Preferring Nothing to Christ

UNLEAVENED BREAD

The Israelites pitched camp at Gilgal and kept the Passover there on the fourteenth day of the month, at the evening in the plain of Jericho. On the morrow of the Passover they tasted the produce of that country, UNLEAVENED BREAD and roasted ears of corn, that same day.

One of the opportunities which Lent offers us is the chance to remember and retell the many ways in which God has been active in our lives. Remembering is writ through the pages of the Biblical narrative. These verses from the Book of Joshua remind us of the preparation in haste of bread without yeast, the Exodus from Egypt, and the keeping of Passover. These are primal memories for the Israelites and their retelling binds them in deeper communion.

The yearly eating of unleavened bread reawakened the memories of God’s decisive action in leading the Israelites from slavery to freedom. Some scholars see unleavened bread as pure, simple and humble. It’s a bread that is entirely new, using nothing of the old. I find this helpful.

In the New Testament we find more layers of meaning added to our understanding of unleavened bread:

Throw out the old yeast so that you can be the fresh dough, unleavened as you are. For our Passover has been sacrificed, that is, Christ;
let us keep the feast, then, with none of the old yeast and no leavening of evil and wickedness, but only the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. ( I Corinthians 5:7-8)

For St Paul we now are called to be unleavened bread. We are called to leave behind the old and, in Christ, become something entirely new.

How has Christ called you this Lent to leave behind the old and embrace the new?

(Joshua 5:9-12, Fourth Sunday in Lent, C)

THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER

They paid him THIRTY silver pieces, and from that moment he looked for an opportunity to betray him.

The figure of Judas looms large in Holy Week. Those thirty pieces of silver are lodged in our collective imagination through art, poetry and hymnody.

Stories of betrayal are always uncomfortable. Betrayal can happen in a matter of seconds. We can say or do something that we can never take back. Perhaps Judas stands for all of our moments of betrayal? Perhaps he stands for all the times we have ‘headed out into the night’? Perhaps he stands for all those times we have watched our hope die and made a wrong choice?

In the Orthodox tradition Judas features often in the hymnody of Holy Week:
Servant and deceiver, disciple and betrayer, friend and devil, Judas has been revealed by his deeds.

These pairings are so poignant. Judas and his thirty pieces of silver can function as a mirror for our own hearts. But we can have courage in the God of all mercy whose hands can hold every betrayal and who counts back each piece of silver.

How does the story of Judas speak to you this Lent?

(Matthew 26:14-25, Wednesday, Holy Week)

SHAKEN TOGETHER

Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.

I love this text. It opens up a whole world for me. I have spent much of my monastic life as the monastery cellarer and I have learnt the importance of how I measure. In the monastic kitchen you are always making substitutes and adjustments. There have been times when I haven’t been quite sure that there was enough to go round. It has pretty much always worked out and no one has gone hungry.

St Benedict urges the cellarer to be mindful that the food provision must be adequate for the needs of the community. The cellarer is to divide the portion of bread allotted to each monk so that it lasts through the day. This is good and loving common sense. But when it comes to love, this is not something that is to be measured and weighed out to the last gram. The love that St Benedict’s monks are to show is to be the ‘warmest love’, ‘selfless’, ‘humble and sincere.’ (Ch 72) This really is the love that is ‘pressed down and shaken together’.

The Gospel challenge for me today is to be the one who gives first and to make my full measure run over.

Where is Christ calling you to give a full measure this Lent?

(Luke 6:36-38, Monday, Second Week of Lent)

REPENT

The time has come and the kingdom of heaven is close at hand. REPENT, and believe the Good News.

The evangelist Mark is the most concise of the Gospel writers. In just four verses Jesus is baptised, goes into the wilderness and then emerges to begin his public ministry. There is an air of urgency and a sense that time is short.

Jesus emerges from his baptism and wilderness experience with a message that is uncompromising. His cry of ‘Repent’ is for deep and radical change where hearts are to be turned away from all that would hinder their love for God. Jesus echoes John the Baptist, who in turn echoed the Old Testament prophets who proclaimed the great day of reckoning, the Day of the Lord. With imagery of warfare and cataclysm the Old Testament prophets warn of a time when God will come to right all wrongs.

