The adventure of faith

 27 April 2025, Easter 2: Acts 5:27-32, Revelation 1:4-8 and John 20:19-end

Yesterday morning, Cardinal Giovani Battista Re (the Dean of the College of Cardinals) preached a homily which reflected on the way in which Pope Francis showed warmth and sensitivity in the face of today’s challenges. He shared our anxieties and our hopes, reminding us that the joyful heart of the gospel is God’s mercy. 

Such mercy which means God never tires of forgiving us, healing our wounds.   For Pope Francis, the church was to be a ‘home for all, a home with its doors always open’.  

How do we get to that place? How do we get to a  place of healing and openness, of mercy and joy? For Pope Francis, Thomas is our guide.

St Thomas - stock image

Three years ago, in a short address, he said that Thomas ‘represents all of us’ because he was not present the first time the risen Lord Jesus appeared to the apostles. 

He is one who shares our struggles. How do we believe without having seen him? How do we know Christ’s presence and love without having touched him? 

Thomas shares our reasoning, doubts and questions; our longing for relationship with the risen Lord. Thankfully, Pope Francis reminds us that God is not looking for perfect Christians!

Today’s gospel allows us to be honest about wounds and questions. It begins with the reminder that Jesus’ risen body is still wounded. The wounds witness to pain and to loss, to the traumas inflicted on mind and body; to the traces of relational hurt and suffering. 

Wounds do not heal instantly. They become scars over time - we see the outer transformation. The deep tissue healing - that takes longer. The knitting together of fibres and growth of new cells is sometimes felt, always unseen. 

The medical term for such deep healing is ‘granulation’. A term my late supervisor picked up during his treatment for cancer - and creatively re-deployed to describe the time and patience needed for healing to occur. 

Healing of past hurts or regrets; of challenging relationships. Healing in how we live differently in relation to grief or chronic illness. Healing in our communities - the life long work of bridge building. 

In Jesus we see the wounded God whose wounds are healing ours. 

He is present with us - in the tender heart of things; the places where we still wince at the touch. This is real presence in the wounds, the pain; presence in the granular healing, in the deep tissues of our fear and confusion, in our hurt, yes; but also in the experience of mercy, in the depths where joy might begin to emerge; in the depths of our lungs as peace is exhaled. 

We are embodied people. So was our Jesus in his life, death and resurrection. 

Our bodies tell something of our stories: scars of childhood and of surgery; of first loves and lasting griefs; of challenges faced and moments of happiness; successes, failures and everything in-between. 

Jesus’ body tells a story too: the one who was and is and is to come dwelt with us; a story of solidarity and encounter; of love and mercy; of forgiveness and peace; of wounds that heal. 

If God does not seek perfect Christians but wounded, healing ones then Pope Francis is right. Thomas stands for us.

He says: 'the adventure of faith, as for Thomas, consists of lights and shadows. Otherwise, what kind of faith would that be? It knows times of comfort, zeal and enthusiasm, but also of weariness, confusion, doubt and darkness.’

He highlights the way Thomas teaches us that we should not fear the moment of crisis: they are part of the story. 

The crisis he experienced is not hard for us to imagine. We live with FOMO - the fear of missing out. Thomas may have felt that acutely - his closest friends had encountered the real presence and peace of their risen friend and Lord. 

He wasn’t there. It wasn’t enough for him to have their account of what happened - however detailed, emotional and vivid. If you weren’t there as the applause erupts or as an infant takes a first breath; if you weren’t there for that shared joke or that parting word, we do feel as if we have missed out. 

It’s not something to write off as weakness or stubbornness or a lack of trust. 

It is an expression of our yearning for encounter; to hope in the face of uncertainty.

If Thomas stands for all of us, we can take courage from him - from his witness - as one who recognised his Lord in woundedness. As one whose own wounds were healed by a wounded Lord.

Thomas knew his need. He was not ashamed to express it - his crisis of missing out was part of his journey.  Such moments, as Pope Francis put it, ‘rekindle the need for God and thus enable us to return to the Lord, to touch his wounds, to experience his love anew as if it were the first time.’

Our need exposes our humility. It strips us of our pride. 

