And let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
Hebrews 12:2
Taking a tip from our Eastern Orthodox siblings in Christ, and from Diana Butler Bass’s book, A Beautiful Year, this year we have been journeying through Lent not as a time of repentance, but of preparation. We prepare ourselves to meet our risen Lord, Jesus our Christ in all his risen glory on Easter Sunday morning.
How do we prepare ourselves to stand in that glory, the glory that shines brightly, pulsing with the throb of life – life abundant?
The Powers-That-Be attempted to kill Love-Made-Flesh on that fateful first Good Friday, but love never dies. God’s story never ends at the cross, it continues with life – life abundant, glorious and fearless. We need to prepare ourselves to stand in such glory. We need to prepare ourselves to be that glory in the world.
Our world does seem ever more chaotic. Its leaders ever more cruel and scary, and in the face of this we have a choice to make. Will we fix our eyes and hearts on Jesus? He too lived in a world that was chaotic, with authoritarian leaders who were cruel and who kept their power through fear and violence. He knows what this is like.
Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, we are steadied in the swirl of chaos. With our eyes on him, like Jesus, we do not meet cruelty with cruelty or violence with violence. Rather, like Jesus, we bear loving kindness, generosity, compassion, mercy, grace, forgiveness, and peace in the world. This takes practice my friends.
The news tells our brains to be afraid and the path to fear is a well-worn and easy one for us to take. It’s what kept our ancestors alive so many tens of thousands of years ago. However, we don’t have to do this. We can instead take the path of Jesus. We can turn to him, offer him our fears and let him transform them into compassion. Let him transform our anger into loving kindness. Let him transform our fear of scarcity into generosity.
When we do this, we can stand with Jesus in the centre in balance, in equanimity.
It takes practice. Each time we feel fear, we acknowledge it and turn to Jesus or the Holy Spirit or God letting them work the transformation from what is death-dealing into what is life-giving.
This is the glory of the resurrection that we are all invited into.
And as we practice fixing our eyes on Jesus in private, in public we become, we are, beacons of generosity, loving kindness, mercy, peace, forgiveness, justice, and compassion in the world.
Those around us can take respite in our presence from this world’s fear and chaos because they will feel in our presence that we rest in the love and grace of God, that we stand in the glory of the risen Christ, that we breathe the air of the Holy Spirit.
Yours in our Risen Christ,
Rev. Svinda Heinrichs