We are here to help people love and worship God. We aim to be, and encourage others to become, committed and active disciples of Jesus,
who love God and worship him, who know the power of the Holy Spirit and who show God’s love in every part of their lives.
Thought for the Month
Lent is an annual pilgrimage; it is a journey to Good Friday and Easter Day. In Lent we learn once again that at the very heart of our faith is the Cross and the Resurrection of Christ; they cannot be separated without distorting the Christian faith.
The Cross tells us that in Jesus God becomes vulnerable; God becomes the victim of human lies, and betrayal, of jealousy and power politics; there is a sense in which we can say that in Jesus God dies. What the Cross means is that in a very unequal and divided world, a very unjust world, God stands with the victim, the suffering, the forgotten, those who are counted as expendable.
Without the resurrection though, Christianity is just one more tragedy in a broken and suffering world.
The resurrection is hope when all hope has gone, it is the defeat of evil and death; it is the place where all sin and all hatred find judgement and healing and mercy. The empty tomb on Easter Day proclaims that life is stronger than death, that love is greater than evil and that Christ is triumphant over the forces of destruction.
But Easter without Good Friday makes the Christian Faith empty triumphalism.
In Lent we contemplate both the brokenness of the world and the depth of our own sin; not to punish ourselves nor to lead ourselves into despair, but because we can only know the extent of Christ’s victory if we look honestly at the needs of the world and it’s people, including ourselves.
This year Holy week begins on the last Sunday in March. On that day we celebrate Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem as its king, and we reflect that by the end of the week, the crowds who welcomed Him are now baying for His blood!
Holy Week is history in the sense that it is a record and a re-telling of events that happened two thousand years ago. But it is more than history. Holy Week, the Cross and the Resurrection, bring hope to our world; hope for each one of us.
On the Cross we know the depth of God’s love for us and for His world; and the Risen Christ speaks to us of God’s triumph over all that destroys life and joy. The events of Holy Week assure us that there is nothing in all creation that is more powerful than the love of God in Christ Jesus. These events shape our worship and our prayer, they give us strength for our pilgrimage, not just through Lent, but through our lives.
God bless you,
Tim
St Mary's Church, Priory Road, Ecclesfield, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S35 9XZ, United Kingdom
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