As the Gospel unfolds Jesus will show us by the way he lives, teaches and loves what it means to repent and to change our hearts. Lent can be a time when we take stock and look at the places in our lives where our hearts have become stuck and seem unable to turn. The Scriptures are there to guide us and to challenge us.

How is God calling you to a change of heart this Lent?

(Mark 1:12-15, First Sunday in Lent, B )

QUIVER

He made my mouth like a sharp sword, he hid me in the shadow of his hand. He made me into a sharpened arrow and concealed me in his QUIVER.

During the course of Lent and Holy Week we read from the parts of Isaiah which are known as the Servant Songs. The identity of the servant isn’t clear. Some say that it could be Isaiah himself, others Israel and others Cyrus, the Persian King whom God will use to liberate Israel. This uncertainty gives us a certain freedom when we come to interpret the text. When the Church uses these texts in Lent and Holy week we can hear them as foreshadowing Jesus. Handel’s Messiah has done much to plant this understanding in our collective biblical memory.

Isaiah 49 speaks powerfully of the servant’s preparation for service. The servant spends time concealed, away from the public gaze. We can imagine this as an intense time of testing and strengthening. His mouth is being made like a sharp sword and his whole being a sharpened arrow that is honed to perfection. The hidden years which Jesus spent in Galilee prepare him for his public ministry. We can imagine this as protected time, where family life and ordinary tasks all contribute to who he is.

How do you hear this text today? Do you have a sense of God concealing you and preparing you for something this Lent?

(Isaiah 49:1-6, Tuesday, Holy Week)

Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus to say, ‘Where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the passover?’ ‘Go to so-and-so in the city’ he replied ‘and say to him, “The Master says: My time is near. It is at your house that I am keeping PASSOVER with my disciples.”

The shared memory and dynamic of the Passover is something which frames the Liturgy of the Word during Lent. Through the Old Testament readings we are invited to embark on the demanding wilderness journey with our Biblical ancestors, to feel again the hunger and confusion in the desert and to experience the triumphal passage through the Red Sea. In the New Testament readings we walk alongside Jesus who is making resolutely for Jerusalem where he will eat his last Passover meal and then pass over from death to life.

In the semi-nomadic culture of the Ancient Near East there was a springtime ritual known as ‘pesach’ (Passover). When the dry season began the shepherds needed to find water and new pasture for their flocks. The journey was dangerous. They performed a sacrifice as a means of protection and then shared a meal. The journey was necessary for the wellbeing of their flock because staying in the winter pasture could mean losing some of their flock. The ritual meal bonded the group together and this strengthened them for the journey.

Meals bind us together. The bonds that develop when food is shared have a special quality. The connections which are made with others during a meal cannot really be planned. The rituals involved in any meal provide the framework for this connection.

Lent invites us to look again at the meals we share and how God speaks to us through them. Which meals will you share this week?

(Matthew 26: 14-25, Wednesday of Holy Week)

OBEY

Although he was son,
he learned to OBEY through suffering.

We sing this text as an antiphon at Vespers during Lent in our monastic liturgy. In fact, as soon as I start to read it the tune begins playing in my head. It is very much one of the sounds of Lent in the monastery.

In the context of the Letter to the Hebrews Jesus is presented as the ideal High Priest, one who bears our burdens and intercedes for us with the Father. Jesus has a unique status. New Testament scholar, Marie Isaacs, helpfully suggests that ‘His suffering is neither punitive nor corrective but an act of filial obedience.’

St Benedict would recognise this idea of filial obedience. His Rule is writ through with the many ways in which obedience is to be cultivated in the monastery. In Chapter 5, On Obedience, St Benedict is clear that love is both the motivation and goal of obedience: ‘It is love that impels them to pursue everlasting life, therefore, they are eager to take the narrow road…’

It’s easy for Obedience to be seen as something that can limit our potential rather than expand it. Christ is our surest model of the life-giving nature of true obedience. The place that suffering plays within this is will be different for each one of us.

How has Christ called you to walk the path of obedience this Lent?

