HELLO!

It was a very spiritual day at Woodlawn. We celebrated the life of Bob Watt at 2 pm. The church was packed with FOB, Friends of Bob. The energy in the sanctuary was full of grief and love. You could feel it. Please keep the family in your prayers. Here is the livestream link: https://u.pcloud.link/publink/show?code=XZfvct5Z3nRfsAc6GgVOOex8I3uQdyHJKGG7

Later, at 7 pm, 70 people sat around intimate tables to remember Jesus’ Last Supper as we shared together in a Maundy Thursday service. There was beautiful music, heartfelt stories of “home” and Holy Communion.

I may see some of you at St. Luke’s Anglican Church at 9 Veterans Ave at 130 pm for our annual Ecumenical Good Friday service (April 3^rd). It is a 90 minute service, with five local churches participating, including Woodlawn United Church. There are five reflections, from five local clergy (including mine) and a Mass Choir with participation from all five churches. For those who cannot be with us in person, you can access it via livestream https://youtube.com/live/lB6sl3MTnnw

I am reflecting on Good Friday using the book we have used as faith study text: The Last Week: What the Gospels Really Teach About Jesus's Final Days in Jerusalem written by Marcus Borg and John Dominic Crossan.

Jesus was not an unfortunate victim of the Roman Empire’s brutality. He was also a protagonist filled with passion. His message was about the kin-dom of God. He spoke to peasants as a voice of protest against the institutions of his day. He attracted a following, took his movement to Jerusalem at the season of Passover. He challenged the authorities with public acts and public debates. According to the Gospel of Mark, Jesus did not die for the sins of the world. The language of “substitutionary sacrifice” (atoning for our collective, historical sins) for sin is absent from his story. Jesus was killed because the sin of the world inflicts suffering on those who challenge injustice. The Roman Empire who killed him.

As Mark tells the story, Jesus was executed by the method used to execute violent insurrectionists. Was Jesus guilty of claiming to be the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed? Perhaps. Why perhaps and not a simple yes? Mark does not report Jesus taught this, and his account of Jesus’s response to the high priest’s question about this is ambiguous. Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus replies, “You say so”.

As Mark tells the story, was Jesus guilty of resistance to imperial Roman oppression and local collaboration? Mark’s story of Jesus’s final week is a sequence of public demonstrations against and confrontations with the Empire. It killed him. We pray for the way this story of discipleship, suffering and sacrifice speak to us, speaks through us, speaks in us.

Peace, Kevin