Collect for Lent II
GOD of patience and humility, in your love you gave your Son to be rejected and raised up on a cross.
Gather us under its shadow and open our eyes to its mystery, that we may share even now in the life that is from above;
through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Collect for Lent
ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, you despise nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent.
Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our brokenness,
may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
PROPERS:
Old Testament lesson:
Genesis, 17, Vv 1 - 7 & 15 - 16
Epistle:
Romans 4, Vv 13 - 25
Holy Gospel:
St Mark 8, Vv 31 - 38
In the Old Testament lesson we read of God’s Covenant or Promise to Abraham, when he was 99 years of age, saying, ‘walk before me and be blameless’. God told Abraham, ‘you will be the father of many nations; my covenant is between me and you and your descendents after you for generations to come. I will be your God and you will be my people’.
God also told Abraham, ‘as for Sarah you wife, I will bless her, so she will be the mother of nations, kings of people will come from her, for she will bear a son’. In the Gospel, Jesus taught the disciples that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the leaders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days, rise again. Peter was horrified to hear Jesus say this and drew him aside and rebuked him. But Jesus told Peter sternly, ‘get behind me Satan, you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men’.
Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, explains that the promises were spoken to Abraham and his seed. The scripture does not say to seeds, meaning many people, but to your seed, meaning one person, who is Christ.
The opening of Matthew’s Gospel traces the genealogy of Jesus from Abraham. There were fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Exile into Babylon and a further fourteen to the birth of the Saviour. Paul, in Galatians, wrote clearly that no one is justified before God, by the law, because the righteous will live by faith. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse for us, for it is written, ‘cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree’. Jesus redeemed us inm order that the blessings given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles. So, by faith we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit. Paul says that if you belong to Christ you are Abraham’s seed, and his according to the promise. Because we are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts; the Spirit that calls God, Abba, Father.
I remember as a girl of about 17 attending church with my elder brother who was 12 years older than I. After the service of Matins, when we left the church I turned to him and said, ‘I don’t see what Abraham has to do with us.’ I remember his look of pity. As I grew older I eventually understood what Abraham has to do with us.
Hebrews 10: 15 says that the Holy Spirit testifies to us. ‘This is my covenant, I will make them after, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts and in their minds will I write them. Their sins and iniquities I will remember no more’. Hebrews tells us also, ‘For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance. Jesus died as a ransom to set them free from the sins of the first covenant. When Jesus came into the world, he said, sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but body you prepared for me. With burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said here am I, it is written in the scroll. I have come to do your will O God.
In Mark 8: 34 Jesus called the crowd to him and told them, ‘If anyone would come after me, he must take up his cross and follow me’. This is a hard saying and not one that we rush to undertake. In his book Rivers in the Desert, Rowland Croucher, an Australian writer says, ‘For many years I had the impression that the cross was a symbol of suffering’. Thus, any kind of personal suffering I endured was a personal cross, which I needed to bear, as Jesus did. In other words, I thought of tragedy, misfortune, accident or physical disease as a cross. It was something I could not avoid, something which, in his divine providence, God allowed to happen to me. As a disciple of Jesus bearing my cross meant accepting the suffering without bitterness. This is a gross misunderstanding of the cross. A cross is never something that God puts up for us. It is not an accident or a tragedy beyond our control. For Jesus the cross was a demonstration of love. The cross is a neon light heralding the love of God for us. We take up the cross whenever we enter into costly acts of love. For Jesus the cross was a demonstration of justice. On it Jesus cancelled the bond that stood against us, with its legal demands. So too, we bear the cross whenever we work for justice or reconciliation, standing with the marginalised poor. For Jesus the cross was a glorious act of worship. For the first time in history a perfect worshipper offered the perfect sacrifice of worship and turned the cross into an altar. We too bear the cross whenever we present ourselves to God in worship. For Jesus the cross was a sign of victory.
The cross is the disciple’s pattern of ministry. Love, justice, worship and victorious faith are the marks of the Kingdom. With Peter we may reject the cross, but this is not the way of Jesus. If we are to identify with Jesus we must take up the cross. This is not a counsel to be morbid or to martyrdom. Rather it is a call to choose life in love, justice, worship and victory. A wonderful hymn puts it thus:
‘Take up thy cross,’ the Saviour said,
'If thou wouldst my disciple be;
Take up the cross with willing heart,
And humbly follow after me;
‘Twill guide thee to a better home,
And lead to victory o’er the grave.'