more suitable place to bear witness. It is only there that violence and injustice are both addressed and answered. The brokering of peace at Calvary accepts and defies the violence of every tyrant. In Christ’s final breaths, he offers them life as well.

The depths of this act of Jesus, to save entirely at cost to himself, is prophesied when Jesus of Nazareth rides a donkey’s colt into Jerusalem.  

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” [John’s Gospel 11.32-38]

We are measuring out our lives in missile strikes. We are becoming accustomed to an appalling situation where war in Ukraine and Gaza are superseded by Venezuela, then Iran, Lebanon and now swathes of Arab nations. The obscene colonisation of language means that “taking someone out” now means execution of an opponent, as opposed to having a meal with a person we like.

Political agitators encourage us to focus on ourselves, to feel aggrieved about the economic burden of fuel (and consequent) prices, while certain individuals, communities and faiths are typecast as terrorists and tyrants, justifying our actions of death as the measure for their sins.

We need to be angry that this is the world we are offered, that we are called to shape our lives around powers and principalities offering death and naming it life, offering slaughter and naming it peace.  

This passage concerning Martha, Mary and Lazarus is one of the most revealing about Jesus’ emotional state. The death of his friend and his family’s accompanying grief affect him deeply.

Death is all around; it is not only his friend’s death, but the reality that Jesus’ own ending draws closer. The gospel writer notes that following the Lazarus miracle, the response of community leaders is not celebration, but them plotting to extinguish both Lazarus and Jesus.

Jesus weeps at what has happened and according to the reading is “greatly disturbed.” A more precise translation is “indignation”; it arises from the sound a horse makes when it is unwilling to comply. Jesus expresses this emotion at least twice, we are told; his friend is dead.

Jesus’ grief is not simply profound sadness, it is unwillingness to accept what is before him.  “Take away the stone.”.

As we draw nearer to the weekend which transforms history, the Lazarus story asserts to us how Jesus understands God’s economy, surrounded by death, yet insisting on life.

We cannot become accustomed to the world where might makes right. The powers that claim authority over life and death, wealth and poverty, faith and other faith must be named – and confronted. The saving of Lazarus, the healing of the blind man, the welcome of the Samaritan woman are not nice, neat gospel stories told to palliate the church, they are the assertion of a God who will not tolerate the powers that isolate and blame, marginalise and condemn.

This is the God of the cross, and the empty tomb.

We are citizens of God’s economy. We will proclaim – and live – the impossibility that death is defeated by resurrection. We will assert that love is offered to all, and mercy is not constrained by politics or geography. Or faith.

We will not be satisfied with the story of death on offer from the world around us. Take away the stone.

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” [John’s Gospel 9.13-18]

A few weeks ago, a church leader sat with Jesus in the dark, talking (spiritual) obstetrics. The Spirit breathes where it wants. Just last week, a foreign woman shared a midday drink with Jesus, talking about water which quenches thirst forever. The Spirit breathes where it wants.

A man, sitting always in his individual darkness, is suddenly able to see. The Spirit breathes … and people of faith erupt. This in the wrong day. What poor theology.  Something, everything is wrong – wrong day, wrong man, wrong act, wrong answer. There must be someone to blame, to punish, to banish, to deny.

We read this story, and watch it unfold. We wonder how anyone, any community, could act in this way. Then we walk past a mirror, and stumble. All too easily we can locate our face in the crowd, and perhaps even hear our voice.

A gift is given. A life enhanced. One translation uses the phrase, “The Spirit respires where it will”, as if the breathing, the respiration, of the receiver is eased by Jesus’ presence.

Yet, for an awful moment, all the air is sucked out of the room by the indignation of the community of faith. There are rules. The Sabbath is not for healing.

You can’t just feed someone because they are hungry.

There’s a queue, they have to start at the back.

What if she was asking for it?  

The risk of these gospel stories is finding ourselves within them. We hope to imagine ourselves as the one receiving life, and that may well be our experience. We may also find ourselves mingling with those offering judgement, not justice; blame, not blessing.

These narratives of respiration disrupt our faith and our lives. When someone is offered life, it is disturbing for everyone they meet. When a person is offered forgiveness, when people discover mercy, they become entirely different.

There is, however, a profound danger in forgetting. When we forget the wonder of our first respiration; when we misremember what mercy is all about; when we only recall the culture which constrains us and not the Spirit who breathes us life.

When we forget what it is to see again.

