Our reading today is from the last chapter of the book of Ruth (Ruth 4:13-17). This Old Testament story not only gives us a glimpse into the lineage of David (and ultimately of Jesus), but shows us how God works His purposes out even through sorrow and sadness. Naomi, Ruth and Boaz all show us something of what it means to live an ordinary life of faith (something we often think is insignificant, but in truth is all God asks from each of us.) They remind us that our lives influence others and so ‘everything we say or do must echo God’s loving intentions for all humanity.’ (‘Sharing The Easter Story’, P 177)

This is a heart-warming story about human relationships and ‘going the extra mile’ for someone. So often, we think of showing God’s love in extravagant sacrifice as being the only acceptable way, but Jesus reminded His disciples that giving a cup of cold water to someone can earn a reward! (Matt 10:42) The book of Ruth shows us that ‘ordinary’ kindness and love go a long way. Who can we show kindness to today?

Romans 8:31-39 reminds us that nothing at all can separate us from God’s love. Paul lists plenty of adverse things in these verses (including trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword and even death), but God’s love triumphs over every adversity. “The love of God for each one of us shines like a star in the darkness. We must follow where it leads, regardless of the dangers and difficulties we face on the journey,” says Sally Welch (‘Sharing The Easter Story’, P 173) These verses are triumphant and confident, proclaiming not only Christ’s victory over death but our victory in Him (we are ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us.’) Because of Christ’s victory over death and sin, we can have hope that God’s love will be more than enough for us.

There may well be times when we feel separated from God’s love, but these verses remind us of solid truth on which we can stand at all times. If God is for us, nothing can be against us. If He is on our side, then we will be undefeated. Hope and reassurance ooze from these verses and give us the confidence to face an uncertain future with a smile on our faces and love in our hearts.

Today’s reading (Mark 10:17-22) looks at a rich man who came to Jesus wanting the answer to the question ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life?’ Once more, we see someone viewing a relationship with God on a transactional level and when Jesus challenges that view by asking him to give up his material possessions, he cannot bring himself to ‘cut loose all that binds him to earthly values in order to become truly free.’ (‘Sharing The Easter Story’, P 168)

On one level, this encounter shows us that we have to be prepared to let go of earthly ties, but one other aspect in Mark’s gospel shows us Jesus loving this man, even though he ultimately doesn’t reciprocate this love. Jesus looks at us and loves us too, even when we fail to be loving. ‘He looks into our hearts and sees our failures and our flaws, our efforts and our disasters, and he loves us.’ (‘Sharing The Easter Story’, P 169) That is tremendously encouraging and liberating news!

This week’s Lent theme is ‘Loving’, right at the heart of the Christian message, but possibly the hardest thing we find to do! God’s love is perfect, and we are to love as He loves: to extend our love beyond our families to those who may be unworthy in our eyes, to those who may actively hate us, to love without ceasing, regardless of the effort or cost involved!

Our reading today (Matt 5:43-48) leaves us, as Sally Welch puts it, quailing at the thought! We hear the words to ‘be perfect’ and give up at the thought of this, let alone at any attempt! But she goes on to offer the thought-provoking notion that Jesus is not so much commanding us to be perfect as promising us His perfection which opens the door to a new kind of living. This is not to pretend that loving others as Jesus wants us to is not difficult or costly. He wants much more than ‘fluffy, indiscriminate love.’ He wants incarnated love, love that can be seen and felt, love that is articulated. But knowing that we do not have to love in our own strength is a weight off our shoulders and helps us to realise that God’s love needs God in our lives if we are to see this manifested at all.

The proverb tells us ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.’ I’ve spent a lot of time this week baking cakes and quiches, and it struck me that you can’t really make anything with eggs without breaking them! Even boiled eggs, which are cooked in their shells, have to have those shells broken to access the egg inside. Any time we want to use the goodness of eggs, we have to break them. There is no goodness, no nutrition, no benefit to eggs which doesn’t involve brokenness.

We don’t much like to talk about brokenness, valuing strength, intactness and wholeness much more. But Easter reminds us that God chooses to use brokenness to mend brokenness.God chose to send His Son in obscurity, clothing Himself with human flesh, allowing Him to be born in a stable in Bethlehem, and then sealed our salvation through His death on a cross, and the lowliest form of death at that: crucifixion. Paul says we preach Christ crucified, which apparently didn’t make much sense to either Jews or non-Jews in his day and still doesn’t nowadays, but the truth is that ‘the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.’ (1 Cor 1:25)

God took up our pain; He bore our suffering. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. (Is 53:4-5) He was broken so that we could be made whole; as Isaiah goes on to say, ‘the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.’ (Is 53:5)

We might hope that Jesus being broken puts an end to all talk of brokenness now, but the truth is that we all have broken lives, and actually God seems to specialise in brokenness before there can be wholeness and restoration.Life has a habit of breaking us and we don’t see how we can serve God in this state. We want to be whole eggs. We want to be perfect people. But Paul says, ‘we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.’ (2 Cor 4:7) We have to be broken in order to become whole. The egg seems whole and perfect but is essentially useless without being broken. We too have to be prepared to bring our brokenness to God in order to be restored to that place of wholeness and completion which was His original purpose for us.

It doesn’t matter if we’re broken. We are still welcome in God’s presence. He still wants us. He doesn’t shun us because we are broken, the way we might throw away a broken toy as useless. He actually takes our brokenness and makes something beautiful from it: ‘You assemble all our broken, shattered pieces/ More beautiful than I had ever known.’ (‘Long Live The King’, Aaron Shust) Brokenness is no barrier to God. After all, ;a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.’ (Ps 51:17)

One of the things we are reminded of in the Bible is that it’s always time to choose God’s ways. 2 Cor 6:2 tells us ‘now is the time of God’s favour, now is the day of salvation.‘ We are so grateful that we have the opportunity still to choose to follow God and to be saved!

Sisters, brothers
Thieves and lovers
Come on, come on, eternity
Turn your faces
From finite places
Heaven’s grace has set you free.’ (‘The Time Is Now’, Phil Wickham)