Every weekday morning, barring illness or Bank Holidays, I drag my weary and protesting body out of bed, usually when it’s still dark outside, in order to go swimming. I usually swim for about an hour each day, managing 2km in that time: 80 long lengths, each measuring 25 metres.

It takes a fair amount of commitment to do this, day in, day out. And at some point in that hour, without fail, I will have the sort of internal dialogue that goes like this:
‘I can’t do this again./ Yes, you can./ No, it’s too much. It hurts. I want to stop./ Keep going. It will get better./ But my lungs are going to burst./ Don’t be stupid. You think that every morning!/ Yes, but it really hurts today. I want to stop./ Keep going. You can do it./ No, not today. I can’t./ Yes, you can. It will get better. You did it before. You can do it again./ No, it’s too much. I want to stop. I’ll never make 80 today. Why am I doing this, anyway?/ It helps keep your blood sugar and blood pressure under control. It’s good for you./ But it hurts so much./ Get on with it. You’ll survive.’

That internal conversation, pretty reminiscent of so many I hold with myself each day, can occur at any point in the hour. Sometimes it’s near the start, as I struggle to get into a rhythm. Sometimes it’s in the middle, as I feel I just can’t carry on. Sometimes it’s near the end when my limbs are tiring. But I’ve learnt that if you carry on swimming, moving the arms and legs and breathing steadily, no matter how bad you feel, you get there in the end. What really matters is the commitment to continue, the awareness that feelings are by no means a reliable guide to anything in this life. Some days, swimming is pure pleasure and I glide through the water effortlessly. Most days, it is work. Different factors affect how I feel about it: mood, tiredness, the water levels, the water temperature, the other swimmers, all kinds of things. But I’ve found that how I feel about it rarely affects the outcome. My times don’t often vary much, whether it feels good or bad. My blood sugars and blood pressure are helped by it, whether I feel virtuous or not. The key is attitude and perseverance.

Luke tells us ‘As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.’ (Luke 9:51) The NKJV translates ‘resolutely’ as ‘steadfastly’. There are echoes of Isaiah’s prophecy ‘For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.’ (Is 50:7) It can’t have been easy for Jesus to go to Jerusalem, knowing what awaited Him there. As we remember the battle He went through in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He wrestled with the desire to find an alternative method of salvation (and how often I wish there were an alternative method to keeping fit than exercise!), we are ultimately so grateful that He came to the place where He said “My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.” (Matt 26:42)

How did Jesus come to this place? How do we come to the place where we persevere, no matter how we feel? The answer has to lie in keeping the end goal in sight. For me with swimming, that means remembering the benefits of exercise to my health, when I would rather lie in bed and sleep. Hebrews 12:2 tells us ‘For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.‘ Jesus endured the cross, with all its agony and pain, because He knew the joy that would be His – and ours! – as a result of it. There was, therefore, for Him – and there must be for us too – no turning back.

This is my heart cry
Though none go with me
The cross before me
The world behind me

This is my anthem
My heart for Your fame
My every move bring
Glory to Your name (‘No Turning Back’, Chris Tomlin)
‘No Turning Back’, Chris Tomlin

This is a grammar lesson which, if you persevere, tells us a lot about prayer.

The verb is that part of a sentence which affirms action or state of being. Younger pupils define it as a ‘doing’ word.

Verbs have voices. Voice is ‘that property of the verbal idea which indicates how the subject is related to the action’ (Dana & Mantey, ‘A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament’ P 155). In English, we nowadays have two main verbal voices: the active and the passive. The active voice describes the subject as producing the action or representing the state expressed by the verbal idea: the dog barks, the cat miaows, the man ran, I am writing this blog post. It has various tenses to describe when the action is done (yesterday I blogged about the Family Service, tomorrow I will do something else, by Friday I will have written masses of lesson plans etc.)

The passive voice is that use of the verb which denotes the subject as receiving the action: the cat was chased by the dog, the lessonplans will be written.

But in Greek, there is another voice called ‘the middle voice’. Dana and Mantey say ‘it is impossible to describe it adequately or accurately in terms of English idiom, for English knows no approximate parallel’ (ibid, P 156). The middle voice is “that use of the verb which describes the subject as participating in the results of the action.” (Active – I counsel; passive – I am counselled; middle – I take counsel).

With me so far? I’ve known these grammar things for years, but today when reading ‘The Contemplative Pastor’, Eugene Peterson made a link between grammar and prayer which caused my eyes to widen in wonder. I apologise if this doesn’t have the same effect on you, but I do believe that we are able to learn spiritual truths from every aspect of life!

“In prayer, I do not control the action. That is a pagan concept of prayer, putting the gods to work by my incantations or rituals. I am not controlled by the action. That is a Hindu concept of prayer in which I slump passively into the impersonal and fated will of gods and goddesses. I enter into the action begun by another, my creating and saving Lord, and find myself participating in the results of the action. I neither do it, nor have it done to me; I will to participate in what is willed.” (Eugene Peterson, ‘The Contemplative Pastor’ P 103)

He goes on to say “Prayer and spirituality feature participating, the complex participation of God and the human, His will and our wills. We neither manipulate God (active voice) nor are we manipulated by God (passive voice). We are involved in the action and participate in its results but do not control or define it (middle voice.) Prayer takes place in the middle voice.” (ibid, P 104)

The relationship between our wills and God’s will in prayer is at the forefront of our thinking as we meditate on the Garden of Gethsemane as we prepare for Easter. We think about Jesus praying ‘not my will, but Yours be done’ (Luke 22:42). We don’t always understand how human free will and God’s sovereignty sit together. But maybe that’s because English has no ‘middle voice’. We think things either have to be active or passive; we don’t understand another way. But clearly there is another way: “At our human and Christian best we pray in the middle voice at the centre between active and passive, drawing from them as we have need and occasion, but always uniquely and artistically ourselves, ‘participating in the results of the action.’ ” (ibid, P 105).