That week of waiting must have felt very long for Thomas. Waiting without knowing if or when he would encounter Jesus. 

Did he think his fellow disciples were suffering from grief-induced delusion? Did he find hope in the murmurings of peace? 

Jesus knows these moments of crisis and vulnerability. And as the gospel reminds us he does come back. Pope Francis says ‘he always comes back: When doors are closed, he comes back; when we are in doubt, he comes back; when, like Thomas, we need to encounter him and to touch him up close, he comes back.’

And this moment of return is the moment of Thomas’s recalling. He went - legend has it to Kerala - he witnessed to others of the one who was his wounded and risen Lord. 

Perhaps, with a pastoral tenderness born of his experience, he was able to speak peace to others; to speak of mercy and joy. Perhaps breathing those words - softly, urgently - ‘blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe.’

Perhaps he is the one who not only represents us, but bears witness to us, so that we can live out the good news of resurrection life. 

Perhaps it is in this place of woundedness that healing happens: at a granular level life begins, faith blossoms; a new future in community is made possible. 

As David Ford puts it: ‘Here the breathing in of life is inseparable from the words of peace, sending, receiving and forgiveness.’

When John writes of forgiveness and what is retained, he is reminding us of Jesus’ promise to hold us fast. In all our woundedness and capacity to wound others, we are held fast. Jesus holds on to us in that - loving as God desires us. Forgiveness is tied to such an embrace. 

Peter went on to speak of what it is to bear witness to the resurrection and forgiveness, to repentance and obedience. As part of a fragile and fallible community of friends, we are invited to love and serve - breathing in and breathing out the Spirit of peace. 

Revelation reminds us that we are loved and set free from sin. We are made a kingdom - a people of solidarity and encounter, serving God and our neighbours, drawing the margins into the centre of our life.

Thomas is the one who asks the awkward questions - who stands for us in seeking faith and love, worship and embrace.  As we break bread together, we relearn  mercy which means God never tires of forgiving us, healing our wounds.   May we embody those gifts in the local, in the unseen and granular, so that this church might be: a ‘home for all, a home with its doors always open’.  

© Julie Gittoes 2025

Love's risen body

 Easter Day - 20 April 2025: Isaiah 65:17-end, Acts 10:34-43 and John 20:1-18

Not darkness but twilight

In which even the best

of minds must make its way

now. And slowly the questions

occur, vague but formidable

for all that…

The opening of R. S. Thomas’s poem “The Answer” draws us into where we find ourselves this morning. 

We like the first witnesses to the resurrection out caught in the half-light. Easter begins in the early morning; in the not-yet light darkness of dawn. 

Questions occur, vague but formidable. Has the stone moved, or is it a trick of the light? Are those shadows or grave clothes? Can I trust what my eyes see, the sense my mind makes? Is that the gardener?  

Easter begins  here: not darkness but twilight.

Mary Magdalene Br Robert Lentz

R. S. Thomas is unafraid to write about problems and how we answer them, kneeling, praying; waiting for the stone to roll from our minds.. He takes us to the point of dying, and to the piled graveclothes of ‘love’s risen body’. 

He invites us to trust in the midst of struggle, as the disciples did. Whether they ran or hesitated, wept or rejoiced, they had to allow their imaginations to come to terms with something new. 

As light breaks in at dawn, their minds and emotions respond to slivers of hope; of life. That looks different for each of them.

Peter hears the rumour and runs towards the tomb. He’s outran by his friend, the Beloved Disciple, the one who trusts and senses love’s risen body. 

Mary arrives first and flees - the questions are too formidable. But she returns, hearing love speak and touch her heart.

Resurrection breaks-in not in darkness but twilight; it meets them where they are as a stone rolls from their minds, questions folded to oneside; love’s risen body taking up space not in an empty tomb but in and around them. 

They all come to the tomb as they are - with all their fears and hopes, questions and emotions.  They give us permission to approach the empty tomb as we are too - whatever our experience of loss or the hope we need to face tomorrow; whatever our struggles and disappointments;  whatever baggage weighs us down or new life that sets us free.

