LENT BLOG SERIES: Preparing Jesus 

One way of approaching Lent is to see it as a preparation for ministry. In the next six weeks we will be exploring different aspects of how Jesus was prepared for the most important three years of ministry in history!

We will be looking at these aspects:

• In the beginning…
• In the line of David
• As was written in the scriptures
• Born a Jew
• Temptation
• Gathering – doing it together

1. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be…

How do you understand the trinity?

Do you understand the trinity?

What's the trinity?!!…..

Many hours, millions of words, gallons of coffee and just a little blood has been expended on these questions and there still isn't agreement.

This is one of the many questions that led me to say of doctrine classes at vicar college "2000 years of too many people having too much time on their hands!"

Sometimes the answer just needs to be "it's a mystery" (perhaps throwing hands in the air to show just how mysterious this is).

But that said, let me introduce one idea.

Perichoresis.

Wikipedia tells us the root of this Greek word "derived from the Greek peri, "around" and chōreō, "to go, or come". As a compound word, it refers primarily to "going around" or "encompassing", conveying the idea of "two sides of the same coin"

In the twelfth century St. Bernard of Clairvaux spoke of the Holy Spirit as the kiss of God. The Holy Spirit is not generated but proceeds from the love of the Father and the Son through an act of their unified will.

"If, as is properly understood, the Father is he who kisses, the Son he who is kissed, then it cannot be wrong to see in the kiss the Holy Spirit, for he is the imperturbable peace of the Father and the Son, their unshakable bond, their undivided love, their indivisible unity."

This indivisible unity means that we worship ONE God, in three persons. They are not three gods. Therefore, when we see the work of either the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit all three are in some mysterious way present for they are indivisible.

Still with me?..take a breath, there is more.

This means that when we talk of God, we also see Jesus as a witness and central character to that story. In this way Jesus does not burst on the scene for the first time in the nativity narratives in Matthew and Luke. He is on every page of the Bible - Old and New Testaments.

He was therefore preparing from the beginning……

We know this just by looking at Genesis and John 1. The both start with the words "In the beginning…". Genesis describes the creative work that is plural ("make them in our image" Genesis 1:26) and where the Spirit gets a look in as well as "God" , he is hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:2). But John's prologue takes it further and makes more explicit that "the Word" (ie Jesus) made all things, through him all things were made (John 1:3).

That's why we hear that he is " the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End " (Rev 22:13) So if Jesus is the eternal Son, begotten not made, that means he is on page 1 in chapter 1 all the way through to page 1251 and the last word of chapter 22 (in my 1984 NIV Bible that is!).

He is also in chapter 2. He walked in the garden with Adam and Eve and was part of that perfect first divine relationship with humanity. He saw them with no clothes and having no shame.

Ok, so far.

But,  that also means that Jesus saw the temptation, the desire to be like God and the rebellion by taking the forbidden fruit despite the stipulation not to. He saw the fall towards shame. He heard the denials and blame casting and saw the desperation as it dawned that perfection had been marred, had been thrown away. God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) passed judgement and threw them out. There was no way back, as the entry was closed up and guarded by "a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life." (Genesis 3:24)

Jesus knew all these things. He was a witness to all these things.

Being on every page thereafter he could see the righteous and those credited with righteousness through their faith, such as Abraham. He could see Moses faithfully taking on Pharaoh, receiving the law, leading his people and passing on the mantle to Joshua. He could see the rebellion and evil of the time of the Judges. He witnessed the faithfulness of the prophets and the disregard of the Kings to what they had to say. He saw the anguish of the exile and the faithful retrenchment of the return and restoration.

Between the testaments he saw the rise of Greece, Persia and Rome. He knew the faithful and the rebellious. He knew the cry of the zealots that "we are under oppression, death to Rome, death to Caesar". He knew that the people were waiting for a Messiah. He knew the law. He knew that he came to fulfil that law. For it came from him. The law he came to fulfil was the law of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) and the prophets spoke the words of God (Father, Son and Holy Spirit).

He was all these things.

And he was a man.

An incarnated God. Fully man and fully God at the same time.

Hoping that your brain hasn't yet given up. Time for another breather…

The Jesus we see is a mystery.

Fully prepared for what he was called to do. But vulnerable enough, in his humanity he holds in common with us,  to demur at the last moment, "Take this cup from me"

Yet all his preparation could only leave him with one answer "Yet not what I will, but what you will.'"

As we will see in the coming weeks there were other ways in which Jesus would be prepared for his ministry.

But we also know that he was prepared from the very beginning of time.

St Paul said "for all fall short of the glory of God". He knows, you know. From first-hand experience. He was there at the start. And he came to put it right. The whole person of Jesus – fully man and fully God – knew his mission "¹⁷ For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him." (John 3:17) We know this because he told Nicodemus.

He went to the cross as an eye witness to the very catastrophic failure that he came to rectify. How much of this he had in mind we cannot know, we are not told. But St Paul knew the significance of what had occurred "¹⁹ For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous." (Romans 5:19) and "²² For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." (1 Corinthians 15:22).

Jesus knew his calling and had been preparing for it from the beginning.

He tried to comfort them on the night before he died. ³³ 'I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.'(John 16:33).

From the beginning, he was prepared for his pivotal moment that was just about to come. He would die on the cross. And that would be the beginning of the end for sin, for death and for all the sorrow, tears, pain that was ushered in by that fateful decision to take the fruit that was forbidden.

All we are asked to do is believe , repent and obey.

May all this preparation not be in vain…..

Today is the day for you, or someone you know, to make that decision. You (or they) will never regret it.

Doug

Any questions about this or anything else contact me at vicar@christchurchpurley.org.uk


WHAT A DIFFERENCE A DAY MAKES…