Sunday 6th April – Communion Service led by Paster Peter Gooch
Please note that John Wainwright’s Palm Sunday Service is now on Page 2 (Page Numbers are at the bottom of this page)
Anyone living in a family with the luxury of having two Sunday newspapers would readily accept John Wainwright’s analogy last Sunday for the Gospel writers. Starting with the same facts and having the same objective of providing a credible and persuasive news feed, they adjust their style of presentation, and choice of facts, to present the same story in different ways, focusing on the things they think to be most relevant to appeal to their readers. What John perhaps missed out is the extent to which reporting styles reflect the personality and beliefs of the journalist themselves,
And the same, it seems to me, is true for the Addresses and Reflections we enjoy on a Sunday from our worship leaders. The way their messages are presented reflects both their assessment of our needs, and their own beliefs and characters. This is perhaps an explanation (and apology?) for a slightly different style of review of the Message from Peter – experienced only in the form of words and a video feed.
Peter’s style is suffused with strong belief, enthusiasm, and a certain rigour. “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again”.
Peter told us that throughout his ministry and his time on earth, Jesus’s upmost thought had been that he must go to Jerusalem. He’d always known exactly what was going to happen there, had gathered up his courage and steeled himself for it, not attempting to change his path. His heart was set on paying the price for our redemption and he accepted the betrayal, the unjust trial, the mockery, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the spitting, the nails, the spear, the agony of the cross. He was full of tender love towards us sinners.
Crucifixion was hugely physically painful and socially disgraceful, but the pain and scorn of the shame associated with the cross was more than compounded by the weight of world’s sin that was placed on him. The exceeding guilt and sinfulness of sin was reflected Christ’s agony and bloody sweat. It was the enormous weight of these iniquities which made him suffer such agony. And yet there had been the joy in his soul of the desire to secure that salvation for us. He was giving his body and his blood for the life of the people of the world. The depth of that agony marked the debt we owed to Christ. There could be no joy without the great anguish: without the great anguish there would be no joy – and this was all for us.
God was pure, holy and sinless. So, when Jesus had sin placed upon him – our sin – the Father God could not at that moment be associated with him. “My God! My God! Why have you abandoned me?”. And yet Jesus had known that this was the principal end for which he had come into the world. He was to give his life as a ransom for many. He was to make his soul an offering for human sin, and to bear our transgressions in his own body.
The resurrection of Christ was one of the great foundation stones of the Christian faith. Jesus had told his disciples that the Son of man would be handed over sinners to be crucified, and that three days later he’d rise to life. The disciples had been slow to understand any of this. And his victorious death for others had often been a stumbling block and an offense to proud human nature, with Christ’s substitution for us on the cross a truth that was often denied, rejected or refused.
Christ’s love surpassed this thinking; unspeakable, unsearchable love. And we should rest on that love, peace, and assurance. If Christ so loved us before we thought of him, then He would surely not cease to love us once we had believed in Him. The person who came to Christ by faith had no reason to be afraid of the grave, for though the sting of death was sin, thanks to God, we had been given victory over death through our Lord Jesus Christ.
It was the strength of our belief and the depth of our faith in Jesus that, through him, unlocked the gates of heaven. We should fill our minds with grateful thanks and pray that we could be in the same mind as Jesus. We should be willing to go anywhere, do anything, suffer anything when the path of duty was clear and the voice of God called. We should set our faces resolutely to the work that God set before each one of us to do.
We should look at our own hearts. Would we see the sinfulness of sin in its true colours? Would we learn to hate sin with a godly hatred? Let us see that Christ crucified was really the foundation stone of our hopes, and that Christ’s atoning death for our sin was indeed the whole life of our souls. We would need to come in faith, conscious of our weakness, renouncing our sin, and humbly putting our trust in Christ and seeking His grace.
Potters Bar United Reformed Church 