The Long Walk Home

The day inbetween. The moments of waiting and hoping that make up our lives until Sunday comes. The Sabbath comes, the day of rest but with a body in a Tomb. A day of desolation and the emptiness of grief. It is right to sit in the darkness and feel the desolation before moving to quickly to the end point of it all. This world has too many unanswered questions, too much brokenness to not take time to sit in the darkness. To reflect on the blackness of the day in which it seemed like God had vanished from the scene. We can too quickly jump to the end.

The real hope though, in that darkness, is that one day this darkness will pass. One day our Sunday will come. Sam and Frodo can express this better than I ever could.

“Frodo: I can’t do this Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding on to Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for”

We live out our Easter Saturday moments not in the despair of hopelessness but with the knowledge that Sunday came and that means another Sunday is coming. Cry from your hearts. Sense the despair and then cry out. Come Lord Jesus.

The sky darkens. The Word who became flesh is now nailed to a piece of wood. The crowd cries out for more, taunts and scoffs. Who could have predicted such an ending?, not the women crying at the foot of the cross, not his followers bewildered and confused. “A murderer they save, the prince of life, they slay.” The horrible irony of that moment. The sky darkens. The wrath of God poured out on himself as he takes our bullet. As he dies my death. “All my pride, all my greed, all my falleness and shame, and the Lord has laid the punishment on him.” The sky darkens.

He cries from the cross, “Father forgive”, “Why have you forsaken me?”, “It is finished.” Who can tell of the horror of that moment, the trinity wrenched apart for you and for me. A God who comes, who suffers, who takes our place, who rips apart history to bring about his Kingdom and Glory. A broken weak God displaying once and for all time the strength of foolishness. And as He breaths his last, the query of defeat on everyone’s lips, a sound is heard, a ripping sound. The temple curtain is torn in two from top to bottom. A sign of hope? Or something to be remembered after Sunday has come. We are left holding our breaths, waiting in the dark.

“Behold the man upon the cross
My sin upon his shoulders
Ashamed I hear my mocking voice
Call out amongst the scoffers
It was my sin that held him there
Until it was accomplished
His dying breath has brought me life
I know that it is finished.”

“We worship at your feet, where wrath and mercy meet, and a guilty world is washed by loves pure stream.
For us he was made sin, O help me take it in, deep wounds of love cry out, Father forgive.
I worship, I worship, the lamb who was slain.”

“But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to his own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”

Thursday. The night Jesus was betrayed. The night he entered into the age old feast of the Passover and turned the remembrance of one night, generations ago, and breathed new meaning into it. The night of the new covenant. The night when all creation held it’s breath to see what would unfold. The night of a cup waiting to be drunk. The night of agony. A man sweating blood. The night of explanation to his friends, of helping them see what good could come after such darkness. A night of prayer and sleeping. A night of betrayal, denial and pain. A night to remember.

The first communion. The first call to remember and proclaim. The bedrock of our lives. The one story we are all drawn into and the one man who unites us together in recognition of our brokenness and need. The bread and wine. Eternal symbols of the reality of our lives. Our lives revolve around this story. The constant reminder that this is what we need more than anything. The cross calls us in, to lay down our lives, to admit that we cannot make it home on our own, to admit that there is more than the world in front of our eyes, and to admit that we are wrong. We need this defining moment in history. We need to stop on this dark night. To feel the agony, to hear the desperate cries of a man who knows the horror that awaits him and to hear his obedience, his counting of the joy to come and to know that in the darkness real meaning, hope and light would be born.

The old hymns are the best expressions of all that happened on that first Thursday night.

“I cannot tell how silently he suffered
As with his peace he graced this place of tears
Or how his heart upon the cross was broken
The crown of pain to three and thirty years
But this I know, He heals the broken-hearted
And stays our sin and calms our lurking fear
And lifts the burden from the heavy laden
For yet the Saviour, Saviour of the world is here.”

“And when I think, that God his Son not sparing,
Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.”

“Guilty vile and helpless we, spotless lamb of God was he
Full atonement, can it be?
Halleujah, what a Saviour!”

