We’ve had a busy day today, helping to plant flowers at Thurnscoe Flower Park and at Goldthorpe Railway Embankment. We’re grateful to all the families that came out to help and to the volunteers who work tirelessly at these venues all year round, helping to make our area beautiful.

We planted different perennials at Thurnscoe Flower Park and Japanese anemones at the Railway Embankment.

Having talked yesterday about the enormity of the resurrection and its fundamental power to change how we live, today’s reading seems almost mundane: John 13:2-7, 12-17 gives us an insight into servanthood which really does not look impressive. Jesus chose to wash His disciples’ feet. There is nothing grandiose about this task. There is nothing exciting about the ordinary act a servant would do in Middle Eastern countries. But this is how Jesus chose to set an example of what He wanted service to look like.

Being a servant is how we demonstrate the change God has brought to our lives.  Putting others first is not natural. We are taught to ‘look after number one’ from being born and greatness often seems to us to be about how many people we can bend to our will, about how rich or famous we may become. These are the changes we aspire to. Yet Jesus shows us in practical ways how to serve and names this as the true path to greatness.

As we serve others, we serve Jesus Himself. (Matt 25:34-40)

I grew up in a sports-mad household. My Dad took me to watch Barnsley F.C. from a young age and I accompanied him to watch Yorkshire County Cricket Club in the summer. Saturday afternoons, when not watching sport in person, were spent watching sport on TV: horse racing, rugby, athletics all framing my time; Sunday afternoons introduced me to F1 racing and skiing. Over time I learned about ice-skating, gymnastics, tennis, snooker and darts. There wasn’t a sport my Dad wouldn’t watch, and so I learned from him.

Through sport I learned geography (following England tours abroad with an atlas at my side, learning places in the UK through ‘away’ matches and associating these places with the names of football stadia or cricket grounds.) From sport, I learned the concept of ‘fair play‘, the dangers of being a ‘sore loser’ and graciousness (which was why I preferred the even-tempered Bjorn Borg to the volatile and rude John McEnroe.) I absorbed the truths of self-discipline, perseverance and teamwork all from watching sport. Many of my childhood memories are indelibly linked to sporting events: the promotion of Barnsley F.C. in 1979 and 1981, Virginia Wade’s Wimbledon victory in 1977, the 1980 Wimbledon final between Borg and McEnroe, the 1981 Headingley Test match.

Yet ironically, it’s an idiom from rugby, uttered by my non-sports-mad Mum which reverberates most often within me today. My Mum was a volatile, hot-tempered, fiery woman who had suffered a nervous breakdown in her early twenties. She rarely talked about this experience in later years, but would perhaps refer to it obliquely by saying, ‘You need to kick moods into touch.’ This reference to putting the ball out of play in rugby resonated with me, and as a typically moody teenager, I learned that ‘moods’ – how I was feeling at any particular time – were not the most reliable of friends and made poor arbiters of everyday life.

A good mood can be induced by a sunny day, pleasant company, a trip somewhere interesting, by a whole host of positive circumstances. Conversely, a bad mood can be induced by drizzle and overcast skies, having a long list of boring jobs to complete, being with cantankerous people, having to do things I don’t enjoy such as cleaning or ironing. Moods are notoriously fickle.

As I grew up, I learned that contentment, serenity and stability were available to me only if I refused to let moods define how I felt or dictate to me how I should behave. I learned that the best way to kick moods into touch was to praise God.

Praising God is a choice we make, irrespective of moods and how we feel. Eugene Peterson makes the wry observation that lifting our hands – as we are commanded to do in Psalm 134 – has nothing to do with feelings and everything to do with a simple motor action, determined by will.

So often, we defer praise and worship of God to the days when we are in a good mood (‘when the sun’s shining down on me and the world’s all as it should be’, as Matt Redman puts it in the song ‘Blessed Be Your Name.‘) But I think the acid test comes when we don’t ‘feel’ like it and still bless God (‘on the road marked with suffering, though there’s pain in the offering.’) When we refuse to let moods define us and dictate our actions, then we move towards true joy.