Today we are invited to linger in the garden, alone and in the company of friends. We listen as our names are spoken in tenderness; as the seed of this story settles  in our hearts.  Here we begin to notice what love’s risen body might mean for us, in our lives. 

Mary was the first to encounter the risen Jesus - and the first to speak of that experience. She waits, kneels, weeps and questions in this sacred time at the point of death, and the possibility of life beyond it. 

She remains in twilight: feeling the fullness of her bewilderment and pain. She remains before the emptiness, giving herself over to agony of tears and heartbreak. She remains in the garden, searching for answers; bearing witness to what feels unbearable. 

Her faithful love and openness, her honesty and questioning leads her to a moment of clarity.  As the theologian David Ford puts it: "Mary had been looking for a dead ‘what’; she is questioned and surprised by a living ‘who’.”

As she hears her name, she recognises her teacher.  She reaches out to that hope and healing; but rather than holding on to him, she is promised something more. 

Her letting go also signals that Jesus, love’s risen body, can now relate to all people, places and times. Mary also receives a new purpose within a new network of friends - that of being a witness, of sharing her testimony. 

She is the first to say: “I have seen the Lord”. 

Peter and the Beloved Disciple had confronted the emptiness of the tomb, but neither of them waited.  Their responses speak to our feelings and experiences too.

Peter rushes headlong into the tomb; but he cannot stay in that empty, desolate and painful place. He runs with his mind full not only of doubts and questions, but also the weight of his own failure and denials. 

His emotional landscape has been reshaped by exhaustion, shame and fear. He cannot risk waiting. He abandons the garden for a room with locked doors. 

But it’s there that the stone rolls from his mind. It’s there, perhaps, that he heard Mary’s cry of joy; it’s there'll he hears Jesus’s words of peace. 

In his haste, his retreat and defences, the good news of resurrection finds him. He can run, but new life waits. Love’s risen body claims him as his own, forgives and restores him. 

What of the Beloved Disciple? He too runs, but he hesitates. When he enters the tomb he sees beyond the emptiness and believes. He embraces what he sees - his heart and mind remain open for faith to be renewed in him; for trust to deepen. 

Believing because of the empty tomb and folded graveclothes is for him the beginning of a new understanding. It is his imagination and experience that shapes the Gospel that bears his name, John. 

He is the one who brings Jesus’ mother Mary into his own home; he is the one who invites successive generations into the space of the story he tells; deepened by images of light and life, of truth and a new commandment of love. 

He invites us into this journey too. He gives us permission to believe and to trust - and yet to allow space for understanding to grow. He waits with us in death’s reality and its defeat. He invites us to trust that all will be made new, to persevere when justice and mercy seem fragile. 

Resurrection is as much a process as an event; it’s a  promise made at the graveside, just as twilight promises a new day.

It is the promise of what we long for: from Ukraine to Gaza, Sudan to Jerusalem, in every place where tears are shed. It is the promise of homes to inhabit and grapes to be harvested; it is the promise of life from infancy to old age, with dignity, joy and delight. It is the promise of blessing - and an end to hurt and destruction. 

It is the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, as Isaiah puts it. 

That can feel a long way off. 

In Acts we hear Peter preaching in a world not so different from ours: where the power of empires, with power and wealth, seek to possess, control and dehumanise; where culture wars value some bodies and lives less than others; where rights are reduced to a zero sum game; where scarcity and excess divide peoples and communities; where the world itself cries out for release.

Peter begins with words that speak of divine acceptance; the dying and rising of Jesus presses us further into this way of life, an ethic of love.

As Willie Jennings puts it: ‘The Jesus of history becomes the defining moment of all history. Here is the deliverance of the world and its restoration toward health and life… The unbelievable has happened: Jesus was killed and rose from the dead. Death has been overcome in and through him. Yet this was no singular miracle but rather the great announcement of the new order - Jesus is the judge of the living and the dead. He is the Lord of all.’

This cosmic hope is also personal and particular: Peter preaches the forgiveness he has known. As he speaks, the Spirit moves, inviting us to love those who are different to us. In Christ, God brings loving judgement to  us and a wayworld world - calling us to embody love where we find ourselves; to announce in the way we live  what Jennings calls ‘God's desire for joining and communion’.

