Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and we hear, John 10:11-18, Jesus telling us that he is the good shepherd, the one who lays down his life for his sheep. More than this, he knows the sheep, they belong to him. To whom we belong is also at the heart of Acts 4:5-12. Here the disciples are being questioned by the authorities about healing the man born lame. They appear less interested in the fact that the man is healed than by “what power and what name” he was healed. To whom do the disciples owe allegiance? Are they one of “us” or are they one of “them”. Jesus does not only look after the sheep of this fold, he must gather all the sheep, so that there may be one flock. For him there is no “us” and “them”, we are all one. When we belong to Jesus we also belong to this great flock and they belong to us. If Jesus is out there, finding, gathering and protecting them, we should be alongside him.

Resurrection is harder than it looks. In Acts 3:12-26, the disciples are full of confidence, addressing the crowd immediately after healing a man who was lame. Yet, in Luke 24:36b-48, when the risen Jesus appears to them, they are described as: startled, terrified, frightened, doubtful and unbelieving. Jesus shows them his hands and his feet, he asks them for food, telling them that it really is him, just as they knew him. Perhaps this is the problem. The risen Jesus is too much like the Jesus they knew, still wounded, still hungry. The resurrection has not removed the scars of his mistreatment or his very human needs and limitations. If God’s power can defeat death surely it can make everything new? God’s power is not like human power, it is revealed not in strength but in weakness. By the time we get to Acts, Peter has recognised this, asking the crowd: “why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” Accepting our weakness and brokenness, our inability to repair our mistakes and fix things on our own is the necessary first step needed before we can allow God’s power to work in us and through us.

Last Sunday we rejoiced at the resurrection, the disciples, however, didn’t. A week later our gospel, John 20:19-31, finds them hiding away in a locked room afraid of what the future holds for them. Thomas often gets a bad press for doubting but the other disciples are not doing much better: Jesus has already come to them offering peace, sending them out as the Father sent him but a week later, when Jesus returns, they still haven’t moved. Perhaps Thomas did not believe them the first time because despite encountering the risen Lord, they hadn’t changed. However, the fact that they doubt, that they fail to act, is what makes them perfect for the job; because the job is forgiveness, and who better to know the joy of forgiveness, the significance of a new beginning, than someone who has been in need of forgiveness not just once but again and again. By the time we come to the story in Acts 4:32-35, the disciples have changed, they have started to live as if new life were truly possible.

Christ is always returning to us, continually offering us the gift of the spirit, repeatedly inviting us to begin again. The fact that we are failures makes us perfect for the job too. Knowing how rubbish we are at being Christian, at doing God’s will, puts us in the perfect position to forgive the faults and failings of others and invite them to begin again alongside us.

Palm Sunday begins with joy as Jesus enters Jerusalem in Mark 11:1-11 surrounded by crowds shouting Hosannah and ends with the same crowds watching his execution on the cross in Mark 14:32-15:39.

At the heart of today’s gospel readings is the question of what kind of God we want and what kind of God we have. The entry into Jerusalem is a beautiful piece of political satire: Jesus is mocking the imperial triumphal entry, when the ruler would enter a city in a chariot hailed by all the most powerful and important people to mark his rule over them. Here Jesus is on a donkey, hailed by the poor and the dispossessed. During his subsequent arrest, trial and execution there are many ironic references to his kingship:

Pilate refers to him three times as the King of the Jews and then has the term inscribed above him on the cross; the soldiers mock him as King whilst flogging him; and the scribes taunt him as he is dying “Let the messiah, the King of Israel come down from the cross.”

In Mark’s version of the passion Jesus is almost entirely silent except when he is asked by the High Priest if he is the Messiah. Jesus replies “I am”. This is not just an affirmative answer: I AM are the words that God uses to describe Godself. Here, when all human power is stripped away, God is revealed. A ruler who never exerts power over others but gives his own power away for the sake of others.

In the midst of all the human attempts to retain power, gain power, secure power in this story: the disciples’ denial, the High Priests pandering, Pilates capitulation to the crowd, here is the divine counterpoint. A God who never coerces, never manipulates, never uses power over anyone.

God gives us freedom and asks us to consider our own power and how we use it.

Over the course of Lent we have been reminded of God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham and Moses. Today, Jeremiah, 31:31-34, foretells a time when God will make “a new covenant” with all God’s people. This covenant will not be written in a sign in the sky (like Noah’s rainbow); nor in ritual (like Abraham’s circumcision); nor on tablets of stone (like Moses’ laws) but in our hearts. Nothing will stand between us and God, each of us is invited into a relationship with God. This is what the Greeks in John 12:20-33 are seeking when they ask to see Jesus. In response Jesus speaks of glory, which means God’s presence. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, for God to be glorified. Jesus is telling us that the presence of God is fully seen in him at the moment when he gives all of himself for God. This glory, this presence of God is available to each of us when we empty out ourselves and give God room to shine in our lives. Such glorification may seem like a death, like a grain of wheat falling to the ground; our selfish concerns, our attachment to all that separates us from God and one another, needs to fall away in order that the life of God can spring forth in us. Paradoxically, this giving up and giving away, allows us to become most fully ourselves: the glory of God is humanity fully alive.

