Losing Life in order to Find It!

The Scriptures this week seem to challenging us to see (and trust) that the world as we know it, with all its brokenness and its inequalities, needs to be allowed to die in some form so that the new life of God’s desired way of being can emerge. 

Sentence:

“Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” Matthew 10:39

Collect:

Creator God, Life giving Redeemer, Spirit that brings new life to bear,

Grant us courage to trust that what you allow to be torn down

shall be built up by your good purposes again.

Help us to relinquish our pretence of control

that we might follow your lead into new fields of joy and mercy.

Renew in us the desire for a new creation

fit for all that you love here on this earth.

This we pray. Amen.

Reflections:

Our readings this week (Fourth Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 7 [12] Matthew 10:24-39) are disturbing, exciting, confronting, bewildering and leave no easy place to hide from the demanding nature of the gospel.

The pattern that does seem to run through the Scriptures is that of dying to what is now so that the God given future can emerge. This was never easy to hear and still is not easy or palatable to hear and understand.

It is very painful to read the story of Hagar and the child who Sarah does not want anywhere near her child. And at the literal level very hard to hear God instructing Abraham to do as Sarah demands. But if we allow the story to work at a deeper level who among us has not felt sent into the wilderness at some point in our life, possibly to perish, and then a well of life giving water has been revealed to us and a new direction opened?

You may like to read a previous reflection on this story.

Who Belongs

Or the story of the prophet Jeremiah who is tormented by the task given him to announce violence and destruction. If he obeys and speaks the words then his neighbours plot against him, if he refrains from speaking the words of warning given him he is tormented from within! Such a description of the perfect and painful experience that creates the crucible in which new life is refined from out of the dross of existing life.

And then the disturbing words of Jesus himself: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to this earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword!” Not words that many of us are comfortable with. There is the piercing of things, the opening up, slicing through, of old and ancient wounds that run through the human condition, that is necessary for healing, for truth telling, for truly becoming who God dreams us to be.

You may like to read another reflection on the gospel from a few years ago.

Not peace but a sword

Despite the message of dying into new life being at the heart of the gospel it is still very confronting to be reminded that we need to personally and collectively be ready to let old broken ways of doing and being to fall away and trust that God will be in what is emerging! Birth, life, death and new birth is the only way. God give us desire and strength.

Intercessions:

Creator God,

You have made all thing good

and yet everywhere we see destruction and desecration.

We pray that you would raise up courageous and wise leaders and servants

who will protect and heal the broken, rebuild and reimagine where there has been destruction.

We particularly pray for those places and people ravaged by war and poverty and natural disasters …

Equip your saints with minds and hearts that burn with hope for your purposes.

Creator God,

Hear our prayer.

Life giving Redeemer,

Come bind our wounds and ease our fears that we may open ourselves to you and your teachings.

Give us the courage to open doors and to protect those who enter in.

Give us voices to encourage and invite, advocate and affirm.

We particularly pray for those who are sent in your name to bring comfort and hope in situations of conflict and enmity …

Strengthen and embolden every agency of care,

Until all are under the banner of your love.

Life giving Redeemer,

Hear our prayer.

Spirit that brings new life to bear,

Be with us in our birthing of new ways of being followers of the law of Love;

Gift us with imaginations that see opportunities to grow even in hard places;

And plant joy in the hearts of your workers.

We particularly pray for those who are nearing their end, may they find trust in your eternal purposes so that they can relinquish their lives into your hands and find their way back to your holy and welcoming embrace.

And when our time comes may we too entrust ourselves to you.

Spirit that bears new life,

Hear our prayer.

Living God,

Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer,

Grant us faith to give ourselves to the process of new life. Amen. 

This is my work informed by all that I have heard, read and experienced. I am indebted to the wisdom of others.