During the family service, Tony & Gary organised a quiz about April Fools…

It was full of (16) difficult questions:

Being a French teacher meant I could at least say the traditions started in France and the French call April fools ‘un poisson d’avril’ (literally, April fish… in France, the tradition is to stick paper fish on people’s backs, catching them unawares!)
The answers to other questions:

Amazingly, my team won the quiz, scoring 11 out of 16 (most of which were lucky guesses!) and we each received a very appropriate prize:

At the family service last night, Mark spoke about being an April Fool or being a Lifetime fool. The Bible has a lot to say about being foolish. Matthew 7:13-29 reminds us of the importance of building our lives on the solid words of Jesus if we are to be wise people. A fool will build a house on sand, but the foundations aren’t solid enough to withstand storms. A house built on rock, however, will be strong enough to withstand storms.

The foolish man says in his heart that there is no God (Ps 14:1) and thinks that his ways are right (Prov 12:15). Man tries to live independently of God and does not think he has any need of God. If we are to avoid being lifetime fools, however, we need to understand that God is real and that He is calling us into a relationship with Him.

In 1 Cor 1:18-30 Paul shows us that God’s ways and wisdom are very different to ours. The message of the Cross sounds foolish to men, but it is the way of salvation. “For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor 1:25). We need to understand that ‘the power of paradox opens our eyes’ (Michael Card) and determine to be a fool for Christ.

Dave preached from Matt 21:1-11 this morning, a very familiar passage about Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In Luke 9, we read that Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem, determining to arrive there for the Jewish festival of the Passover, when Jews remembered God’s great deliverance from Egypt. Josephus, the historian, estimated that 250,000 lambs were sacrificed in Jerusalem each year; there must have been at least half a million visitors to the city, with every adult male living within 20 miles expected to go there for the festival and many more travelling much further to celebrate this festival. That year, the people were surely expecting another kind of deliverance…

Jesus’s triumphal entry, fulfilling the prophecy in Zechariah 9, was a clear sign of His identification as Messiah. Previously, He had urged those He had healed to keep His identity a secret, but now it is the time to reveal His identity and to enact a deliverance far greater than any previously experienced or expected.

What can we learn from this narrative?
(1) We must learn to trust in God’s timing.
Jesus was working to a divine timetable. He is control, even though He ulitmately appears to be the victim of plots and scheming throughout the week to come. None of this took Him, or His Father, by surprise. True disciples must learn to trust God’s heart and wait on His timing. Jesus’s triumphal entry stirred the whole city (the same word as used for earthquakes!), and when told to rebuke His disciples, Jesus retorted that if He did, even the rocks would cry out. The first ‘rock concert’, maybe?!

(2) We have to give Jesus our time, our talents and our possessions.
The unnamed man who lent Jesus his colt was the means Jesus chose to use to see prophecy fulfilled. What is the ‘little donkey’ that we can give Jesus? Whatever our talents, when we give them to Jesus, He is able to multiply their usefulness and achieve miracles through them. There is nothing and no one insignificant in God’s kingdom.

(3) We must love people as much as Jesus loves them.
When He reached the Mount of Olives, Jesus looked down over Jerusalem and wept (Luke 19:41). He loved the people so much and knew that they would not ultimately receive the deliverance God had planned for them. God is so much more than simply a benevolent, friendly force. He is love. We must be moved with real tears, as Jesus was. We must learn to weep with those who weep.

(4) We must learn that Jesus’s way is the way of the Cross.
Jesus was born to die, to be our Passover Lamb, in a particular way for a particular purpose. The crowds wanted a Messianic King, not a Saviour. They did not understand how salvation could come through death. They were obsessed with themselves. Self-interest is the way of the world. Self-denial is the way of Jesus (Luke 9:23). If we do not learn this, we will never ultimately see spiritual life, for it only comes through death.

Last night about 70 of us, many children who had attended the Easter Special earlier in the day, came to watch ‘Hop’, a film about the Easter bunny released last year (for a preview, you can view the trailer here trailer for ‘Hop’)

The film, released in 2011, tells the story of E.B., the Easter Bunny’s teenage son, who heads to Hollywood, determined to become a drummer in a rock ‘n’ roll band. In LA, he’s taken in by Fred, after the out-of-work slacker hits E.B. with his car. Both are sons who have disappointed their fathers and who are seeking to find their true destinies in life. For E.B., that means being a drummer, not necessarily the benevolent Easter bunny who delivers eggs to children around the world; for Fred, that means following his heart and becoming the co-Easter bunny! The film, involving both animation and actors, is heart-warming and full of humour, with Carlos the chick desperate to move up from his No. 2 role to take over as Easter Bunny himself.

Such a film may have little to do with the real meaning of Easter, but it acts as a bridge between the church and the community, showing people also that we can enjoy life and acting as a springboard to conversations about what Easter really means.

After the film, people enjoyed chip butties and yet more conversation!

Many thanks to all who helped in various ways, making this a really successful evening!