Over the years I have discovered songs that express these truths more eloquently and poetically than I can. Rend Collective’s ‘Truth North’ is one such song:

‘I will not let the darkness steal the joy within my soul
I will not let my circumstance become my compass, no
I will not let the fears of life and sorrows of this world
Dictate to me how I should feel
For You are my true north.

I will not let my failures turn into the curse of shame
I will not walk beneath the clouds that taunt me and condemn
For I will stand on solid ground the shadow of Your love
Forgiven, changed, a heart renamed
For You are my true north.’ (‘True North’, Rend Collective)

Moodiness – that temporary state of mind or feelilng usually associated with being irritable, sullen, sulky and angry – has no place in our lives. Moods do need kicking into touch as we determine to live not by what we feel but by the truth God’s word reveals. (‘East To West’, Casting Crowns)

The resurrection of Jesus Christ – one of the central tenets of the Christian faith – changes everything. Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 gives us the ‘normal’ time frame for our world: there are times and seasons for everything, including death. But the Easter story overturns this norm, teaching us that death does not have the final word. ‘Love and life are stronger than fear and death. We can expect to see those we’ve loved and lost again. God has a future in store for each and all of us. Anything is possible with God.’ (‘Sharing The Easter Story’, P 200)

Our faith has the potential to change our lives, how we live, and to change our communities too for the better. It’s not always easy to see this: we often feel inconsequential, as though our witness and our lifestyles are making no impact on our communities. But we are people who have been raised to life by Christ; once we were dead, but now we live! (Eph 2:4-6) This fundamental change of citizenship and focus has an enormous impact on those around us. The enormity of the resurrection needs to reverberate through our lives.

The theme of this final week of Lent readings is ‘Changing’. Change is part of the Christian’s life, for this life is about ongoing transformation into the image of Christ (Rom 8:29, 2 Cor 3:17-18). But change is rarely enthusiastically embraced by us all or even noticed, for the most part, once we reach adulthood.

Today’s reading (Isaiah 42:1-9) is part of the ‘Servant Songs’ in that book, showing us the nature of God’s Messiah. This servant will spurn no one but will ‘faithfully bring forth justice.’ Gentleness and compassion are seen in this servant, a refusal to countenance bullying or manipulative control. We see here that change can only come as we feel loved and secure. Power, status, material objects and worldly success are not the pathways to the kind of change God is looking to bring about in our lives,  but the work of peace and justice which Christ epitomises will effect long-lasting change in our lives and from there in our communities.

Jesus used other parables to describe the kingdom of God. In Matt 13:33, He likened it to yeast working its pervasive way through a batch of dough, causing the bread to rise. Yeast permeates everything and affects everything it comes into contact with.

We may well feel that our lives and our faith have little impact on the world. We are not evangelists preaching to thousands. We are not hugely influential people with millions of followers on social media, with people hanging on to our every word. But the truth is, every Christian is like yeast, and yeast has an impact far beyond its size. The very nature of yeast means that it works all through everything it meets; it infiltrates everything. Every Christian has the Holy Spirit dwelling within them, and therefore we have God’s very nature within us. As we allow His nature to influence us, to shape us, to mould us, to permeate us, we then begin to permeate everything around us. Jesus talked about us being salt and light (Matt 5:13-16), again using imagery to help us understand the pervasive nature of His kingdom.

The three parables about seeds and yeast remind us that:

1. God is working in our world all the time; He has not abandoned or forsaken us. There may well be delays which we don’t appreciate, but the natural world reminds us that there is a time for everything and a season for every activity under the sun. (Eccl 3:1) We can’t change that, no matter how much we try, so we may as well learn from it!
2. God’s work may well be unseen much of the time or look different to what we expect. He delights in turning our thinking upside-down and revolutionising our ways of doing things. There is great liberty and fun in ditching the world’s methodology and living in step with the Holy Spirit, because He brings forth great and mighty things from the smallest starts. If a mustard seed can turn into a mighty tree providing shade for the birds, if an acorn can turn into a mighty oak tree that lives for hundreds of years, what can He do with the tiny faith each one of us has?
3. God’s kingdom permeates everything, just as yeast does. Each one of us can be light and salt in our society; we can be yeast, changing the bread from the unleavened, flat consumable to something that is light and tasty and much more appetising!