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

The most precious thing

 Sunday, 6 April, Passiontide: Isaiah 43: 16-21, Philippians 3:4b-14 

and John 12:1-8

What is most precious is often most fragile.

Our world, our friendships, every human heart; like a jar of precious perfume. 

In his novel “Alabaster”, Chris Aslan reimagines the story of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He narrates their shame and sorrow, the freedom they long for and the stigma they face. They hear rumours about a new teacher; someone who might bring hope. 

The jar of pure nard is the most expensive thing they have, but it has not brought them good fortune. When the teacher comes to stay, Maryam smashes it open. 

Her words take us into the tender and provocative moment in today’s gospel:

At the upper room I hurry inside, dripping spikenard all over the carpets, to where the teacher is reclining. Then I take one of his feet and I pour… I’ve never smelled anything like it… It’s rich and warm and a little heady…

The scent fills the room, intoxicating everyone… Spikenard spills everywhere and I pull off my headscarf to use as a mop… my hair falls around me and catches in the liquid, so I use it to wipe his feet as well. 

Spikenard might’ve been a year’s wages; a dowry perhaps. 

No wonder the reaction - assuming scandalous waste rather than abundant generosity. 

Could it not have been sold? Would not the poor have benefitted?

The air fills with fragrance, hands and  feet are drenched in perfume, skin and hair are soaked with oil. 

And Aslan’s Maryam says to the teacher:  “It’s the most precious thing we have”... it’s not enough, I know, but I want to honour you and to prepare you for what’s to come.”

Mary, like our imagined Maryam, dares to love with abundance and holds nothing back - even her own future. 

She faces criticism, scorn and censure for this show of devotion, for the waste.

Yet this outpouring is meeting a different kind of need - it's a fragrance of love which encompasses death, an embodied worship which expresses hope; which gives an unspoken glimpse of resurrection before the pain.

As Maryam holds the teacher’s feet, she thinks ahead: This body will soon be broken and destroyed like this jar. He chooses to do this for us…I start to weep. I wipe and I weep, whispering my adoration. 

Her body is communicating her longing, her worship, her gratitude; her relief, her trust, her sorrow. She sees the brokenness and anticipates burial. 

His feet are washed with oil before he washes the feet of others with water.

A jar is broken in devotion, before his body breaks to heal and restore. 

This is a holy moment: intimate and tender as oil mingles with tears; blessing and sorrow; dignity and honour and grace. 

In describing this chapter in his commenary on, David Ford says the essentials are: being loved by Jesus, loving and trusting Jesus, recognizing who Jesus is, a heart open to the suffering of others, prayer, service, life-giving signs, extravagant attention and generosity. 

We are invited to play our part in this drama of friendship with Jesus. 

Such friendship is the most beautiful thing: it is to be held in the loving gaze of God. 

Our bodies are fully part of our life with God as we offer our whole selves without shame or fear; resisting some of the harsh judgements we make about them.

Embodiment goes to the heart of the incarnation: God’s word dwells with us as we break bread and share wine, weep and find consolation in our tears. 'God's presence and his very self, and essence all divine' as the hymn puts it.

Jesus names the goodness in this moment saying that it is worthy of being remembered - not for its waste but because Mary has dobne a beautiful thing. 

She antipates Jesus’ act of self-giving love by anointing his precious body with the most precious thing she has. She’s not  being cautious or holding back; she lives beyond the metrics of calculation; of growth or exchange. It is a pure gift in response to love.

As Isaiah has promised, God will do a new thing - it springs forth and we are invited to perceive it. He writes of a new way - of fresh waters; he writes of people being formed anew - declaring their praise and adoration. 

Mary’s gift of life and love fill our senses as an act of worship, drawing our attention to God’s love in Jesus: spilling over to forgive, breaking to make whole, lifted up do draw us to Godself. 

In the Eucharist, we are drawn into the abundance of  Jesus’ act of self-giving love. In fragments of bread, a cup of wine and words of blessing, we are made welcome, forgiven, restored and made new. Drawn into communion, our bodies in one body. 

Consider for a moment the things that have sustained us when life has been painful or we’ve found ourselves in turmoil - what comforts us?  Often, it's time with those who love us; the gestures of those who care; the body language that doesn’t count the cost. 

These aren’t merely pragmatic or calculated; not empty platitudes or politeness. They are acts of kindness or creativity that resist the pain of a fragile and finite world - which capture our senses like spring flowers. 

The body language between Mary and Jesus speaks of facing  suffering and death with generosity - sharing all that we have, breaking it open; somehow finding with it a gift of beauty with a fragrance that hangs in the air. 

It is an act of resistance against the grave - death does not win, instead the sacred notes of love rise above it. 

When challenged, Jesus is not suggesting that the needs of the poor do not matter - or that we accept society's inequalities as inevitable. It invites us to worship wiht our whole heart and to be open-hearted with what we have. 