The cross says everything. Tonight I went to church and was reminded that this is all I need. The bread and the wine. The body of Jesus broken for me and for you. The deep symbolism that reminds me that I have a way back to God. That I stand forgiven and accepted. That nothing else will work, none of my good deeds, none of my worst moments can change anything at the Lord’s table. I simply come, empty, broken, full of sin. It is because of these things that I can come. All I do is hold out my hands and receive. It is all I can ever do. And the wondrous thing is that it is enough. His love compels us to come, to throw away our own efforts at righteousness and accept that 2000 years ago one man changed the world forever, that he bore our sin, that he took on our death, that he bore the wrath that should have been ours. We proclaim this until he comes.

“We do not presume
to come to this your table, merciful Lord,
trusting in our own righteousness,
but in your manifold and great mercies.
We are not worthy
so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table.
But you are the same Lord
whose nature is always to have mercy.
Grant us therefore, gracious Lord,
so to eat the flesh of your dear Son Jesus Christ
and to drink his blood,
that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body
and our souls washed through his most precious blood,
and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.
Amen.”

My parents have broadband. What a good thing. And so after a week and a half away from the internet I return to the world of procrastination and random thoughts. Which is fine because I’m on holiday and allowed to procrastinate all I like. Ha. Word Alive was brilliant, lots and lots and lots of Jesus. Uber amounts of food for the soul and many random chats with old friends. Mainly the question burning on my heart as I left was, “Do I love Jesus?”. I think I do, but I want to love him more. We were looking at Colossians and the phrase that jumped out and hit me over the head was… “Christ, who is your life.” It seems like a bit of a throw away comment, but sums up everything I forget. Christ is my life. I have nothing, am nothing, can do nothing without Him. When I read that I think it’s a bit extreme. But it’s not. It’s reality. Reality of the deepest kind.

The Lake District as ever worked it’s magic air on my soul. The Lakes look like this, and as you can tell I am very happy in my silly hat. Hoorah for holidays and the wonder of being in a created world and knowing the creator.

As well as being the first line in the excellent Damien Rice’s ‘Blowers Daughter’, it’s also an apt phrase for the next few weeks in my life. It’s a blustery Sunday afternoon in Hove, the clouds are racing across the blue sky and in the distance the sun is sparkling on the dancing waves. Pathetic fallacy never seemed so real (for the ill informed amongst you pathetic fallacy is a literary device, oft used by Dickens and Hardy, of having the weather in the story reflect the general mood of the story. Now you know why it’s always raining in Dickens and Hardy’s work…)

And so it is that I come to wrap up the term just gone, place my clothes and stuff in bags and head off around the country for three weeks. There is a long to do list on my desk which clearly explains the need to procrastinate here before I run around like a headless chicken for the evening.

First up is the annual pilgrimage to Skegness.

A place I’ve been almost every year at this time for the last 12 years. Oh dear. Word Alive is calling me again. And more importantly the beach at Skegness is calling, a beach I’ve ranted and raved at God on, made silly decisions about my future on, run along, had deep chats on and generally enjoyed encountering God on. It’s become a ritual in my life. A routine which reminds me of where I have come from and who is going with me when I leave. So many transforming times have happened in Skegness, a fact I find deliciously ironic. Preparing for Word Alive has changed over the years. In the early times, when a mere youth, I would at this point be compiling compilation tapes for the car. These were works of painstaking care. I always aimed to ensure that there would be enough parent friendly songs for them to get played in the car, but also with songs I loved thrown in. Now I’m just plonking songs on the ipod, and thinking through what I can put on seminar handouts to make them interesting. How weirdly times change. Still, it’s good to return to places of deep memory.

Talking of which, the next stop on the journey is my favorite of all places.

The Lakes are welcoming me back. And soon I’ll be back in my world; peace the order of the day, friends to climb mountains with, valleys to gawp at in wonder and a general feeling of being small and loved to be enjoyed. Rest of the best kind. From there I head to Guildford for family times over Easter and then off to the Yorkshire Dales with work mates. *sigh*.

I think I’m ready to go. Much as I love routine, the view from my window and talking about God as a job, I’m also looking forward to seeing lots of old friends, getting some rest for my soul and walking around with a stupid grin on my face because the maker of the world knows me and knows that I am his.