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VICAR’S LETTER FEBRUARY 2012
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 LENT LEARNING THIS YEAR – THE PASSION
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This year’s LENT GROUPS are using a film called THE PASSION. It’s a moving depiction of the death and resurrection of Christ. There are 6 short film sessions, with the first and last session in church together and so 4 sessions will happen in people’s homes and in small groups.
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The church’s growth in life and faith depends on the quality of the “soil”. In the spring gardeners do a great deal of digging. Bringing the topsoil into connection with the deeper soil creates a fertile place for new growt
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Frequently asked questions about the Passion
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Answered together by Sue Hart, Craig Pemblington, Mike Stoker, and myself
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Why do we need to be thinking about the Passion? We often say, ‘Christ died for us’ ; what does that actually mean?
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Ever since the events of Good Friday and Easter Christians have asked this question. It’s important to take time to consider it because our answer needs to connect with a truly Christian and scriptural understanding of God, rather than one we make up for ourselves. So, for example, one of the biggest mistakes is to take the events of Good Friday out of the context of all that Jesus shows us, in his life and ministry, of God’s love and hope for us and the world.
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Another mistake is to think of Good Friday as a kind of bargain made between the Devil and God to pay off our sins. The God Jesus reveals in his ministry – of compassion and healing – doesn’t fit with a caricature of God as violent, bloodthirsty and needing to be appeased by a sacrificial death.
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Why should we want to watch a movie that dramatises a pretty nasty blood thirsty event?
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The first thing to note, is that the film we are exploring for Lent is NOT Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ (2004), which is very famous for depicting the gory reality of a Roman crucifixion and focussing on a bloody and lingering death of Christ on the cross. This is not what the Christian faith is all about.
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The BBC drama, ‘The Passion,’ portrays the dramatic events of holy week as a climactic moment, but set within the context of Jesus’ wider ministry, as well as the political, religious and social tension of the time. It gives us a very real setting in which we are invited to relate to characters that have journeyed with Jesus up to this point, and are trying to gain a better understanding of the things he has taught and demonstrated.
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More info on the film is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thepassion/video/ and http://www.rejesus.co.uk/site/module/the_passion/
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If we read the New Testament we see that Jesus’ death was the consequence [not the means] of his faithfulness to his calling that was given to him by the Spirit at the Jordan, when he was commissioned as God’s Beloved Son to preach Good News and bring hope to the world. Jesus was prepared to go the whole distance to prove his message to be true.
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Why does our faith make such a big deal of the cross when really it was a symbol of disgrace public humiliation?
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The Romans had honed humiliation to a fine art. Public flogging and the lingering death by asphyxia that was crucifixion show the extent of the fear of the authorities faced with Jesus radical redrawing of the identity of God.
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And Christian interpretations of the cross have naturally evolved over the millennia, not least in music and art. The church has developed in different contexts potent symbols of faith – a ship in full sail, a fish, a dove, intertwined Celtic symbols of the Trinity, and crosses of myriad designs.
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As a counter to domesticating the symbol of the cross, for example in jewellery, the film we shall watch offers a stark reminder of Jesus being willing, after he was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, to finish what he had started. Christian theology shows Jesus deliberately choosing his death, not as a masochist but as a consequence of the disturbance he had created in showing God to be irrepressibly loving and forgiving. No need for animal sacrifices to atone for sin or long public prayers. We are invited to come as little children to a trustworthy father for example in the parable of the prodigal son
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So we make a big deal about the cross as a key symbol of how God stands with all those who are forgotten, sent away, who are ill, and who suffer. But it’s not enough for God just to stand with people. If that was all God offers where would be our salvation? Jesus, in the whole of his ministry, his death and his being raise from death by the Father, invites us to follow him in losing life in order to find it. After all, there couldn’t have been a resurrection without a death and so it is for us as people, and for us as a church.
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John Lennon once said that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus – it might have been taken out of context at the time but lots of things right now are more popular that Jesus – so why is the passion so important?
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In our society now lots of things do seem more important than Jesus’ life, death and resurrection – but then they always did. He was never going to win a popularity contest and he didn’t ever try. When the crowds wanted to make him King Jesus told them he was not that kind of King. He often disappointed people’s expectations and contradicted their pictures of God.
