PSA 04 March 2012

Ken Howcroft “Taking up your Cross and Following”. What on earth can we say about what is going on in Homs in Syria? It begins to feel like a situation without hope. All we can do is hold people before God and believe that somehow God will be able to redeem the mess, and bring hope out of despair and life out of death. That takes a lot of faith. Again and again when he did not know what to do or what was going to happen, Abraham hears the call of God to step out into an unknown future. That means that you cannot know or decide in advance what God will do. We have to be prepared to go along with God no matter what happens. That is what Peter has to learn when Jesus rebukes him for tempting Jesus to be God’s son but not in God’s way. Peter has to learn that it was both through the hardship of the crucifixion and the joy of the resurrection that God brought new things, new life, to the world through Jesus and through his followers. Today let us pray that we may have the courage and the trust to put our commitment in Jesus, the same sort of trust that Abraham had in God. A sermon for the second Sunday in Lent. The readings were Romans 4.13-25 and Mark 8.31-38.