On Mothering Sunday the church gives us the story of three mothers: Hannah, Jochabed and Mary. Each of these women endured danger and difficulty to bring their child to birth and each bore a child who would also endure danger and difficulty to bring new life to their people. Their labour was not for themselves and their families but was for the benefit of all the families of the earth. Today we will hear Hannah’s song from 1 Samuel 2 and Mary’s song from Luke 1: in response to the new life they are about to bring forth they sing, not of their own hopes and fears, but those of all God’s children.

Throughout the scriptures there are descriptions of God as our mother: struggling in labour; weeping in sorrow; nursing and protecting her offspring; and, before his crucifixion, Jesus describes himself as a mother hen who longs to gather her children to her breast and hide them under the shadow of her wings. The mother is both a symbol of God’s love for us but also of our calling to love as God loves. Romans 8 speaks of the whole creation groaning in labour for the glorious revelation of the children of God. This is our labour. To commit ourselves to struggle with hope to bring to birth the promises of God for all God’s children.

Throughout Lent we hear the promises of God, to Noah, to Abraham and this week to Moses: the giving of law at Sinai in Exodus 20:1-17 where God, once more, promises to be our God and outlines the fruits of living as God’s people. This passage echoes the creation story in Genesis: heaven above, earth below and water under the earth are all within God’s care, the stages of the creation end with a remembrance of the sabbath, the day of rest on which God delighted in creation. This is not a new promise, it is, like all the covenants, a re-creation, an invitation to be remade in God’s image. Our gospel, John 2:13-22, can also be read in this way. The violence of Jesus’ actions and the reference to the demolition of the temple may look like destruction but they are a prelude to a rebuilding. The temple, the place where God dwells, is not something that can be made by human hands or controlled by human power. The temple God chooses to dwell in is the body of Christ. These readings are a call to remember who we are, made in God’s image to carry the creative force and loving purpose of God into the world.

Throughout Lent our Old Testament readings recall the covenants, binding promises, God made with God’s people. This week, Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, recounts the promise to Abraham. This promise had been made to Abraham before but he had failed to believe it. Similarly, in Mark 8:31-38, Peter fails to believe Jesus. It is heartening that our scriptural heroes doubt as much as we do but that God is persistent. Peter does not doubt that Jesus is divine, is just that his idea of a Messiah is informed by the world in which he lives: a saviour is someone who will gain the whole world for his people. Jesus, however, is insistent that he will suffer and die, that the fulfilment of God’s promise will not be an easy path. Yet we need to hold onto these promises if they are to become our reality. Abram is renamed by God in this week’s reading, becoming Abraham, meaning the Father of nations. A name which must have made him acutely aware of the difference between his present childless state and the future that God promised. In a week which saw the death of Alexei Navalny his supporters are acutely aware of the difference between their present reality and the future Russia that Navalny dreamed of. During Lent we are called to reflect, with sorrow, on all the ways in which our world does not conform to the kingdom of God. At the same time, we are asked to hold onto the possibility of a better, different world. A world which may seem foolish to some, just as it was foolish for 99 year old Abraham to believe that he would father nations and for Peter to believe that healing and renewal would come from the cross. Jesus asks us to risk being fools, to keep our minds on the possibilities of the divine so that kingdom may come on earth as it is in heaven.

Lent, 40 days of penitence and reflection, can appear dull: no flowers, no Gloria, no chocolate. Yet our readings today are action packed: in Genesis 9:8-17, Noah is in a storm-tossed boat packed with wild beasts for 40 days; and, in Mark 1:9-15, Jesus is driven into the wilderness for 40 days in the company of wild beasts and devils. In both readings, what seems like a time of destruction turns out to be a time in which God remakes and recreates echoing the creation story in which God brings something new and glorious out of chaos. When we experience chaos in our lives it is hard to discern God’s plan but we are to hold onto God’s promises. In Genesis this promise is sealed by a rainbow, something which only appears in storm. The rainbow has been used as a symbol of hope by people who have suffered storms in order to bring forth a new and better world. Can we not only trust God to bring us safely through our struggles but embrace the struggle, knowing that from it a new creation will emerge.