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In John chapter 6 we read how many of his hearers drifted off home because they wanted a popular firebrand not one “going up to Jerusalem to be crucified”. It’s an age old trap for churches to want to be successful in a narcissistic way rather than in God’s way of brokenness. If you reflect, the Beatles’ songs were often about hope in dark places. People who have houses, cars, money, holidays and good health aren’t much interested in Jesus except in reinforcing their own concerns for order and virtue. Saying that you really believe in ‘Christian values’ isn’t the same as being a community of the crucified and risen Christ.
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What’s behind the imagery of Christ as the lamb of God?
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We need to have in mind that Jesus and all to whom he spoke were steeped in the scriptures (what we call the “Old Testament”. In Jesus’ days when individuals didn’t possess books, boys were taught to memorize the scriptures from a very early age. This meant that when Jesus discovered his calling, he would naturally use familiar images and narratives from his people’s history of faith but put on them an unexpected interpretation. A key story for the Jewish people which Christians have also used as a sign of God’s saving power, is that of the Exodus. In that narrative the angel of death didn’t lay a hand on the Israelites on their last night in Egypt when they killed and ate a lamb and daubed the blood on their lintels as a protective sign before the great get away. So it was called the “Passover” and commemorated each year with a week’s celebrations and thanksgiving. A sign for ever of God’s mercy and protection against enemies.
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The word “Paschal” As in Paschal Candle (Easter Candle used for baptisms) is a variant on this. So Christians have joined their sense of release through the Resurrection with this long tradition of calling on God when we have no resources of our own left.
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People keep saying that we are ‘called into a new life’… what does this actually mean?
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Jesus’ being “raised” from death to new life is an invitation to us. If we will allow it, God calls us also as sons and daughters, beloved, intimate friends, those who can pray “abba”; and yet we can refuse this invitation because it’s daunting. When the first disciples saw Jesus arrested they didn’t support him but ran away to save their own skin. Then showed himself to them risen form death and he commissioned them to continue his work through the Spirit’s power but still they were afraid and half hearted; it was only on the Day of Pentecost when people thought they were drunk, that they really got it, so they realized that like Jesus they could enjoy this amazing resurrection life. But what is it exactly? In Romans chapter 6 Paul sees Jesus as having been “raised” – not literally “up” but moved into a new state of aliveness, intense presence, full alertness by the Father. This is an example of what he calls the Father’s “glory” – a shining power appearing in history as the Resurrection of Jesus – God shows us what his power is like in the human being taken beyond the power of death. Paul calls this a sign of a new creation. So the New Testament says if we can share in Jesus’ death we can also share his Resurrection – this amazing new life made available through the power of the Father. The key to this is Paul’s belief that the death and resurrection of Christ can actually come inside the lives of believers. This is what does away with what Paul calls the “old self”. This “old self” was never really truly us but the confusing and half alive way in which we try to make sense of things on our own. Eg. racism is the result of distorted thinking that we pick up when we don’t have this Resurrection energy; another example would be poor self esteem – forgetting that God calls us by name and calls us to work with him. So letting in this new life gets rid of the old or false self.
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We have been given through baptism a new identity, a new sense of who we are, gradually formed, the beginning of a life no longer shaped by small and damaging thoughts but from the power of God that sets us free.
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Just as Jesus’ dying on the cross is the power that puts to death the self shaped by sin, so Jesus’ rising into new life is the power that give baptized Christians new life and hope.
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So…. not only do we want us to watch and talk about the Passion – we want us to be filled with it too! Because opportunities like these help us to understand and strengthen our beliefs, so that we can be more like Christ and have more to share with others.
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SESSION 1 TOGETHER Sunday 19th FEB 6pm in church Setting the Scene’
SESSION 2 during the WEEK OF 27TH FEB ’Politics and problems’
SESSION 3 during the WEEK OF 5TH MARCH ‘conspiracy’
SESSION 4 during the WEEK OF 12TH MARCH ‘Passover’
SESSION 5 during the WEEK OF 19TH MARCH ‘Crucifixion’
SUNDAY 1st APRIL PALM SUNDAY 6pm ‘Resurrection’
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So … sign up now if you haven’t already – bring a friend! Your parish priest
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GIVING REVIEW SUNDAY 19TH FEBRUARY
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Please consider making a modest increase in your regular giving from 19th February or joining our stewardship scheme – speak to any of the church leaders – so that we can pay our church and hall housekeeping bills in 2012.
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