Sunday 2nd March 2025 – Sunday before Lent

We seem to like to leave permanent markers of our presence. Go to the top of a mountain and there you’ll find a cairn.

At either end of a long-distance walk there’ll be a pile of stones.

Sometimes we mark significant, holy places – an emergent natural spring; burials in the form of long barrows; sites of martyrdom; holy appearances, such as at Walsingham.

Permanent structures, shrines to a past event.

On the Mount of Transfiguration, Peter wanted to put up ‘shelters’ for Moses, Elijah and Jesus. Permanent markers, shrines to a holy appearance. It’s as if he wanted to freeze that moment in time.

But before he could go any further with his plan, Moses and Elijah have left, leaving Jesus. Jesus cannot be constrained, we cannot tie Him down.

Jethro Tull, a ‘70’s folk rock band, sang:

‘People, what have you done locked Him in His golden cage. Made Him bend to your religion Him resurrected from the grave.’

Are we in danger of trying to constrain Jesus, to freeze Him in time and place, to bind Him into our own particular church or world view? Or are we prepared to allow Him to move freely in the world, in our communities, in our churches, in our lives.

But we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own;

and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own.

If our love were but more simple, we should take Him at His word; and our lives would be all gladness in the joy of Christ our Lord .

Rev Phil