Such new life cannot be stopped, though many try to place a limit on the scope of love. We will rise.  We glimpse it now through tears; through communion. We glimpse it as many  bodies - beautiful, aging, bruised and tender - made one. Every grief and every hope, every doubt and every joy is held within love’s risen body as Thomas ends his poem, “The Answer”:

There have been times

when, after long on my knees

in a cold chancel, a stone has rolled

from my mind, and I have looked

in and seen the old questions lie

folded and in a place

by themselves, like the piled

graveclothes of love’s risen body.

©️ Julie Gittoes 2025

Lord, to whom can we go?

 August 25 2024: Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, Ephesians 6:10-20 and John 6:56-69

Marc Anderson, an American entrepreneur, wrote an essay on artificial intelligence in which he said this: ‘I am here to bring good news: AI will not destroy the world, and in fact may save it’. [The Guardian Magazine, 24 August 2024: why we should fear AI by Yuval Noah Harari]

Those words may well leap out of us: good news and salvation.

The stuff of hope and healing, justice and joy shifting from the realm of creator to the creation’s creation. 

Image from Y N Harari's webpage for Nexus

For many of us, AI is the impact of Chat GPT and concerns about how to assess essays; or perhaps the worry of a takeover of humanly imaginative endeavours, leaving us with the mundane tasks we’d hoped to jettison. 

Rather than seeing AI development as a risk that we should fear, Anderson  regards it as ‘a moral obligation that we have to ourselves… to our future.’

Others sound a more cautionary note. 

For example, in his book Nexus the historian Yuval Noah Harari looks at the flow of information from the stone age, through the Bible to early modern history to today’s rise in popularism. As he examines the relationship between information and truth, he addresses the choices we face when confronted with non-human intelligence. 

How will digital empires impact on our freedom and security he asks? Can we find a hopeful middle ground rooted in shared humanity?

We have always faced such choices: about freedom and agency, power and “powers”. Today’s readings offer wisdom and insight into where we are to find good news and the hope of salvation.

The book of Joshua follows on from Moses’ parting words and begins to trace the history of God’s people as they settled in the promised land. Part of the story includes the mistakes that were made; the things that led to a time of exile - for example worshipping other gods, failing to show compassion and mercy to the vulnerable, seeking human rather than divine rule, exploitation rather than justice. 

All this is told with the benefit of hindsight. We glimpse one moment when mistakes are named and faithfulness to God is restored.

The challenges and difficulties of present circumstances are named. The promises, which may have faded from memory, are recalled. The bigger story of freedom and protection is retold. 

Remembrance leads to recommitment. Reverence of God leads to service of others. 

Faithfulness overtime relies on such moments of renewal: acknowledging what’s gone wrong, recalling moments of blessing with hope, and being intentional about our own priorities or actions - in worship and compassion.

That movement is not always easy. 

Last week we were immersed in reflecting on the living bread - and our need to be fed. We recognised that this bread gets inside us and changes us. Yet today, we are confronted by a critical moment of choice.

‘This teaching is difficult, who can accept it?’ says one of those who were following and learning from Jesus. In response, Jesus continues to hold out the promise of his words which give spirit and life. He continues to hold out the promise of his very self.

He also looks around him and asks his own question: ‘Do you also wish to go away?’  Do you go, holding on to the offence; or do you want to choose life this day?

Peter’s response is equally direct and from the heart:  ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.’ 

It is a choice which comes from relationship - just as Joshua and the people recommitted out of their remembrance of being beloved. Peter speaks out of being fed and made whole, forgiven and challenged, taught and embraced. He speaks out of being known and loved. 

We know that Peter will still run into misunderstandings; his ego will sometimes get in the way, his boldness will tip into denial. Yet he will also grow in faith - he will run to the empty tomb. He will be recalled, by name, to love and service by his crucified and risen Lord.

In this moment, though, he longs for and reaches out for the intimacy of continuing and deepening relationship with Jesus: of being fed by enriched bread, the bread of life.  

In him we glimpse something of the process of faith and faithfulness. Peter continues: ‘We have to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’  His commitment is rooted in relationship - in abiding in Jesus. He has come to believe as trust grows mingled with knowledge and experience. 

