Peter’s fearful denial contrasts with Jesus’ courageous truth-telling. Peter is close by and is trying to follow Jesus (trying not to run away and hide, like most of the other disciples do). But when questioned by a servant woman, guards, and a relative of the man he injured in the garden, Peter’s fear gets the better of him, and he lies about his identity and involvement.

Meanwhile, Jesus continues to speak honestly about himself and points out that he has been open and clear about everything from the beginning. While Jesus is struck for his honest words to those who hold power over him, Peter warms himself by the fire, seeking comfort.

In what ways do we feel torn between solidarity and self-protection these days, between the boldness of publicly standing up for our values and the impulse to hide?

How might we be experiencing the dissonance between risk and comfort?

In what ways might it feel particularly difficult to live out our discipleship today?

What rooster crows or wake up calls have we been hearing?

How might God be calling us to walk in the way of Jesus, in our current context?

This text uplifts the dissonance between knowing and not knowing. Jesus knows who he is and when his time is. The disciples will not understand yet. Jesus knows who will betray him. He asks, “Do you know what I have done for you?” and says, “Now that you know . . . ”

Do we know what Jesus has done for us? Maybe, somewhat. Probably not entirely. What might our not-knowing have to teach us? (If Socrates was right, perhaps the beginning of true wisdom is knowing we know nothing!) Still, we know enough to know that what Jesus offers in John 13:1–17 is radically loving. And perhaps that is enough to begin to do likewise:

We say, “You will never.”

We say, “I need more.”

Jesus says, “This is enough.”

Jesus says, “So you also must do.”

We begin Lent with an invitation to contemplate the reality of our human finitude.  In John 11,  Lazarus' sisters Mary and Martha lament like we might: "Lord, if you had been here...this wouldn't have happened."  Others whisper a question we might also ask: "Couldn't you have prevented this?"  These questions hold a familiar, deeply human grief:  the experience of an absence of God or Christ in a world of pain and suffering, where things are not as we want them to be.  Can we believe that in the dissonance between how things should be and how they are, God might be at the work of transformation, opening us to the possibilities of resurrection?

One man came to the Temple to build a future; another came to save a legacy. When the tables are overturned and the courts fall into chaos, a merchant faces ruin while a poor father faces despair. But amidst the wreckage, a quiet act of grace from a stranger reveals that some offerings can’t be bought with silver. Discover a story of what remains when the walls of tradition are stripped away.

In our passage today, Jesus performs the well-known miracle of transforming water into wine.  Not one to leave a symbol untouched, there are layers of symbols in this passage.

This miracle takes place at a wedding feast, perhaps paralleling the great feast mentioned in Isaiah atop God’s mountain.  He transforms the water normally used for cleansing in the Jewish purity rituals into something consumed for jubilation; perhaps symbolizing the transformation of traditions?  The miraculous wine is also the best, perhaps symbolizing the goodness of God’s kingdom.  The amount of water that is transformed is also excessive.  While many of us have grown up with the adage “Everything in moderation,”  There are many excesses in this passage, as it is with Jesus, as it may be in God’s kingdom.

This week, we will taste, sip, savour, and mull over this rich and full-bodied vintage shared by Jesus.

This Sunday is our memorial Sunday, Eternity Sunday.  The time of year when we pause and remember all who have passed away in the last year.  It is an important time for us to remember both our mortality and to be reassured of Jesus’ promise of eternal life.

The text chosen for this year is the story of Lazarus’ death and his subsequent resurrection.  Which picks up on those two themes, one we are all mortal and death comes for us at some point.  And, second, Jesus’ miracle of raising the, very, dead Lazarus from the grave, reminds us, and points us towards the promise of God’s Dream, where death is not an enemy, for it has been defeated.

Many have leaned on this passage as a reminder of Jesus’ presence, care and compassion when we endure the sting of death.  Jesus weeps with us. This passage is also highly personal, revealing a side of Jesus we often don’t see in scripture.  Jesus has a close relationship with Lazarus, so much so that, upon facing the reality of Lazarus’ death, Jesus weeps with grief.  This reflects the depth of Jesus’ care and compassion.  

We are reminded this week that death is a part of life, that in God’s Dream, death has been defanged, and that we do not face death alone, that in facing and revisiting death, Jesus is present and with us.

With all the injustice around us, one would be forgiven for wishing that God would do something in some grand show of power.  We would be forgiven for sitting with Elijah in a cave of despair, waiting for God’s grand entrance.  And we would be forgiven for presuming God’s silence in the face of injustice is ambivalence.

We have been trained by culture to expect spectacle.  Grand expressions of power.  And in our desire for spectacle, we’ve chosen entertainment over substance.  Headlines over journalism, show over leadership.  So what then do we make of God’s silence in this passage?

God’s silence in this passage isn’t inattentiveness; rather, it’s the opposite.  It’s in this silence that Elijah’s attention is captured.  Intuitively, Elijah knows, in this moment of silence, God will appear.

Like the freezing and thawing water that cracks boulders, like the steady, slow movement of glaciers which carve out mountains, or the invisible, slow growth of tree roots underground, that over time crack sidewalks, lift foundations, and stabilize entire ecosystems.  God’s silence is not inattentiveness.

God continues to be present and is acting, in quiet ways and in dramatic ways.  Even if we feel that nothing is happening, God is still up to something. Sometimes the most important things happen after a time of silence.

These early scriptures, as challenging as they may be, paint us a picture of how the early Hebrew people perceived God.  And in some cases, it reveals more about the early Hebrews than it does about God.  As we’ve traversed this story, we see how the God of the Hebrews differs from the other gods of the time.

In our creation story, we hear a story of a God who created.  In the story of the Binding of Isaac, we hear a story of how God does not desire child sacrifice.  In the story of Jacob and Esau, we hear a story of God who makes (and keeps) promises.

This week, our God gets a name, YHWH, the great ‘I am.’  And we hear more about what God has in mind for the Hebrews.  God has heard their cry, and God plans to liberate and deliver them to a place just for them.

Admittedly, reading this last part through 21st-century ears, it’s hard not to feel a bit uncomfortable, especially with the foreshadowing of the Hebrew occupation and colonization of unseeded lands.  And I suppose, that’s part of the challenge with reading the Old Testament, recognizing that 21st Century norms weren’t the norms then, and every story has a bias, with the Old Testament written with a bias which favours the Hebrew people, God’s people.

This said, I believe the story is more about God and who God is than the Hebrew people or their experience of God.  In this story, God provides an identity, something for the people to latch on to.  God also demonstrates the lengths God will go to see those people free.

This is a tough passage.  As a parent of a young child, I can barely conceive of God asking this of me.  So what are we to do with this passage?  I take a certain degree of comfort in knowing that we are not the first people to be troubled by this passage.  We are not the first people to wrestle with the meaning of this story and why it’s included in our scripture. 

From the beginning, we, the readers, are let into a little secret, that this is all a test.  But why is God testing Abraham?  And why is God testing Abraham in this way? For most of the narrative surrounding Abraham up to this point, was first that God will lead him to be the patriarch of many peoples, and second that Abraham, even in his aged state, will father a son.  So why is God so interested in taking this promised child away?

Perhaps this story isn't the story of a child sacrifice, perhaps it's about something else...