Dear Friends

I’ve just come back from a meeting where I was chatting to a friend after the service and she was telling me about one of her friend’s experience at the doctor’s surgery this morning. During the night the friend’s young daughter was ill and the mother decided to take her to the doctors. At the reception she asked for an appointment to see the doctor and was told appointments could only be made over the phone: after trying to reason with the receptionist the mother went into the waiting room adjacent to the reception desk and rang on her mobile; speaking to the receptionist a few feet away she made the necessary arrangements for her daughter to see the doctor. Sounds crazy and defies common sense but we all know people or of people for whom rules are set in stone; regardless of how ridiculous they are.

As we approach Holy Week and Good Friday the narratives about Jesus’ final days before the crucifixion emphasise how people can become so caught up in their ritual and routines that the plain truth escapes them. In John 11 we read of Jesus raising Lazarus from the grave where he had been for four days, the religious leaders are so angered that this miracle is causing people to believe in Jesus they plot how they might kill him.

Today for many people Jesus is an irritant. He won’t sit comfortably with other faiths, his teaching is awkward for those who want to be fast and loose, why did he have to preach the Sermon on the Mount and tell us how God reckons thoughts as well as actions? John 3:16 is great, why do we have to have 3:18?

To that last question the answer is simple, because it’s all true. Many people have become like the religious people in Jesus’ day, they can’t see the wonderful life, hope and fulfilment Jesus gives to those who trust him because they focus on the familiar and mundane. Let’s make sure we don’t fall into that trap so that when we hear those familiar words: “Christ is Risen” His Spirit rises within and victoriously shouts: “He is risen indeed, Alleluia.”

John