Our Primary School
This week I spent some time in our Primary School. As a School Governor with a particular focus on the Foundation stage, I pop in from time to time to see how the staff and children are doing. Margreet, as we know, visits weekly to give an assembly and at numerous other times just to say 'hello'. When I speak to people who are outside of our education system, they marvel at the concept of a 'church school.' In many countries, where there is a rigid divide between sacred and secular, the very idea of a connection between a place of education and faith seems impossible to comprehend. Indeed, even in our own context, there are frequent debates about 'faith schools' with some very strong opinions voiced on both sides of the debate. As someone who was educated in faith schools from the age of 4 right through to 18, I am fully committed to their worth in our society and in our educational system. This doesn't mean that faith schools are perfect and get things right all the time, but rather they strive to attain excellence and to instill a clear sense of moral integrity and self-worth in the children and young people that they educate.
As we all know, our Primary School is enduring unsettling times. It is essential that, as a community of faith we hold the school, its teachers and pupils and their families in our thoughts and prayers. We believe that through the incarnation, God redeems messy situations, not always in ways we would expect, but certainly in ways that might bring forth hope and light. This is no quick fix, immediate solution, but rather one that seeks to sustain, to nurture and to encourage. Christian hope is rooted in the promise of new birth, which is a very Lenten theme. Even though we my walk through the wilderness, there are signs of new life. Wait...and hope...
Helen-Ann Hartley
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Lent, temptation, and the Lord's Prayer - Luke 4.1-13
Last Sunday, we celebrated the Transfiguration, the vision of Christ in glory which appears to Peter, James and John. The Transfiguration is a turning-point: in the lives of Jesus and his disciples, in Luke’s gospel, and in the church year. After it, Jesus leaves his ministry in Galilee, and turns for the last time towards Jerusalem. And we enter Lent, turning our hearts and minds towards the Passion.
Except that today, on the first Sunday of Lent, our gospel takes us back, for a moment, to the beginning of Jesus’s ministry. When, after his baptism and before he begins work, Jesus retreats into the desert to pray, and is tempted there by the devil. We’ve talked before about the kinds of temptation the devil offers him - to use his power for his own gratification, to compel people to believe in him, or to take worldly power. We’ve also talked about how, even after Jesus has resisted temptation in the desert, it doesn’t go away, but reappears from time to time to the very end of his life.
This year, the thing that struck me most about the Temptations, was the way they connect with a teaching which Jesus gives, in Luke’s gospel, just after the Transfiguration, as he turns towards Jerusalem: the Lord’s Prayer. The words of the Lord’s Prayer echo the words of Jesus to the devil so strongly, that we are surely encouraged to reflect on them together.
The Lord’s Prayer comes to us through two gospels, Matthew and Luke. The version we know best and use in church is Matthew’s. Luke’s is basically the same, but a little shorter and plainer (11.2-4):
Father - may your name be sanctified -
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
And do not put us to the test.
‘Give us each day our daily bread.’ The Lord’s Prayer teaches us that God loves and looks after us as a Father. Whether the bread he gives us is physical or spiritual food, or both, it’s what we need to live. In the desert, the devil points out the Jesus that if he’s God’s son, he can provide his own bread. ‘Command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ But Jesus says, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’
For Jesus, physical food has become almost irrelevant. Life is not in the physical ticking over of a body. Life is in the body filled with the Holy Spirit - the Spirit of life, the Breath of God. Don’t worry, he says a bit later, about your body - what you will eat, or what you will wear. Only look for the Kingdom of God.
We do look for the Kingdom of God, all of us who follow him. In the Lord’s Prayer, we say, ‘May your name be sanctified; may your Kingdom come.’ I’ve always thought the wording of that line was, in some ways, surprising. You might expect it to say, ‘We sanctify your name; we look for your Kingdom.’ Instead it says, ‘May your kingdom come.’ Perhaps by saying the prayer, we are seen as already looking for the Kingdom, and we hope that other people will join us.
When he answers the devil, though, Jesus reminds us that hope isn’t everything. We must act, too. ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ The Kingdom of God needs our help to come. We need to put our lives where our prayers are.
Jesus knows, that to do that is a huge thing. Everything. He will tell people that it costs everything to follow him. ‘Sell all you have and distribute it to the poor.’ (18.22) ‘If anyone comes to me without hating his mother and father, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.’ (14.26-7)
It’s a daunting prospect - and Jesus understands that. In the Lord’s Prayer, he teaches us to say, ‘Do not put us to the test.’ We are such fragile, imperfect beings. ‘Don’t try our weakness, Father. Don’t test our faith and strength too hard.’
When he answers the devil, Jesus turns that prayer upside-down, and offers us, not reassurance, but a challenge. ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ Don’t test God’s patience with your weakness, he seems to say. Don’t test God’s faithfulness with your lack of faith. Worship the Lord your God and serve Him, and trust that faith can move mountains and transform the world.
The Lord’s Prayer is the foundation of our faith. We teach it to our children, and for many of us it is where our relationship with God begins. When we say, Father, we want to worship you, to serve your Kingdom. Help us. Forgive us when we make mistakes. Look after us.
The Lord’s Prayer takes us on our first steps in Christian discipleship. Jesus’s dialogue with the devil shows us what we’re aiming for: to serve God with the whole of our hearts and souls and minds and strength - without counting the cost; without asking for reassurance or protection or rewards. It challenges us to take the next steps in discipleship - to put our lives where our prayers are.
One part of the Lord’s Prayer which is not echoed in the Temptations is, ‘Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.’ But, we might think, forgiveness is so central to our faith. How can it be left out?
I think it may be relevant here that Jesus is talking to the devil. The Temptations make clear that if we are to serve God, then we must reject the devil. It may be that, at the end of time, even the devil will be forgiven and reconciled with God, and evil will be wholly dissolved in love. But until that time, there is no negotiating with evil: no forgiving it, no excusing it, no letting it go.
This is a stark challenge at the beginning of Lent, because most of us in this life are compromisers. We want to love God and our neighbour and to follow Christ, but we also want to live reasonably comfortably in the world around us. And so we make all sorts of little accomodations to evil every day. Maybe we see and don’t tackle a bully, or we eat meat that’s been inhumanely raised, or we don’t share our wealth with others. ‘Forgive us our sins,’ says the Lord’s Prayer, knowing that most of us are only young and imperfect in faith. But, turn away from evil and all its works, says Jesus to the devil.
The call; the challenge of Lent, is to take our next steps along the path that begins with the Lord’s Prayer. To try to follow Christ and serve God with more of our hearts and souls and minds and strength. To give up more of the evils that disfigure human life and society. In the hope that like Jesus, we may grow in the power of the Spirit, and live and work more passionately to God’s praise and glory.
Amen
Teresa Morgan |