Mary reminds us to love in the moment - aware of what lies ahead for Jesus, she offers comfort and tenderness. The breaking open the jar is a breaking open of her heart with deep gratitude and love. 

We too are to love Jesus without limit; that friendship is the source of goodness, reminding us that we are from love, of love and for love; that we are also to show the same open-heartedness to those who are in need. 

Paul writes of the vindication of unconditional love. He has desecribed the way in which Jesus does not cling to power but empties himself for us. In the light of that, Paul sees his gains as fleeting, counting them as rubbish (a polite translation of the Greek!). 

There is nothing that we can do to attain our own righteousness - it is a gift in Christ by faith. He shared our embodied experience, suffering and death that we might know his resurrection.

Mary responds to the need in front of her - the one who’ll die outside a city wall and be buried in a stranger’s tomb.  She loves what is before her eyes, in her dining room, amongst friends and those who’ll deny or betray love. 

Her body language shows that it is always Jesus we serve when we love those whose need confronts us. Judas faces rebuke rather than blessing for holding back; for thinking in the abstract. 

The perfume is an anticipation of resurrection - it is a glimpse of hope, it is a reminder of beauty and goodness, of extravagance and vulnerability. It is the fragrance of love, broken open and spilling out. 

As Passiontide begins, we are gifted an image of utter generosity; of being present; Jesus between us and judgment; holding nothing back. 

The cross awaits with all its pain and abandonment; but in this moment, one woman chooses to make a gesture that fills the room with the scent of what is possible. That there will be life again. That love will triumph. 

We press on in this way of love, as friends - recognising Jesus and being open-hearted to others; in prayer, service, attention and generosity, that our bodies too might be life-giving signs, broken open in love. The spiritual writer Ignatius says this, may it be our prayer:

Lord my God, when your love spilled over into creation You throught of me. I am from love, of love, for love. Let my heart, o God, always recognize, cherish, and enjoy your goodness in all of creation. Direct all that is in me toward your praise. Teach me reverence for every person, all things. Energize me in your service. Lord God may nother ever distract me from your love. Neither health nor sickness, wealth or poverty, nhonour or dishjonour, long life nor short. May I never seek nor choose to be other than You intend or wish. Amen.

© Julie Gittoes 2025

A landowner, a tree and a gardener

 Sunday, 23rd March, Lent 3: Isaiah 55:1-9, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 and Luke 13:1-9

How do we respond to life’s biggest questions?

In the 1930s, the philosopher Will Durrant wrote to 100s of figures in the arts, politics, sciences and religion challenging them to respond to the fundamental question of how they found meaning, purpose and fulfilment in their own lives.  He published the replies in a book called On the Meaning of Life.

In 2015, James Bailey finds himself sitting alone in a caravan, heartbroken and unemployed, wondering where he’d find happiness and purpose. He stumbles across Durrant’s book of collected letters and decides to repeat the exercise.  

After rejections, responses begin to arrive: one-liners or extended reflections, which gave him inspiration. 

The late Hilary Mantel talked about discovering meaning in the pursuit of it, the spiritual gold of virutes like tenacity, patience and hope.  An environmentalist wrote about preserving the planet we depend on; a holocuast suviver described goodwill and generosity in the face of brutality; a prisoner talked about respecting and appreciating life as a gift.  

Others mentioned friends, being fully present; responding to failure and tragedy. The palliative care consultant Kathryn Manix talks about what matters in the face of death - connection, relationship and love, not weath or success or more stuff. She sees this as the beginning of wisdom, of simplicity, of loving kindness. 

All a work in progress right until our final breath - when we come know the fullness God's loving-mercy, even as we are fully known.

And often the question ‘why’ will remain on our lips, particularly when we want to make sense of the world as it is; especially in the face of personal or collective suffering or loss. 

Jesus is confronted with a version of a ‘why’ question in today’s gospel. Some of the people around him approach to tell him of a violent and traumatic event. We don’t have to imagine very hard - every day, words and images rapidly convey the brutality of leaders slaughtering civilians; of lives lost when buildings collapse. 

There is so much pain in the world, we ask ‘why’ there is pain, cruelty and suffering. Jesus somehow shifts things to ask deep and wise questions; questions that somehow hold open the possibility of meaning and purpose in life. 

Yet our human instinct is sometimes to seek after the proverbial ‘theory of everything’ that makes sense of the senseless; of the bad that happens in a beautiful world. We try to square God’s goodness and power with the reality of suffering. 

Those addressing Jesus are telling him the horrendous news with a rationale already formed in their mind: somehow, they want to suggest that those who have been killed by Herod have done something to deserve it. Jesus undoes their logic. Suffering is not evidence of or punishment for sin. 

Our society has its own inner  logic too: it might be judgements about lifestyle or background; it might be implying that others have it worst; of even that suffering shapes our character. 

