Leading up to Easter as part of Lent Salvos For A More Inclusive Church have invited you and I to join them each week as they share a Lenten reflection.
Today I’ll be posting both the Good Friday & Easter Sunday reflections separately for you to use as a devotion, and to be reminded of the lengths that Jesus went to win our hearts.
Lenten Reflections 2021 (Easter Sunday)
Today we finish our series on the seven “I am …” statements of Jesus. Please welcome Captain Belinda Cassie (Australia) who is our guest presenter today. We’d also love to have you share your Easter reflection with us today as you respond to the question, “What does the Easter story mean to you as you share the inclusive love of God?”
Belinda writes. “Whosoever. It’s an interesting concept really, whosoever. If you’ve spent any time around churches or church folk you’ve heard it said over and over, in sermons, in readings, in songs. Usually with gusto. But I wonder sometimes how much we really mean it. Or does our whosoever really mean, whoever looks like me or speaks like me, whoever dresses like me and behaves like me, whoever believes as I do or loves like I do, or comes where I’m from?
John (John 11) tells us the story of one of Jesus’ friends Lazarus’ death and resurrection. There is a moment as the story unfolds in which Jesus comforts Martha, the sister of Lazarus. I like Martha, I kind of like to think I’m a bit like Martha myself. She’s been cut a fairly raw deal over the years, painted as the whingy woman from the kitchen, but I don’t think we’re telling Martha’s real story when we see her as such. Martha is the one who fronted Jesus when it seemed he arrived too late, four days too late , four days after her brother had died and she asked him why.Why were you late Jesus,
why weren’t you here when we needed you?
We’ve loved and supported you,
we’ve believed in you, so where were you?
why weren’t you here when we needed you?
We’ve loved and supported you,
we’ve believed in you, so where were you?
And I can’t help but think that if we were all completely honest with ourselves, we’ve all had those kind of moments. The moments when we want to ask Jesus why.
Why did that happen?
Why did I experience that?
Why did I experience that?
In the middle of my darkness where were you Jesus? Martha was just brave enough to ask the questions that we often don’t allow ourselves to. Jesus’ initial words fall a bit flat with our friend Martha. Jesus said, “Your brother will be raised up.” Martha replied, “I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time.” Basically, Martha, I imagine with a sigh, is saying ‘yeah, yeah, I know’. And Jesus replies, “You don’t have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live. And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all. Do you believe this?”
Other versions quote Jesus as saying ‘anyone’ or ‘whoever’. I like that. Because the thing that stands out to me is that there is no caveat. It’s that whosoever that we speak of. See the thing that I noticed about Jesus is that he never left anyone out. It’s almost as if he intentionally reached out to those that the religious folk of the day decided didn’t belong. The ones they would have kept out of the collective whosoever.
Today as we gather in churches or homes, as we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus the Christ we may well recall those words again, ‘I am the resurrection and the life – whoever believes in me will live’.No hoops to jump through, no boxes to tick, no rule book you have to follow, just an acceptance of the grace of God that means in Jesus we are each the whosoever, and we find life and a new beginning in him. It doesn’t matter what you might have heard elsewhere. Maybe someone told you that the way you live, look, or love leaves you out, and dear one I am sorry if someone spoke that over you, because that’s not from Jesus.
The Jesus I know, the crucified Christ, who defeated death and the grave, the one who rose again, did so that you and I and the whosoever would have life, and have it to the full. Here, and now, and for eternity.
Captain Belinda Cassie, Australia
But today there are some words from Gethsemane and the cross that remind us that Christ hears and remembers us. How often like the criminal in Luke 23:32-43 do we ask God to be included. “Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” and Jesus answers us each, “Truly I tell you, … you will be with me in paradise.”
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