We’ve come to the Mitford party about 20 years late. My wife and I recently started reading the super popular series, Mitford Years, and at three chapters in, I’m wondering to what degree I should be a pastor like Father Tim. (I’ve got the portly part down pat.)
If you remember the very start of the series, Father Tim was blessed by his fasting on Good Friday. Perhaps you’re blessed to be fasting today as we commemorate Jesus’s death.
Having most of us grown up knowing the “rest of the story,” it’s impossible for all but those with the best imaginations, to put ourselves the disciples’ shoes or in the mind of Mary on that fateful day.
The great experiment has reached it’s tragic and for some foregone conclusion: He was a fine, if too feisty, rabbi. As the Muslims would say down the road, a prophet worth reading and emulating, but no Messiah.
But even more difficult to comprehend is the magnitude, the pervasiveness of the difference that death was making. I don’t have space here to describe that impact. (I sometimes say that when I don’t really know how to describe something!) Paul’s words in Colossians 1.19-20 richly suffice, “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.”
Ah, how I want our Muslim cousins around the planet to know this. Peace has been made. Reconciliation accomplished. Fast and feast during Ramadan out of joyous devotion to God, but you need not offset your sin nor earn his favor.
The death the holy one died, he died for you, too.
PS: As Rev. Lockridge reminds us, Sunday is coming! I’d appreciate your prayers as I preach on Easter this Sunday for the first time ever!
