From the Minister’s Study Todd takes a Lenten journey though the Scriptures

By Rev. JoAnn Todd Trinity and St. John’s Anglican Churches, Blyth, Brussels

Throughout these last six weeks of Lent in church, we’ve read some really neat stories about Jesus and how he revealed himself as the Messiah, the one to save us from ourselves, from our sin; first to the devil and then to his followers and his critics. I think it’s worth a review of the highlights of these stories. It will help us to see Jesus more clearly, maybe even bring us closer to Jesus. It seems opportune, in the middle of Holy Week, just before Easter Sunday.

The First Sunday of Lent, we read the story of Jesus’ testing during his 40-day-long “wilderness desert retreat”. In a weakened condition, after a long period of fasting, the devil tests Jesus’ strength and moral fibre with really tempting and exciting, could we call them, opportunities, like turning stones to bread. Imagine how many people you could feed if you could do that? And if Jesus chose, he could prove that God would save him if he jumped off a building. Who wouldn’t want to prove to a non-believer the power of God? And the pièce-deresistance, Jesus could rule Satan’s kingdom if he’d just worship Satan. Ah, to be the boss of the underworld, that’s a lot of power!

As Jesus was tested by temptations to use his gifts wrongly, we too will be tested, we are but human! Where we are seemingly the strongest, we have the potential to be the weakest. But Jesus used the power of God to resist, rather than give into the devil’s temptations. When we go to Jesus for strength in our times of weakness, we know that Jesus will be there for us, strong in the knowledge that Jesus understands our needs and our weaknesses because he’s been there and done that!

The next three weeks, we had incredibly descriptive and deep stories from John’s gospel; stories of light and darkness, of awareness and close-mindedness. First, we heard the story of the Pharisee Nicodemus. He came to Jesus hidden by the dark of night, which could mean two things: Nicodemus didn’t want people to know that he was going to Jesus, or it could also be John’s symbolic way of saying that Nicodemus was in the dark as to whom Jesus really was – or possibly both!

John’s gospel writing is full of symbolism and imagery.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a leader within the Jewish religious establishment. For him to go and seek Jesus out was to put himself at great personal risk. And yet, something in the signs and wonders that Jesus was performing was clearly speaking to Nicodemus, leading him to Jesus, calling him to act on the beginnings of the faith he was feeling as to who Jesus was –otherwise why would Nicodemus take the risk? Jesus performed miracles as a way to point to God, many of the wonders he did were things only God could do. He did so to reinforce to those who had eyes to see that he was the Son of God, their Messiah, the one who came to be their Redeemer.

Jesus challenged Nicodemus to some out-of-the-box thinking, challenging the interpretations of his years of learning and living as a teacher of the Jewish law. He told Nicodemus that he needed to be born “from above”; in other words, an awareness of the truth of who Christ is, and how that impacts one’s life. True faith does not come from following the rules, from just acting the right way, but faith comes to us from within us, and is born of the spirit. And so, our actions, our behaviours then are guided by our faith in Jesus, the Christ, and his ways. John uses this story to tell his readers that Jesus is “the Son of Man, (who) will be lifted up (so) that those who believe in him may have eternal life. (3.1415)

The following week, we read the thought-provoking story of Jesus deliberately going to Samaria and his meeting with the woman at the well, and all the implications of that meeting. This was a most unexpected stop for a Jewish rabbi and would have left readers of the time truly flabbergasted that Jesus would deliberately choose the route through Samaritan land! Samaritans and Jews were longheld rivals, since the fifth Century BCE. Jesus asked the woman for a drink, and then promised her water that will quench her thirst once and for all, living water Jesus called it. He reveals that he knows of her difficult personal life, and she

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Samaritans and Jews, a long-held source of rivalry. Jesus leads her

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