This church leader, this foreign woman, this formerly blind man are all offered mercy and life for the circumstances in which they find themselves. Perhaps they, or their families, are members of John’s community, to remind us so that we, in turn, are able to remember.

Our remembering is never solely for ourselves, but for the one who comes to us at midnight, or midday, or in their own personal darkness. Jesus never turns us away.

The Spirit breathes where it wants. May you hear the sound of it.

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,“Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?” They left the city and were on their way to him. [from the Gospel of John 4.4-42]

The darting poetry of this conversation, John’s narrative, as this woman and this man engage with each other in the heat of the day. Image and metaphor, question and reframing, step and dance; two thirsty people.

It could almost seem whimsical, even allowing for the context of her apparent social marginalisation and his presence in the wrong territory. With the wrong person.

Notwithstanding, she does not shy away, even at the cultural baldness of his request … demand. The conversation moves through theology and need, to theology again. Claim and counter claim, as sibling cultures engage, working themselves out in the midday sun.    

Perhaps she serves him. Perhaps they each imbibe the well’s gift. Perhaps they are equally blessed to have their thirst relieved.

At what appears to be the utter end of everything, he will be thirsty again. Sour wine must suffice on that occasion, stuttering heartbeats from his final breath. Perhaps one of the faithful women there held it to his lips?

And then the (potentially hazardous) blessing of knowing. And being known. She has hidden here because the journey of being known has proved all too costly. Yet here is the profound gift he proffers her.

A man who told me everything I have ever done. Then the words, unspoken, yet clear as midday sun, and still he offered me life!

This encounter, beyond theology and culture, claim and counter-claim. When we are told (and even believe) that we have no name, no faith, no future, no place but the margins, no worth but our failure, he meets us where we are, he asks us for help, and he offers us life.

He knows all our story, and loves us, this Jesus.

Nothing will prevent Jesus’ offer of life, to each and all of us. Always.

A Drink of Water | Seamus Heaney

She came every morning to draw water
Like an old bat staggering up the field:
The pump’s whooping cough, the bucket’s clatter
And slow diminuendo as it filled,
Announced her. I recall
Her grey apron, the pocked white enamel
Of the brimming bucket, and the treble
Creak of her voice like the pump’s handle.
Nights when a full moon lifted past her gable
It fell back through her window and would lie
Into the water set out on the table.
Where I have dipped to drink again, to be
Faithful to the admonishment of her cup,
Remember the Giver, fading off the lip.

Tell us, what do the living do?
Do you dance? Do you make bread
with each other? Do you walk in the parks
in Autumn, smelling the late summer flowers?
Is it true that some things get to grow old?
What is the world doing now? Are you fighting
with sticks and stones? Do you remember
us? Do you lie down under the stars
and listen to the birds passing overhead,
and do you get to feel the little wings of your own
wild heart be opened? You have somewhere
to go then, don’t you? Go. Don’t let us keep you.
We have names, we are safe. We’re at school.
We are hiding in our favourite little places, waiting
for you to tap us on the shoulders, to tell us
it was just a joke, come home now,
and the bombs and boots are just a game we’re playing,
and the bread and milk are waiting on the table,
and the moon is new, and the gardens are in blossom.
This sentence is the length of one of our shoes.

What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” [Gospel of John 3.6-9]

Nicodemus visits Jesus in the dark.

In rural communities, living beyond the streetlights, night is a time of darkness, alleviated when the moon is full. However, in cities and towns across the world people never truly experience night. The restless fluorescents of businesses and homes, of cars and streetlights, punctuate and banish any hint of darkness, and the stars are mere memories in the night sky.

One of the most potent verses as John’s community introduces the Gospel is the assertion about the coming of Jesus that “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

We are invited into a series of engaging narratives where light and dark are pronounced. A man, a community leader, visits Jesus at night, to avoid scrutiny.  A woman is banished to the blazing midday heat to draw water, alone. A man, born in darkness, receives light and life. Jesus’ friend, entombed, waits. As dawn emerges, the most powerful man in Israel refuses light and life, and hope.

Each time we have the opportunity to condemn – to locate in someone else our discomfort, our blame, our woundedness – Jesus, instead, wonderfully offers life.

The narratives invite us to discover where darkness dominates lives and societies. This is not only the failing of individuals, this is the action of a community, a culture. The woman is isolated by her village’s judgment and consent; the previously sightless man is condemned more after his healing than before. As the dead man is restored to life, the response of the community leaders is to find a way to kill him, and Jesus.

Darkness and evil will not easily tolerate challenge.