Throughout scripture God is presented as something both holy and terrifying: no one is supposed to see God and live. In 2 Kings 2:1-12, God’s presence is felt as fire and a whirlwind, in Mark 9:2-9, Jesus is transfigured with divine light yet the disciples are overshadowed with darkness. In both readings the divine presence is kept secret: only Elisha is able to see Elijah being consumed into the divine, only Peter, James and John are invited up to the mountain top. Despite this, the power of God’s presence will effect change for ordinary people in their everyday lives. When the disciples open their eyes they no longer see the terrifying glory of God but “only Jesus himself”. The power of God is no longer reserved for a select few in a mountain top experience but comes down the mountain in an ordinary human life, revealing that the light of God can be seen in the faces of friends and strangers and that the power of God be can work through human hands.

Today is the last outing for the Nativity figures until next Christmas; we celebrate Candlemas, the day when we turn our attention from Christmas and Epiphany towards Lent and Easter.  As we remember Anna and Simeon’s recognition of the infant Jesus as light of world, we commit ourselves to carrying that light into the world around us.  Our gospel, Luke 2:22-40, the acknowledgment of the infant Christ as the place where earth and heaven meet.  The story brings together male and female, old and young, rich and poor and human and divine, embracing all human life in the love of God.  We too are called to embrace the diversity of God’s people to become the place where Christ’s light shines. 

Today’s readings are both concerned with the truth: whose words do we trust? And what is the impact of speaking truth? In Deuteronomy 18.15-20 we are promised that God will not leave us in ignorance but will speak to us in words that we can understand: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.” However, the prophet recognises that speaking truth is risky: those who speak wrongly risk death, those who do not heed the truth will be held accountable. This perhaps explains some of the anxiety felt by those hearing Jesus teaching in Mark 1:21-28, he is not a scribe and yet “he speaks as one with authority”. The proof of the pudding is, as ever, in the eating. Jesus speaks to the man with unclean spirits and his words set the man free, his demons leave him. We can trust those whose words lead to healing, wholeness and freedom. But truth does not come without a cost. There is a warning in both these readings: there are those who will oppose the truth, those whose own power and position is invested in the status quo or those who are afraid of the change that truth will bring. The truth will set us free but we must be prepared to fight for it.

Today’s readings are both concerned with the truth: whose words do we trust? And what is the impact of speaking truth? In Deuteronomy 18.15-20 we are promised that God will not leave us in ignorance but will speak to us in words that we can understand: “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command.” However, the prophet recognises that speaking truth is risky: those who speak wrongly risk death, those who do not heed the truth will be held accountable. This perhaps explains some of the anxiety felt by those hearing Jesus teaching in Mark 1:21-28, he is not a scribe and yet “he speaks as one with authority”. The proof of the pudding is, as ever, in the eating. Jesus speaks to the man with unclean spirits and his words set the man free, his demons leave him. We can trust those whose words lead to healing, wholeness and freedom. But truth does not come without a cost. There is a warning in both these readings: there are those who will oppose the truth, those whose own power and position is invested in the status quo or those who are afraid of the change that truth will bring. The truth will set us free but we must be prepared to fight for it.

“The truth will set you free” (Jesus), “but first it will piss you off” (Gloria Steinem). The season of epiphany is all about truth being revealed, the truth of who Christ was and the truth of who we really are. In our gospel this morning, John 1:43-51, Nathanel is initially unprepared to hear the truth. He cannot accept that God would choose someone from Nazareth: “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” He accepts it only when Jesus speaks truth to him and truly sees him as he is. For Eli, in 1 Samuel 3:1-10, the truth that God speaks to Samuel will be hard to hear. Yet he knows that, however uncomfortable or unpleasant, the word of God will bring renewal. He has the humility to recognise that God’s truth is often given to the overlooked and the undervalued and so graciously helps Samuel open his ears to God’s call. He models for us the work of the community of faith: nurturing, encouraging and listening deeply to the experiences of those who are often overlooked that we might receive the truth God is speaking to us.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany, the wise men from the East travelling far from home to find the Christ child. Our readings are full of wonder: the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh brought by the wise men in Matthew 2:1-12, echo the prophesy in Isaiah, 60:1-9, that the nations will be drawn to God’s light bringing with them, gold, frankincense, camels and rams. For Isaiah these gifts are for the rebuilding of the city of Zion, God’s home on earth. But in Matthew the gifts are offered to a child, a child soon to be made homeless by Herod’s genocide, a child who will grow up with no place to lay his head. Both readings are resonant with the idea of home: Isaiah foresees the children returning home from far away; the wise men need to find another way home. God’s home is no longer a fixed place but travels alongside those who flee injustice, those who are desperate to find a home. We discover that, wherever we come from, our true home is to be found in travelling with God and that, finding ourselves at home in God, we are at home everywhere.