Moment by moment we are invited to live as God’s beloved, forgiven, healed and restored children. We are reminded that God has already chosen us, loves us. And therefore we are invited to choose God’s love in return. By the power of the Spirit, we continue to abide in this love.

Such choosing and abiding is a gift: individually and collectively. This teaching, this commitment, is hard but also life-giving.  

This is good news and salvation: hope and healing, justice and joy offered by creation’s creator.  Offered as Jesus places himself in human hands - reconciling the world to Godself as he is lifted up on the cross.

Good news and salvation is offered to us as we take the body of Christ into our hands; being fed by the bread of life, so that our lives might reflect his love.  We eat and live. Sustained in times of strength and weakness. Serving others out of that same well-spring of limitless love; using our influence, time, resources to bring life to others.

So we come back to the choices we make about our freedom and agency, power and the powers of the world. Our freedom is a great gift of God to creation yet we are so often pulled in different directions; our hearts divided over the desires and opportunities we should pursue. 

In Ephesians, those struggles are named - including the external influences and forces at work in the world. Perhaps we might add the technological to the cosmic powers we have to confront.  How do we seek after truth rather than controlling information; or respond with caution to tech that we do not understand, for the sake of our moral obligation to creation?

In response we hear of the ‘armour of God’: a visual and memorable shorthand for what God already provides for us as we navigate our world; day by day we choose to be clothed in them.  These are things which enable us to hold onto the hope of our shared humanity: reshaping our imagination; being creative with grace; seeking freedom rather than exploitation. 

The list begins with truth - the life and love of God revealed in Jesus and at work in us through the power of the Spirit. We are invited to a life not of self-righteousness but one built on right relations; we are to take as shoes whatever makes for walking in ways of peace. All that protects us - the good news of salvation - is obtained in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. To whom can we go? He has the words of life!

The sword is of the Spirit, the word of God: the daily choice of choosing life and hope, joy and peace, justice and compassion.  The creator’s gift of salvation to creation - mediated by human lives. As we remember God’s saving acts at this Eucharist, proclaiming the mystery of the gospel, may our faith and faithfulness be renewed in worship and service. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024

Overflow of life

 Sunday, 30th June: Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24, 2 Corinthians 8:7-end and Mark 5:21-end

God does not delight in the death of the living.

Bold and hopeful words from the Book of Wisdom: God creates that living things might exist.

The created order is drawn into this pattern of generativity - of creativity - that is wholesome: good, healthy, virtuous, fruitful.

Part of what it is to me made in the image and likeness of God is to carry within us this light of hope; this desire of wholeness; the longing of immortality.

Such gifts given freely in love - an act of divine creativity without compulsion. 

Envy crept into the world: a fear of scarcity and lack; selfishness shaping our desires; what we want rather than what others need.

In the world as we know it, our hearts can be turned inwards towards, away from others and God. And yet, we know that the first impulse of light and love is there. 

In commandments shaping and guiding our loves: to honour and bless, to seek what is just and merciful, beautiful and true.

When hearts turned away from commandments, prophets called us back, helping us reimagine a more whole and wholesome future.

When hearts turned away from love, God’s word dwelt among us: loving us in flesh of our flesh.

Image from the catacombs in Rome

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is radiating this love in ways which raise up and restore; bringing healing and wholeness; taking the sting of death and restoring life. 

We know what it's like to be in the midst of a crowd: at stations  and festivals, in stadiums and marches, watching the Euros or dancing at the Eras tour.

Today Jesus encounters two children of God: two daughters - one who’d been suffering for as long as the other had been alive; one facing death barely as life had begun. 

Twelve long and yet fleeting years.

The father of the young girl is a person of power and influence, he falls at Jesus’ feet, laying all his authority and anxiety before him. He pleads for health and life. 

The older woman has no such public status. She is marginalised and invisible - crouching near the ground, she creeps along amidst the moving feet of the crowd. 

Like many perimenopausal women, she’d sought out medical advice to no avail; she’d spent her money on possible cures and treatments, yet the symptoms and bleeding would not stop. 

She had heard of Jesus: a healer, a teacher; a story-teller.