The politician takes the stage and speaks of a God who hates. A preacher proclaims that the world is better when women cannot vote, and simply comply with their husbands. Leaders condemn children for the failed decisions of their parents, seeming content with their penury and isolation.

Speaking of forgiveness, or being reconciled, articulating justice which offers accountability coupled with restoration, is a dialect which so many never learn. Worse, others are taught to banish it entirely from their lives and memories.

We do not need to look for demonic powers, they are in plain sight. Justifying the punishment, wounding and death of children; being content that they are suffering in another country, another story, another life; ignoring deliberate misery with the diseased solipsism of contemporary populism, or failed theology. Satan’s fingerprints are obvious.

Nicodemus is told of a breath which – impossibly – births new life. This breath stirs us to step beyond what we can know, to what God reimagines.

What if all the world is entirely loved by God? What if God has given everything, even God’s self, to save the creation? What if we are embraced in this story and are called to embrace others in our turn?

What if reflecting Christ’s light in the darkness is to confront and oppose the demonic powers of the pedlars of suffering and live out our resurrection hope?

How can these things be?

There is a God, who loves the world beyond measure and has given everything, even his child, so that the creation might have life, abundantly.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished. The tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”
But he answered, “It is written,
‘One does not live by bread alone,
but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”             [Matthew’s Gospel 4.1-4]

“For you are dust, and to dust you shall return” are the words spoken to each person marked with the ashes, on forehead or hand, as the journey of Lent commences. We carry the mark to be reminded of our place and our value.

We are indeed the very stuff of stars; our bodies, the bones of this ancient continent on which we stand, all creation and the dust which marks our shoes as we walk along. The ash from the burning of last year’s palm branches is a smudge of our history, ancient beyond measuring, which we bear forward as a sign of God’s intention – and our own.

The cantos of temptation endured by Jesus are a profound attempt to draw him from his calling, his earthedness, his humanity. We hear serpentine whispers echoing, “You can be like God!”, with offers of bread and spectacle and power.

Notwithstanding his exhaustion, Jesus refuses and rebukes the tempter, which is left again to eat the dust of its failure.

Our earliest temptation is to copy and paste this story for our own experiences; the times we felt tested or questioned our sense of call. We are at risk of mislaying the gospel altogether.

This is profoundly an understanding of identity, Jesus’ identity.

In the beginning, the woman and the man are placed at the heart of God’s creation and proclaimed as very good. The tempter questions both God’s intent and their identity; in a heartbeat, they forsake who – and whose – they are. How easily they appear to abandon their human value for the possibility of something they imagine as more significant.

A similar offer is placed before Jesus, and he asserts his humanness with each breath. An insightful colleague said that Jesus appears to embrace his humanity with more hope and enthusiasm than any of us. His voice scratchy, he endures his tiredness, his smallness in the midst of all the wilderness, and defies the opportunity to walk away.

Jesus knows who he is, and to whom he belongs. His identity resides in the one who shaped all of us from dust and whose breath gives life. Our humanness is not a humiliation; it is a wonder. Failing to understand this, or denying its import, leads us to a fixation on eternity which ignores the value of human worth in this life.

Far worse, we are led to minimise the lives and humanity of others. We tolerate suffering and injustice, believing that our humanity is a temporary hindrance on the way to eternity.

In Jesus, God has fully affirmed our humanness, our flesh, the stuff of which we are made. Enduring – and refusing – the temptations, Jesus asserts the worth of each human being, and proclaims his identity as such. He reclaims the ground forfeited when our human worth was first put to the test.

Jesus incarnation locates us at the manger, in the wilderness and at the cross. The fully human Jesus has asserted once more that each and every human being is fearfully and wonderfully made in the image of God.

… Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white.Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him.Then Peter said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear.But Jesus came and touched them, saying, “Get up and do not be afraid.” And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone. [from Matthew’s Gospel 17.1-9]

All those things which demand our time and our attention. These compelling events before us, which elicit the response of our action, or at least profound concern. Recent happenings leave us dumbfounded, unsure of which step to take, which words to say, what to feel.

As followers of Jesus, we watch his interactions with many diverse people; storytelling, feeding, chastising, blessing, inspiring, forgiving, healing. These consistently human moments can distract – even mislead – us into engaging with Jesus solely as the astonishing person that we see and hear.

Jesus exhibits the joy and grief and anger and compassion of every fully human being. We are in his company, and his hands and feet and voice are like our own. We will achieve great things together.  

We see the need and rally to the cause. The needs are many, the wounds are deep.

