stfrancischurchtairuanz

Remembering Paskhas

Easters are not generally remembered like birthdays or Christmases. Who really remembers stand-out Easters? Well, thank you for asking. I do.

My first (of three – chronologically, not in rank order) was in Queenstown. Camping out of my Morris 1100 in off-road laybys, hooning with mates in various acts of late teen larrikin-hood. The abiding memory, standing atop a snowless Coronet Peak in weak sunshine, intoxicated by the remarkable 360 degree scenery. It was good to be alive.

Second one saw me (and I saw it) in Moscow with my wife. Except that there it was called Moskva (Москва), not Moscow, and Paskha (Пасха), not Easter; and there was no off-road camping or larrikinism or one could be shot. Russian Orthodoxy. No sun either (just a whitish, suffuse light, and dirty slush all around). But, what atmosphere; what a memory. It was good to be alive.

Cue time ticking by and there we were: wife and me and now three kids – two larrikin sons and a haughty daughter. Camping, but not really off-road: under willows down by the river on Uncle Mansel’s farm. “Don’t let Mansel take you through his bull paddock,” my Mum had warned me, as she had on possibly twenty three previous visits (from the time I was five years old). “He’s too casual. Those bulls are dangerous.”
Well, we kept clear of the bulls. I was scareder of Mum than the bulls.
We swam in the river when we arrived, although as soon as the larrikins reckoned eels had nibbled their feet the haughty daughter could barely be persuaded to leave the car, and the river was definitely a no-go zone for her. I dug a magnificent long drop with a lovely rural view. But people refused to use it, preferring the considerable distance up the hill to the farmhouse WC.

The car, by the way, an Austin Princess, was parked down the slope in the long grass. Which became problematic during the night when black skies opened and floods came. We huddled unsleeping until the waters began to flow through the tent – until it came time to evacuate. We bundled what we could into the car and … but, no, the loaded Princess wouldn’t handle the drenched grassy slope. Everybody out, unpack, take only what you can carry … I managed to nurse the Princess up the slope in low gear while wife, larrikins and haughty daughter pushed, and we spent the rest of the night, and the next one, in sleeping bags on the floor of Uncle Mansel’s house. But, when all was said and done, a great memory, and it was good to be alive!

Coronet Peak, Москва, Uncle Mansel’s farm in the storm … ah, yes.

There was another Paskha apparently – I wasn’t there but I’ve heard told – when a man was executed on a hill. But, fair play, that’s one Пасха few of us care to remember. Too raw. Uncomfortable to contemplate and, it’s only a myth anyway, isn’t it? That old rugged cross … nothing to do with me, is it?
It’s cosier to centre our rememberings nowadays on bunnies! And chocolate and eggs. None of which relates to His memory, hijacked as we have become to commercial interests. Oblivious to the greatest story ever told.

Ah, yes, good times. Great memories. But give me bunnies, not crosses, eh.

Ken F

Costly Love

by Sue Collins

(Based on John 12:1-8)

This is such an appropriate reading for today, the 5^th Sunday in Lent. Holy Week is approaching and the passion and death of Jesus lie immediately ahead;
– both for the characters in John’s Gospel
– and for us here today in this world and time.

We are reading about and considering the Love Jesus has for us; that costly love he is walking in as he journeys towards the cross.
We consider too the costly love of Mary, who flouts society’s mores as she accompanies Jesus through these times.

Six days before the Passover, Jesus has come again to Bethany. Here is a lovely domestic coming together of friends: Jesus with his disciples is welcomed into the family home where he experiences as much or more of ‘being home’ as he has had anywhere else in his ministry.

His three friends give this dinner.
Lazarus sits with Jesus, while Martha serves the meal.
And then Mary comes forward and the scene changes dramatically. She anoints Jesus’s feet with a pound of costly perfume, then wipes them with her hair … and the fragrance fills the room.

There is disbelief all round. There is wonder, and anger too.

Mary’s action is an extravagant act of wordless devotion. Counting no cost, she anoints Jesus.

‘Not counting the cost’ can be dangerous: it can have extreme consequences. What matters is the motive behind it, the why of it. That’s what might justify or condemn the act.
Mary’s understanding of Jesus’s situation is far beyond the other disciples’ understanding.

And, her anointing of Jesus feet is a kind of prophetic action, signalling Jesus’s imminent death, anointing him beforehand for burial.
She can comprehend, and accept, what Peter and the other disciples cannot: the death of their master and Messiah.

The disciples don’t understand. The majority of them are men of their time, and they stand, too sure of themselves to feel the ache which Mary feels. This is a legacy of their time, this assumed superiority in their ‘maleness’, which in their own minds and their society’s values rates them above Mary.
They are walking the days with Jesus, stoically, fearful for his safely but oblivious of that inexorable nearing of his earthly end time, and all that that means.

Here is Costly Love:
Jesus’s love for us and for the world is so amazingly wonderful.
Mary’s act of anointing in that time speaks to us here in our time. It speaks in the midst of a world of treachery and betrayal, both in the world that was, among Jesus followers, and in our world of today.

Today, we live our lives in the shadow of the cross. But, we also live in the presence of the Risen Christ, in whose love we endeavour to reach out in acts of compassion and generosity, and in moments of worship.
And we live all of this in a world which lives in a mind-set of scarcity, rather than a mindset of abundance, in a world that tempts us to close in and to give little.

We are individually called to open up to costly love.

Worthy of Memory

Mark the name, Maximilian Maria Kolbe. Have you heard of him? Mark the name:
he’s worth remembering.

