Tag Archives: Matthew 23

O Lord, such pain..

Leave a reply

Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken lies, and your tongue mutters wicked things.

No-one calls for justice; no-one pleads his case with integrity. They rely on empty arguments and speak lies; they conceive trouble and give birth to evil…Their deeds are evil deeds, and acts of violence are in their hands..

The way of peace they do not know; there is no justice in their paths. They have turned them into crooked roads; no-one who walks in them will know peace. So justice is far from us, and righteousness does not reach us. We look for light, but all is darkness:”

(Isa 591-4,6&8-9)

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’.”

(Matt 23.37-39)

O Lord, what bitterness and despair come upon us as we consider what is happening today in our world. Nation at war with nation; regimes scheming and manipulating the lives of millions for economic and political ends. Implacable hatreds being fed by rhetoric, biased re-tellings of history, entrenched positions which must be defended and therefore justified at any cost. 

The agony and the anger together scream at us through our phones’ newsfeed, our newspaper headlines, and we cannot blot them out. The intractable and utterly tangled webs of history continue to give birth to pain, cruelty, human brutality and all forms of violence and destruction. 

The narrative of history is made up of the lives of millions of individuals, each one precious and known to you. The great stories of nations are worked out in the details of my life and the lives of people like me around the world – the small, ordinary ones who never pretended to have authority or to understand the trajectories of power. It is the suffering of the small people which rips the guts out of us. We see ourselves in their faces as they search for loved ones under the rubble of bombed buildings; we see our children in the limp bodies carried from battlefields; we see our elders in the frail forms stumbling from pitiful shelter to shelter in an effort to escape the violence.

Fear and hatred are breeding fear and hatred, as they have always done and will continue to do until you return to bring an end to the pain and darkness… how long, O Lord, will it be? The roots of the troubles lie so far back in history, and are so overgrown with all that has happened through the intervening years – with all its partial truth-telling, and inadequately understood motivations – that in many places there seems no hope of any resolution which can bring peace and justice. Where is your perfect judgement, O Lord? Where is your healing peace?

For all those who today are immersed in conflict, violence and fear, who know you as Lord, and call upon Jesus as their saviour, I pray today. May they be given the courage they need to face whatever happens with faith in you. May they be given the moment-by-moment strength to live for you in their own situation, and to point others to their only hope – Jesus. May they shine as lights in the darkness, and testify to your presence. May they not fear death, since it will bring them home to you. May they be given courage as they watch loved ones suffer, and may their faith not fail.

For all those today who are in positions of power – to authorise or restrain violence; to advise for or against destruction; to act in mercy or to act in ruthlessness – I pray, O Lord. In your sovereignty, work out peace, justice and healing so that the suffering will be ended. May those in power be appalled at what they have let loose, and instead bend all their efforts toward peace, seeking to promote the well-being of their people without violence and with justice.

Lord, God of the nations, it is only by your power at work in human hearts that such things can come about. Of ourselves, we are hopeless and helpless to stem this tide of evil. Your people beg that you will have mercy, that your spirit might move to transform darkness to light and bring peace where there is no peace. Your arm, O Lord, is mighty to save; your heart is full of compassion; let us see your kingdom come! 

You just never know…

1 Reply

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him and afflicted…We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. By oppression and judgement he was taken away…

(Isa 53. 4,6-8)

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.”

(Matt 5.43-45)

Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas, the high priest, where the teachers of the law and the elders had assembled. But Peter followed him at a distance, right up to the courtyard of the high priest.. [they] were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death..Then the high priest stood up and said to Jesus, “Are you not going to answer?…” But Jesus remained silent. 

The high priest said to him, “I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God.”

“Yes, it is as you say,” Jesus replied. “But I say to all of you: In the future you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

Then the high priest tore his clothes and said, “He has spoken blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses?..What do you think?”  “He is worthy of death,” they answered.

(Matt 26. 57-59,62-66)

We are so accustomed to the stories told of the life and death of Jesus that it may never occur to us to wonder just how all this information became available to the gospel writers, but we should! Following through on that question takes us to some interesting places – like the context in which Mary, Jesus’ mother, would have shared the intimate details of his conception and birth, and all the struggles which she and Joseph faced at that time. Did Jesus learn this as he grew up, or did Mary share it only when he embarked upon his ministry?

This week, I have been reading Matthew’s account of Jesus’ arrest, trial and crucifixion, and found myself wondering just who it was in that council of the chief priests, teachers of the law and elders who later told the story of that dark night. It can’t have been Peter, whose own sad tale of betrayal took place outside in the yard – and that tale too must have been revealed to later writers, for our blessing and instruction by Peter himself. It must have been one of the council themselves; somewhere in that gathering of hostile and frightened men (and it would have been an entirely masculine gathering), there was a heart which was already tender and open to God’s leading; a heart which would in time confess Jesus as Messiah and embrace the truth of the gospel.

They were all steeped in the Hebrew scriptures, and perhaps for one or two the words from Isaiah that foretold the suffering of the perfect servant would come to mind as they watched this Galilean hold his tongue and refuse to defend himself. Jesus’ demeanor would have spoken so loudly and clearly to those who should have recognised him as their longed for Messiah, and it seems that for at least one of them (then or later), the evidence finally became too much to resist.

When we put this together with Jesus command to love and pray for those who persecute us, we have a powerful encouragement to never give up on those who seem most adamant in their opposition to the gospel.

We cannot tell which strident aetheist, or sceptical humanist; which campaigner for secularism or advocate for universalism might be under the hand of the holy and relentless God, whose love for them took his son to the cross to win their salvation. I think this is a very important lesson for us in these days of increasingly bitter hostility against the Christian faith around the world. Will I obey the command of Jesus to pray for those who hate what I believe and hate me for believing it? Will I follow his example so that my life speaks of the truth of the gospel, of a God whose love for the broken children of this world is so powerful, steadfast and passionate? The offer of salvation is made to all who will confess Jesus as Lord – am I pressing this offer on my ‘enemies’ in prayer?

Perhaps someone was praying for Saul the Pharisee, even as he held the coats of those who stoned Stephen…someone loved him well enough to intercede with God for this young man who was consumed with hatred for the Jesus movement..and how God answered that prayer! Lord, let me be faithful in this, that I might love my enemies as you love them.