Those politicians and others who want us to discard God and despise our neighbours rely on our exhaustion and eventual despair. Worse, they want to curdle our passion into hatred – someone, something, any one or thing – enlisting us in their crippled cadre.

Which is why at the hinge of Jesus’ journey through Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus ascends a mountain with three friends. Which is why a moment described (and entirely beyond description) happens before their eyes.

God interrupts the plans and purposes of each of us, to remind us that Jesus is not only utterly human, but the beloved Son of God. We are frantic to contain the moment, posting it to Instagram, or its miserly equivalents. Before we are able to focus our cameras and our lives, we are in the presence of Jesus, alone.

It is simply Jesus, Son of God.

A moment of miracle and wonder, which healed no wounds and brought no justice, and which calls us to remember that Jesus is the story of God in the world. Peter has already felt Jesus’ reprimand, as he earlier sought to prescribe Jesus as warrior or monarch. We are reminded that on this journey we are following the One who suffers at our hands and whose life is given for the life of the broken world.

This is where our faith finds its bearings. We cannot defeat the systems which fashion evil and injustice, although we must speak and act for all those who cannot speak and act for themselves, or believe themselves alone. We require the guidance of God’s Spirit to navigate these paths and discern where stumblings and missteps are prevalent.

It is difficult not to be afraid.

We do not walk an untravelled road; Jesus is before us, and beside us. The saving of creation is utterly in the hands of God. It is for us to bear witness with our lives. Our hope is found in Jesus Christ, alone.  

There’s no bread.
The bakers have gone into hiding.
The seats at the table are empty.
The Twelve are marching with the thousands.
The streets are filled with a new song.
Only Judas sits at Target Plaza, counting his silver,
while Pontius Pilate issues a carefully-worded statement.
Meanwhile the centurions have quotas to fill.
But out on the streets there’s a Communion.
Jesus takes the city in his hands and says,
“This is my body, broken for you.”

Rob Hardy
2nd February, 2026

“Why do we fast, but you do not see?
Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
and oppress all your workers …
… Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
[Isaiah 58.1-12]

At the heart of every Christian community resides the act of worship.

Worship may be our simple act of prayer, which draws us to God and to each other, or a full liturgical movement of scripture, song and silence, prayer, proclamation and our opportunity to respond to the invitation of God. Worship turns our attention – and our hearts – toward God, In hope and appreciation.

One of our church’s ancestors, John Wesley, saw holy communion as a “converting ordinance”, where people’s hearts are changed by the articulate presence of Christ in bread and wine.

Our more recent forebears, when crafting the Basis of Union, spoke almost entirely of worship as wedded to witness and service. The clear intent is to assert that each element is affected by, and affects, each other.

Our God of the Hebrew Scriptures speaks through Isaiah to challenge the worshipping community, time and again. Isaiah’s song is drawing towards its conclusion. This wonderful piece of poetry and prophecy speaks to the heart of his community, and to each which has heard these words since.

There is a profound resonance with faith communities even now. as we enquire of God as to why our community hasn’t flourished; alternatively, we wonder how our discipleship appears to remain unchanged, even as our attendance grows.

Isaiah’s community remonstrates with God. God replies that their worship and their fasting, even the questions they are asking, arise solely from self-interest. “Our worship, our fasting, our humility” are all styles with which we are accustomed, in our contemporary world where self-interest is lauded and preyed upon – for marketing, for elections, for “salvation”.    

When Jesus is asked about the greatest commandment, his answer defines our lives and, thus, our worship. True worship is when we turn to God, and are attuned to our neighbours.  

We can fast all we like, but if our neighbour remains hungry, what does it mean? We can confess, hear forgiveness and pass the peace, but what if we still refuse to forgive? If our employees remain unfairly paid, if our neighbours are persecuted for their faith, or their race, or their sexuality, what does it matter if we raise our hands in worship and kneel for bread and wine?

We know that worship, witness and service are bound together. When they are separated, they risk becoming the empty actions of self-congratulation.

When we worship, we turn our lives to Jesus Christ, and the world for which Christ died. As such, we serve that world, with bread and justice and hope. We bear our witness in our bodies and our words, a witness articulated in the bread we offer to all who hunger.

In turn, our worship is transformed by the stories and the lives which return to us from our witness and our service. Wesley’s converting ordinance is not constrained by liturgy, or church walls; it is discerned when we share our bread with those who are hungry, when we welcome the homeless and when we clothe those in need with garments and dignity.

Salt for the earth. Light for the world. Flavoured and illumined by the risen, crucified Christ.