The world has just marked the death of Shane Keith Warne, Australian cricketer of fame and legend and now, in death, memorialised, his name on an MCG stand and to be remembered and celebrated for … a hundred years at least. Prematurely gone, only 52, now feted by Michael Jordan, Ed Sheeran, Liz Hurley, Alan Border, Elton John and many other celebrities, his memorial service beamed around the world, hyperbolically accoladed and lionised.

No one would say his honouring was undeserved [although, was it?]. Awesome spin bowler, personality larger than life, and latterly famous for being famous. Everyone loved Warnie.

Kolbe’s death was utterly unaccoladed. He died of starvation, thirst and carbolic acid, aged 47, in an Auschwitz cellar.
What makes his death remarkable is that he died voluntarily in the place of another man.

Kolbe was a Catholic priest, Polish. In May 1941 he and four others were taken to Auschwitz, where they, along with other prisoners, were slowly and systematically starved.
In order to discourage escapes, Auschwitz had a rule that if a man escaped, ten men would be killed in retaliation. In July 1941 a man from Kolbe’s hut ‘escaped’. [The dreadful irony of the story is that the escaped prisoner hadn’t, but was later found drowned in a camp latrine.]

“The fugitive has not been found!” commandant Karl Fritsch screamed. “You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until you die.”

The ten were selected, including Franciszek Gajowniczek. On hearing his name he cried out in anguish. “My poor wife! My poor children! What will they do?” When he heard this cry of dismay, Kolbe stepped silently forward, took off his cap, stood before the commandant and said, “I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. He has a wife and children.”

Others looked on in horror, expecting the commandant would be angered, and would order the death of both men. He remained silent, however … before granting the request. Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.

We know the story because Gajowniczek survived the war and told it. He recalled: “I was stunned and could hardly grasp what was going on. The immensity of it: I, the condemned, am to live and someone else willingly and voluntarily offers his life for me – a stranger. Is this some dream?”

Kolbe was thrown down the stairs of Building 13 along with the other victims and simply left there to starve.
For the next long days he encouraged the others with prayer, psalms, and meditations on the Scriptures. After two weeks, he was one of only four still alive. The cell was needed for more victims, and the camp executioner came in and injected a lethal dose of carbolic acid into the arm of each man.
His wait was over …

Apparently Kolbe’s heroism echoed through Auschwitz. Another survivor Jozef Stemler later recalled: “In the midst of such brutalization … never before known, into this state of affairs came the heroic self-sacrifice of Father Kolbe.” Another survivor Jerzy Bielecki described Kolbe’s death as “a shock filled with hope, bringing new life and strength … It was like a powerful shaft of light in the darkness of the camp.”

Shane Warne was a wonderful cricketer, gone too soon.
But Maximilian Kolbe gave his life for a stranger; his name truly deserving of honour and memory.

[John 15:12-13]

Ken F

Embracing Life’s Transitions

By Bruce Gilberd

(Based on Luke 15:11-32; Ps 32; 2 Cor 5:16-21; Josh 5:9-12)

This theme is water-marked in all of today’s readings.
This theme we know well from our experiences of life:

Infancy to childhood to adolescence to adulthood to middle and older years
For many, single to married life – and perhaps single – or married – again!
The transition into parenting and grandparenting
Moving house, transiting to other towns, even countries …
Transitions of work, health, finances, relationships
Transition from non-faith to faith
And so on – some transitions we choose, and some we cannot avoid.

Do we need to locate our inner disposition to such transitions?
Do we resist them? Tolerate them? Do we endure them? Do we embrace them?
Do we trust God with them?

Looking at today’s readings.

Psalm 32 dramatically describes the transition from resistance to God, an unwillingness to front up and be honest with God, to not hiding, to fronting up, to acknowledging the need for forgiveness – and finding God’s steadfast love, and so shouting for joy … Here indeed is a fundamental transition.
In Joshua 5, God speaks: “I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt” – [slavery].
Nations, communities, churches, believers, all of us need to check from time to time whether ideologies, inappropriate rules and laws, our own habits, are enslaving us. What we need to do is travel to freedom!
Also in Joshua there is another transition – the Israelites on the plains of Jericho – the oldest city in the world, I’m told – ate the produce of the land, and the desert manna provided by God ceased.
So this nascent nation transitioned from just being receivers from God, to being co-workers with God – eating the produce of the land they worked on.
II Corinthians 5: the core transition from knowing about Jesus the Christ to knowing and being befriended by him.
His gracious reconciliation gives us the ministry of reconciliation, healing and bridge-building. Again … receivers transition to givers. We are ambassadors for Christ. That is our primary identity … we do any little thing we can to represent him. We are a new creation, and we are to pass that on. Old transitions into new.
Luke 15: I expect the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son are the best known parables of Jesus. The first illustrates that Kingdom life is unexpectedly found in the heretical Samaritan’s kind action. Another transition.
And the in parable of the two lost sons, or the prodigal son, or the waiting father, there are many transitions:
- From isolation to community
- From a far country to home!
- From vulnerability and sin to protection
- From foolishness to welcome, and a party
- From grief to joy, and
- From death to life.

So –

Are there transitions happening to us? And, how are we handling them? Who can help?
Are there transitions we need to make, but are resisting? Who can help, and give us courage?
Are we aware of others making transitions? Can we be of help?
And, yes, again, will we trust God with all our transitions?

I suggest that what makes transitions enhancing are these:

When we address them with a sense of adventure;
when we let go what needs to be let go of;
when we are anchored in the guiding good God;
when we reach out for reliable advice;
when we pray expectantly – trusting God;
when we make unhurried and informed choices.

And in these uncertain days, may our constant and heartfelt personal and corporate prayer be that there are transitions from European war, to peace; from Covid, and all disease, to health and wholeness; and from indifference and unbelief, to belief.

Amen