Or the Fifth Sunday in Lent if you're a bit more Catholic in your naming of Sundays (I had an interesting conversation once with a Roman Catholic over which of the last two Sundays in lent is correctly named 'Passion Sunday', since they used the title for what I call 'Palm Sunday')

Anyways, today's readings...

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Psalm 51:1-12 or Psalm 119:9-16
Hebrews 5:5-10
John 12:20-33

These are each and all well-loved, and quite possibly overworked.  I used the Hebrews in church a few weeks back when we explored understandings of atonement.  Psalm 119 reminds the young person how to maintain their purity, contra Psalm 51 which is response to the failure of David so to do.  Jeremiah forth-tells the new covenant which Christians understand to have been made through Christ.  And the John...

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks.  They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, "Sir, we wish to see Jesus."

Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.

Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.  Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say - 'Father, save me from this hour'? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name."

Then a voice came from heaven, "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again."

The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, "An angel has spoken to him."

Jesus answered, "This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.  And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself." He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

John 12: 20-33 NRSV

The lovely people to whom I preached this morning have already pondered in some depth the cost of discipleship, and questions about the need to consider seriously the implications of decision 'for Christ' which is so much more than a ticket to eternal bliss, and mist be worked out in the here and now, potentially at enormous personal cost.  So, I won't go down that route again.

Instead it's that little bit that Jesus says... unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a single grain.  I have preached on this once or twice, and always end up observing the essential aspect of death to what happens.  More than a few times I have reminded people there can be no resurrection without death - it is not resuscitation we are on about here, not cheating death by a hair's breadth.  Death.  Which releases potential and brings forth abundant new life.  We fear death - at least at an institutional level - we fight tooth and nail to keep OUR church, OUR school, OUR community centre, when actually what MIGHT be needed is the death that releases the potential for a new season.  How much time and energy is caught up in preserving what is already dying, as a kind of life-support-with-inevitable-outcome that could be released if only death were permitted?  And how do we tell which is which, and what is now?  Ah, t'were only that simple!

As I reflect back over what I preached this morning, and on this passage, and indeed on some of the other stories I've revisited this Lent, what strikes me is that this is about attitude - the willingness to die, to leave behind career or home or family, the willingness to live with ridicule or rejection, the willingness to go wherever God leads and do whatever God calls us to do.  Not a kind of fake-willingness predicated on the ram caught in the thicket, that somehow if I say 'yes' God will say 'that's OK you don't need to after all'.  Real willingness that says, 'gulp, you want me to do what.... er, well, OK then' or, corporately, 'goodness, you mean close OUR building, stop THESE activities, give away ALL those things and then go THERE with THEM and do THAT.... well..... OK then....

You don't ask much of us, do you God?

Just everything!

Body, mind, spirit.

Heart, soul, mind, strength.

Home, family, wealth, status...

Who can say 'yes' to such a call?

Who would not choose the path of ease

Self gratification

Self fulfilment

Self direction...

Sell all you have and giver to the poor

Take up your cross daily

Don't look back, or you're no use to me

These are tough words

Unless an ear of wheat falls to the ground

And dies

Its potential

Is unfulfilled...

"Follow me"

Dare I say yes?

Dare I say no?

Dare I linger in indecision

Choose today who you will follow,

Choose today what you will do

As for me,

Afraid you might actually make me live out what I commit to,

Yet trusting that if that is so, you will sustain me in its outworking

Tentatively

Trepidatiously

I

Say

Yes

... of the Baptist Unions' Declarations of Principle...

It shall be the duty of every Baptist congregation to be purveyors of the finest home-baking for any and all ecclesiatical events whether Baptist or ecumenical.

You know it's true so why fight against the inevitable?!

For my last birthday, a circle of my friends clubbed together to give me a VERY generous financial gift, and I have finally got round to deciding how to spend it... this week I became the owner of a shiny new Kindle, along with a smart blue cover and 3G connection.  Being the good minister type person that I am, the first book I bought for it was an NRSV (with apocrypha) not as quick to navigate as a real Bible it must be said, but handy to have one with me that is light enough to fit in my bag with print that is big enough to read.  I also picked up a tourist guide ready for my trip to Hungary for the sum of 72p... can't be bad!

The real test will be to download a book I want to read properly, cover to cover, but so far, so good.  I hope my friends will consider their gift money well spent!

I have to smile though, because of the way I set up my account way back when, Amazon thinks my first name is Revd, so my Kindle is, Revd's Kindle... that seems quite cute somehow.

Today's readings are a rather odd selection...

Psalm 51:1-12
Habakkuk 3:2-13
John 12:1-11

Still Psalm 51, but now joined by Habbakuk and a wrathful God smiting rivers and mountains trmapling nations, and the tender story of Jesus' being anointed at Bethany from John.  Very odd.

Scripture can be puzzling, and all too often we skip past the verses or passages that prove enigmatic.  So today I want to play, be it ever so briefly with something the John passage...

Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.
You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.

John 12:7 -8 NRSV

You will always have the poor with you... is this so?  There will always be people who have too little means to provide for themselves?  That, no matter how many handouts, how many schemes, how much charitable giving and how much aid work, some people will always have too little, will always be dependent?  Is it really the case that we can never overcome poverty?  Is the chant of 'make poverty history' doomed to failure?

We tend to read this passage, and probably correctly,  as Jesus saying, this is my moment, and in pouring out the perfume Mary (or any other unnamed woman in similar stories) is acknowledging that.  The opportunities to give to the poor will still be there, but this opportunity is a one off.  So is Jesus maybe speaking somewhat ironically?  The poor will always be with you - you're never ging to really tackle poverty, this is just talk arising from missing the point.  How holy it sounds to say 'the money could have been given to the poor" but you have no more intention of doing that than flying to the moon (or whatever a first century equivalent expression might have been).  Rather than an ontological inevitability, poverty is inevitable because of self-centredness.  That feels preferable, I think, and gives our charitable giving and aid-work at least some sense of hope.

The poor will always be with yoy.  Why?  Because individually and collectively you will never care enough to make poverty history.  Jesus words do not give us permission to give up and say, well that's just the way it is; instead they challenge us to examine our own lives and see the impact we have on others, especially 'the poor' that nebulous part of humanity of which we do not see ourselves as part.  Lots more I could play around with using the Matthean and Lukan variants of the beatitudes, but I'll leave it there for now; it is Saturday after all.

The poor will always be with you

Who are 'the poor' Lord?

How do we measure poverty?

And is this just one more trap

Into which we fall

In our attmepts at self-justification?

How do we find the balance, Lord,

Between giving to the poor

And spotting the moments

When something else

Is more important -

Can such a judgement ever be made?

If not ontological inevitability

But product of human sin and finitude

Then show me, Lord

How I can both give to the pour

And lavish my devotion on you.

One dozen blueberry cheesecake cupcakes.  One dozen carrot cake cupcakes

To be delivered to the churches' ceilidh in aid of Christian Aid Scotland's Malawi project.

Why do cupcakes now have double barreled names?

And why am I baking yummy cakes during Lent when I'm not able to sample them?

And how many of my male colleagues have been baking this afternoon?

Ah, questions, questions!!