Amidst the robes, sandals and dust she reached out and touched the hem of his garment. The smallest gesture, a fragment of fabric.

Then she felt the moment that her flow of blood stopped.

He too felt it. Felt the flow of power from him towards another. 

That moment of intense and intentional longing was not just another body in the crowd. He sees her. He raises her up. 

Her healing is holistic: she is made whole and restored to social life and belonging; she is able to tell the whole truth of her life, her body, her shame, her hope. She becomes a witness to that movement of God’s love in him; he praises her faith. 

Perhaps now she can take - or retake - her place community. Healing does not restore to her youthfulness and fertility; but it does restore her to that place of wise elder; to a life that is generative in the care and support she gives to others, to the memories of faith she carries.

How must Jairus have felt as he watched this moment of disruption, or interruption? Watching not as the man of authority but as the anxious parent. 

How must he have felt when the news reached him that the journey was now in vain; hope of healing lost to him. He need not trouble this teacher.

Jesus though invites him to move from fear to trust. He invites him to step aside from the competition and wailing, from the crowds and mocking laughter. 

In him is made real the words of Wisdom: God does not delight in the death of the living. She is not dead, he says, but asleep.

That same power that flowed to stem a flow of love now flows to restore the breath of life. Talitha cum. 

He takes her hand. He invites her to get up. She stands and walks. 

Jesus is the one who brings the radiating energy of life and love; who moves fear to faith; who builds trust and restores hope. This healing is an invitation into the wholesome life of generativity. 

Such generativity - such a life giving move - is directed to the needs of others. For Paul, as he proclaims the good news of Jesus who brings life out of death, who breaks the bonds of the grave, this means attending to those in need, on the margins.

For him the grace of God brings unity, a reconciling love. A love that extends across difference and disagreement in practical support. In his case across Jewish and Gentile communities. 

The wholesome death-defying life that he commends is about generosity in the face of affliction. The only competition is an eagerness to give - abundance and need are in a reciprocal relationship: no one having too little or too much.

We too should be eager to share in this overflow of life. 

© Julie Gittoes 2024

Walk fearlessly

A sermon preached on the Second Sunday in Lent which was also our Beethoven Weekend. The texts were: Genesis 12:1-4a, Romans 4: 1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17 and quotations from Beethoven were found here.

“No friend have I. I must live by myself alone; but I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, so I will walk fearlessly with Him.”

Words written by Beethoven, whose life and work we celebrate this weekend. He wrote these words having dedicated the Moonlight Sonata to a woman he loved;  he wrote them knowing that class and status meant their love was prohibited. 

Yesterday, we were drawn into Beethoven’s legacy in an embodied way. We heard some young musicians talk about why they’d chosen particular pieces to perform; and how they engaged with the emotional energy of his work.

We were drawn into Beethoven’s story in an embodied way in a dramatic performance accompanied by the music which flowed from his pen. We heard of his loves and his loneliness; his creative impulse and his despair. At the end, we were gifted a glimpse of hope.

Some have written that Beethoven had a curious faith. A faith which was deeply personal, reaching towards God; and finding expression beyond the assertion of creeds and dogmas. Whilst he might have had an aversion to sitting in the pews; his fascination with the texts of the Mass and the rhythmic patters of psalms.

He sought to integrate his own personal styles and interpretations of the texts; driven by his years of research and his emotional involvement. We are drawn into something that is both personal and universal; drawing us on person to person, as we reach towards God.  

In the setting we will hear this evening, the Mass in C, we are invited into a work of reassurance and hope. He is reported to have said: “My chief aim was to awaken and permanently instill religious feelings not only into the singers but also into the listeners.”

The themes of awakening and fearlessness; of human creativity and life alone are recognisable to us; but also to the biblical narrative we are drawn into. There too do we find expression of a faith which are curious and trusting. In the lives of Abraham, Nicodemus and Paul we find glimpses echos of nearness of God of which Beethoven wrote, echos which resound within the human experience  from heartache to reassurance.

Abram is invited to lear all that he knows: home and land, livelihood and kin.  He begins a journey of trust; setting out into the unknown. He places his faith in a promise; he responds to a call which tugs at our deepest longings.