(Hebrews 5:7-9, Fifth Sunday in Lent)

As soon as Judas had taken the piece of bread he went out. Night had fallen.

These verses always chill me. I imagine a sultry night, heavy with expectation and fear. But the very next lines in the text shift the focus sharply ‘now has the Son of man been glorified’. There is no portrayal of a victim here. Jesus is in control. God’s glory is to be revealed through suffering.

Now has the Son of Man been glorified,
and in him God has been glorified.
If God has been glorified in him,
God will in turn glorify him in himself,
and will glorify him very soon.

In John’s Gospel we enter a very different literary world from that of the Synoptics. Words and themes are layered with meaning and weave in an out of the flow of the narrative. Light and darkness, day and night function on a symbolic level. Nicodemus comes at night to see Jesus. He is frightened and his visit needs the cover of darkness. In contrast, the Samaritan woman meets Jesus at midday, the hour of illumination. Judas’ betrayal also needs the cover of darkness.

At the highpoint of the liturgical year in the celebration of the Easter Vigil the Church uses light and darkness to tell the story of our salvation. Gathered in darkness around the paschal fire, we wait expectantly for that first proclamation ‘Christ Our Light’. Then when we sing the Exultet we will repeat several times ‘this is the night’.

This is the night,
when once you led our forebears, Israel’s children,
from slavery in Egypt
and made them pass dry-shod through the Red Sea.

For Judas, his choice to go out into the night changes the course of his life forever.
When we gather at night to celebrate the Easter Vigil we renew our choice to put our full trust in God, who through his Son, changes night to day and darkness to light.

Judas stood at a threshold, he made a choice.
Have there been threshold moments for you this Lent?

(John 13:21-33,36-38, Tuesday, Holy Week)

Exodus 17:3-7
John 4:5-42

In the next three weeks as we journey towards Easter, our biblical imaginations are invited to explore three major baptismal themes: water, light and life. We have made the journey from desert to the mountain top. This week we find ourselves by a well. We enter a different world when we listen to John’s Gospel. There’s a play on the themes of light and dark, night and day.

In Ch 3 of John’s Gospel, Nicodemus, the Pharisee, comes to Jesus by night. Literally and figuratively, Nicodemus is afraid of being seen, so he seeks out Jesus under the protection of darkness.

By contrast the Samaritan woman comes to the well at midday. This is the hour of enlightenment and theological insight. It’s Jesus who takes the initiative here by venturing into Samaritan territory. We are accustomed to hearing that the Samaritan woman was ostracised and sinful. This isn’t borne out in the text at all. The woman’s robust dialogue with Jesus leads her to enlightenment. By the end of the conversation she recognises in Jesus someone who knows her intimately: ‘He told me all I have ever done.’

Such is the power of her testimony that ‘many of the Samaritans of that town had believed in him on the strength of that woman’s testimony.’ Through her courage and willingness to engage with Jesus, her life has been changed forever.

How is Christ calling you to engage with him this Lent?

MILK

The Lord brought us out of Egypt with mighty hand and outstretched arm, with great terror, and with signs and wonders. He brought us here and has given us this country, a country flowing with MILK and honey.

References to a land ‘flowing with milk and honey’ appear 20 times in the Old Testament. It’s an easily recognised shorthand for both the guarantee and quality of God’s provision. The writers of Deuteronomy put this speech on the lips of Moses just before the people enter the Promised Land. It functions as encouragement to the Israelites whose path hasn’t been easy.

From our vantage point we can hear the phrase as a metaphor or as the promise of actual foodstuffs that would be available to the Israelites. In order for a land to flow with milk you need good pasture and healthy livestock and for an abundant supply of honey you need healthy and varied plant life and bees. If you have a guarantee of these then your physical needs will be more than well met. I love this shorthand.

It’s always heartening to me that this promise of physical nourishment is given as an encouragement. One of the things that I have learnt in the monastery is the importance of balancing physical and spiritual nourishment. Looking forward to something nice and enjoying it when it comes is every bit as important as the cycle of prayer. God provides.

How has God provided you with ‘milk and honey’ this Lent?

(Deuteronomy 26:4-10, First Sunday of Lent)