All of those ways of thinking about suffering set us apart from those enduring it. We miss our common humanity; the sheer risk and vulnerability of our lives. Jesus in a radical way is challenging the assumptions behind those logics and instead draws us into the reality of an other’s pain. 

He invites us to own the brokenness and hurt of our own lives and to repent. He is inviting us to ask a different question - one which draws us back to God and each other. There’s depth and risk, vulnerability and closeness in turning around. 

In setting aside the ‘why’ Jesus doesn’t offer a strategy or an answer. Instead, he tells a story. A story about a gardener, a landowner and a fig tree. A story full of frustration, perceived waste and lack, but also a story of patience, resources and possibility.  

Image from Bible Art

It’s an odd story - whether or not you know anything about growing fig trees. It doesn’t seem to be a direct answer to the ‘why’ questions about the reality of suffering. It might echo the ideas about finding meaning in life shared with Bailey and Durrent before him in their own perplexity and isolation. 

Are we seeking after the "spiritual gold" of life’s meaning - preserving something for others, fostering goodwill in difficult circumstances or appreciating life as a gift; seeking after connection, relationship and love; finding a simplicity that makes loving kindness possible. All this, even in the face of death,

In the story, the landowner seems to be pretty absent: swooping in to check for fruit but not getting involved; seeing only emptiness and scarcity; offering instructions or making judgments which take no account of potential or patience. Cut it down he says - there’s no life. He quits. He walks away from generosity and preservation, because he sees only failure. He doesn’t reframe it with tenacity and hope. He writes off any potential, meaning or fruitfulness. 

The tree is perhaps stressed by the conditions of soil or weather; under nourished and unable to offer fruit to others. In this seemingly barren state, it needs tender care; to flourish, things need to change. To thrive there needs to be time and attention given to what’s not working well. For us in this Lenten season, there are echoes of that space to look at and amend our lives, to do the heart and soul business we need to do before God. 

The gardener though is intimately and practically involved with this tree. Where others see only uselessness and death, he sees possibility. He is prepared to work hard - labouring with the soil and manure. He puts in the effort even when the odds of a better outcome seem low. Maybe we too can not only hope for change but give our time and effort and love to the cause of possibility - in this crisis, or suffering or in justice. 

The landlord, tree and gardener undo the 'why': they give us more life-giving options and also remind us that we need to be involved. The story doesn’t open up philosophies of living in the face of terrible pain or injustice. Instead, it gives us a spade and manure - weeping with the sorrowful; giving a bit of energy to the future we want to see; nurturing a beautiful thing. Being gardeners who can take on the graft of hopeful, patient tending. 

This is a deeper story that flows from a different set of questions; dispensing with the logic of why allows us to imagine lives lived out of a more meaningful answer. 

Repenting - turning - is an act of mind, heart, will and body.  It signals our need for grace as we seek to do what is right.  As we turn, God is already moving towards us in Jesus to forgive. He bears the weight of the suffering and pain in his body, even death itself. He undoes its power, turning hurt and failure to life and fruitfulness that we might be who we’re called to be. 

Likewise, we too towards our hurt and brokenness Noticing the hurt and going towards it  in the hope that there will be the fruit of new life.  Patiently, the Spirit is doing a new thing with us; nurturing gift and virtue.

There is an echo in Jesus’ story of the promises of Isaiah: reminding us that communion with God will bring a full life, of meaning and purpose. In the passage we heard today, this satisfaction takes physical form - wine, milk, rich food to delight in when we are thirsty, hungry and empty handed. 

Isaiah offers a vision of a restored world which is at odds with those things in our world that do not satisfy our deepest longing: the way conflict and economic systms can drive scarcity and exploitation. His words prompt us to look for a time when our poverty is exchanged for abundance and joy. 

As we are nourished at an earthly table, with bread and wine, we anticipate the promise of that heavenly feast, a peaceable kingdom. We are also invited to witness to such mercy, pardon, life and joy here on earth; to bring comfort to the afflicted and sorrowful in acts of loving kindness. 

This calling to engage with others in love runs through Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. He spends some time retelling the stoires of freedom from salvey and the struggles of the wilderness. In doing so, he offers a teaching exercise. Yes, in Christ, we are drawn into the covenant of God’s love; but we’re human and will face temptations to fulfil our self-ish desires and neglect God’s goodness to us. 

Paul offers a model of radical hospitality as a way of reflecting God’s faithfulness. It does not mean a life free of temptation, struggle or sorrow, but it does give a way thorugh it. A way of love that we see in Jesus. 

On the cross his love overcomes death; and opens up for us new life full of meaning; marked by what is just and merciful. Even in the face of difficulty, we hold each other in this radical love - reflected in patience, compassion, kindness; in simplicity and being fully present in the struggle until a new day dawns. 

© Julie Gittoes 2025