About Jesus, creation and us

How amazing that you gave creation 
into our hands.
What have we done to it?

How much more amazing
that you gave your Son
into our hands.

What have we done to him?

About the wedding garment

The wedding garment is sorrow, repentance, recompense;
forgiveness, freedom, faith, hope, love.

About Holy Week

Every year, the sorrows of Holy Week 
are re-etched into our minds and hearts.

About the wounds of Jesus, our brother, our friend, our Saviour

Fearful friends who fell asleep -
and ran away,
a kiss of betrayal from a chosen follower,
spittle, sleeplessness,
poisonous words,
injustice,
every strand of the scourge,
every prickle of every thorn,
bruises, cuts and grazes from carrying a heavy cross -  
and falling;
the grief of his loved ones,
the indifference of bystanders,
the hatred of those who wished him dead.

Nails,
hanging,
every breath a torment,
every drop of blood drawn from his body,
freely shed for us,
to show his forgiveness
for the infliction of those wounds -
and his grief for all of ours.

An afterthought about Pilate and us

Perhaps Pilate is 'Everyman' and his guilt represents the guilt of us all as we 'stand on the sidelines', 'sit on the fences', 'keep our heads below the parapets' and 'hide beneath the radar' of life. (Look how many metaphors we have for everything that those phrases represent.)

How many of us can put our hands up and say, "Not I, surely, Lord"; certainly I can't.
It is Jesus who struggles up the hill of hatred, carrying the weight of our guilt and bearing the full punishment for it, and yet, even as he dies, is still able to find the strength to show his unshakeable love for us all and to forgive us and all humanity, then, down through all the ages and for all time.

PS I remember reading, quite some years ago now, a poem by John Dunne, which began "Spit in my face, ye Jews" which might be of interest to some people.

A postscript to a Holy Week poem

In April 2014, I posted a poem that had come to me some years ago. I re-posted it in March last year. This is the postscript.

A postscript on Pilate

I feel dissatisfied and annoyed with myself for the postscript I added to my last post, and yet I wanted to add something. It did, however, set me thinking again about that scenario. Why was it that Jesus didn't speak to Herod and why did he speak to Pilate?
I'm sure, in the first case, it was because he knew it would have been a complete waste of time. There would have been nothing he could have said to Herod that would have had any effect on his closed mind.
It is, perhaps, more intriguing to consider why he spoke to Pilate and why he answered his questions. It must have been because he saw in him something real - something that could be reached and Jesus would never fail to respond to that in any human being.
We know that it had no outcome on the final fate of Jesus but I wonder how it affected Pilate in his life thereafter. His wife had tried to to warn him against condemning Jesus but he was trapped by his own weakness and all the water in the world could never wash away that guilt from his hands.
Maybe the interplay between them, Jesus, the victim, apparently powerless, yet wholly innocent, strong, dignified, unafraid; Pilate, seemingly powerful and yet powerless to follow his conscience and free Jesus, was enough to eventually produce a redemptive change in his life.
One thing we can say is that , as I once heard someone comment, Pilate is the only other human being, apart from Mary, the mother of Jesus, to be mentioned in the Christian Creed because, by his actions, he became an instrument in the Redemption of all Humanity.

My second-ever post, from Thursday 2nd January 2014

I have decided to re-site my 'God' thoughts here, where they all belong together.
This thought is as true for me now as it was then.


I woke early this morning and this thought came, unbidden and fully formed, into my mind.

Belief in God is the peg on which I hang my life.