Still from film

In older age, he goes: he embraces a way of life which is visibly different to all that has been. He does not, indeed cannot rely on his own goodness or power, knowledge or influence. Instead he responds to the promise of blessing; a blessing not just to one family or nation, but for the whole earth.

Perhaps we can imagine Abram saying: No friend have I. No children; no future. I must live by myself alone; in the few kin I have.  But I know well that God is nearer to me than others in my art, on this journey into the unknown. So I will walk fearlessly with Him. In hope. In a promise.

Abraham was renamed in hope by a faithful God; and to him Paul turns in thinking about the nature of trust in God. This is not a matter of knowing in the sense of looking upon an object and knowing its weight and form. 

This kind of knowledge is rooted in love and hope: it challenges us to think about where we place our trust, and how such commitments shape our lives.  The faith of which Paul writes is a radical openness to love. A love that brings life; a love that calls us into being; a love that defeats death; a love that exceeds all human imagination in its creativity. 

It is a love that calls. A love that displaces all other idols of status and human regard; of achievement and power. It is a love which displaces wealth itself. 

It is a love that reshapes our worldly commitments; and calls us to be a blessing to others, in order that they too may bless. 

Like Beethoven and Abraham, Paul and Nicodemus, it might not always be clear what lies ahead. Sometimes we will find human longings unmet; or our lives constrained by the wills of others. And yet, we are invited to walk fearlessly with God; the God who kindles, instills and awakens the flame of love in our hearts.

This promise rests on grace not our effort. It rests on a promise fulfilled; and a new future unfolding. 

For Nicodemus this journey is played out over the course of John’s Gospel. He begins by trusting in facts, in noticing what he sees. He is drawn to trust in a person. He continues in curiosity; he is unashamed in his questions. 

He is invited to trust God’s love. A love revealed in the one who will be lifted up on a cross; a love which is at work in the world through the movement of the Spirit. Through this love, his curiosity becomes a deepening commitment. 

It is Nicodemus who stands alongside the beloved disciple and Jesus’ mother at the end; taking a crucified body to be laid in a tomb. It is he who, with the women, brings spices to anoint a body which has born the cost of loving to the end. In the face of the isolation of death and grief, he and they, wait and walk in fearless love. 

Nicodemus- John LaFarge 

For Beethoven, music was the means by which he could express the desolations of isolation and frailty; the wondrous power of nature and the human heart; and within that stir curiosity and joy, solidarity and conviction and the movement of the love, human and divine.

Our lives and bodies are also marked with our convictions: our convictions are revealed in how we spend time and money; our habits and actions reveal the priorities in our hearts. In the midst the storms of this world, dare we live with an intensity and focus, a lightness and commitment that strengthens bonds of community and awakens in others a glimpse of hope in which they can place their trust. 

Our lives and bodies are are marked with the sign of the cross; marked by the love of one who was lifted up in order that we might be reconciled with God and each other. 

The evangelist John reveals to us that God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him, trusts in him, may not perish but may have eternal life.

God reveals the depth of love for us in becoming one of us in Jesus Christ. As we enter into relationship with Jesus and follow him we receive the life that is in him; that life flows from his relationship to the Father. 

This life enables us to see see others as Jesus sees them; to love them as he does; to see and love ourselves and Jesus sees and loves us.

This life and love is a dwelling in God: it transforms how we act and speak; it enables us to be compassionate, creative and courageous.

God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world may be saved through him.  

To save means to heal, to liberate to make whole: Jesus came to save us from fears and welcome us into new life.

Jesus comes to give us to the very life of God, so that life flows through us. Jesus was lifted up on the cross and in his resurrection; so our humanity too is lifted up with God, abiding in love that continually reshapes us.

May we be alert to where the Spirit is moving in our lives and in our community; may we notice where there is pain and isolation and be with others; may we notice where there is joy and love, and draw near to bless; may we notice where there is fear and speak words of consolation. 

May we hear the promise of life and love awakened in us; when the way ahead is unclear or painful, may we walk fearlessly; in delight and confusion, in companionship and when we are alone, may we know that love is with us, lifting us up.

© Julie Gittoes 2020