Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 1

Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John

By Rev Dr Ockert Meyer Lecturer in Preaching, Worship and Theology at United Theological College

Holy Week Reflections 2020

Holy Week Reflections 2020

Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John

As you read through each passage from the Bible, listen to ARVO PÄRT : Spiegel im Spiegel ( Cello + Piano ) - Malter /Schwalke and allow the first few minutes of music to silence and centre you and then let it play in the background while you read and pray. Do this with each

reading and reflection every day to centre your thinking.

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 3

Monday Read John 12:1-11

James Tissot: Mary-Magdalene’s-Box-of-Very-Precious-Ointment (1894)

REFLECTION

As far as I can remember, this will be the first Easter Weekend when I will not be in church. The same will be true for many other Christians in Australia and around the world.

The question is: how can we still be the church, if we cannot be in a church? How can we celebrate if we can’t be together?

But more to the point as far as Holy Week is concerned: How can we immerse ourselves in the story of Jesus’ fears and passion at a time when everyone seems to be consumed by their own fears and the fears about their own circumstances?

Chapter 12 of John’s Gospel marks the end of Jesus’ public ministry and the beginning of this passion. That is why this reading is the reading on Monday of Holy Week. The end of this era is described by the Gospel writer in two symbolic actions that are set in the context of two meals: the anointing of Jesus’ feet at the meal in Bethany and the foot washing at the Passover meal in Jerusalem.

The first of these two is Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet at the meal in Bethany. We are not given insight as to why Mary is doing this, but the presence of her brother Lazarus at the table might provide us with a hint: it is just after Jesus had brought Lazarus back from the dead. So perhaps this is the way that Mary shows her gratitude to Jesus for bringing her brother back into their lives.

We have read this story so many times that we often

forget how traumatic the death of their brother must have been for Martha and Mary. The (anonymous) painting above beautifully captures the emotion that Mary is pouring out together with the costly perfume. Tissot’s work (the other painting) focuses less on Mary’s own emotions; rather it focuses on her humility, shown here by the way she wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair. Tissot was a French painter that lived in London when he met the love of his life, Kathleen Newton. However, only six years later Kathleen died at the age of 28 of TB. Tissot was devastated and never quite recovered from this. He spent the rest of his life painting mostly religious art.

John’s Gospel mentions that Lazarus was present at the meal and one could very well imagine that he is the one reclining next to Jesus (to his right). One can see the surprise on the faces of most of the dinner guests, with Martha (on the right half behind the pillar) clearly not happy. The person on Jesus’ left is Judas. He is not portrayed as shocked, but somewhat troubled, perturbed and thinking: what a waste!

Most of the early readers would have been able to understand Mary’s actions as a display of devotion. Culturally people washed and anointed their own feet. When guests arrived at someone’s home, especially after a journey, the host usually provided a basin and water for the guests to wash their own feet before sharing the meal. (See Gen18:4)

The same practice is attested to in other biblical texts and Greco-Roman sources. A slave was virtually the only one who could be expected to wash and anoint the feet of another person.

The ointment Mary used was very expensive; it was made from pure nard, an imported aromatic herb, and its value was estimated to be 300 denarii; a sum that would’ve taken a labourer 10 months to earn. Since there is no indication that Mary belonged to the wealthier classes, it is clear that the ointment must have been a major expenditure.

In more than one way Mary’s act of anointing Jesus’ feet foreshadows what is to come. On the one hand anointment was something associated with the embalmment of a corpse. On the other hand, Mary’s gift is extremely costly. As a symbolic action her anointing of Jesus’ feet becomes a hint, a sign of Jesus’ sacrificial death.

This year we commence Holy Week 2020 with the unusually deep awareness of the reality of death. As I write this the death toll of the corona virus stands

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 4

globally approached 40 000. The anxiety around us is palpable. As things stand now our Easter weekend will only be the beginning of this new reality rather than the approaching end. All indications are that we’ll be in this for many months rather than a few weeks.

And again: where do we find God in all of this? How do we approach God in all of this?

These are some of the questions that kept Dietrich Bonhoeffer occupied in his time in prison; isolated from his family and loved ones.

He addresses these questions in a short but poignant poem called ‘Christians and Pagans’. In the first verse he says that all of us – Christians and non-Christians – look for God in times of need. Non-Christians (‘pagans’ in Bonhoeffer’s language) are no different from Christians in this respect; even if the ‘gods’ are only the ones that could be invoked through their OMG’s). However, the ‘god’ we find here, is only the God of the gaps; the One whom we can summon to be at our disposal, our good-luck totem in our times of need.

What distinguishes Christians from non-Christians is not that we go to God in our need (that is what everyone else also does); we stand by God in God’s need. Some turn to God in God’s need and dread. These some are the Christians. And God’s need we find in the helplessness and powerless of the poor, grieving and oppressed. This is the exact reversal of what the ‘religious’ person expects from God.

“The God of the bible is to be found on the cross, in the incognito of his weakness and not in the apparent strength of human ideas and social developments. God in not to be found in the crusades or the Utopias and in the first, second and third empires of the conquerors, nor in the glorious heroes or the shining examples of sainthood. God is not the culmination of our ideals and the sum of all power; God really is other, and therefore is weak in this world. God suffers for it, and redeems it through suffering.”

This is how the church becomes church; when it exists for others; when it shares the suffering of the vulnerable, when it “learns to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated…in short from the perspective of those who suffer.”

So perhaps, in answer to our question: on this first day of Holy Week, let us not ask, where is God for us, but rather: where are we for God?

In this week, in this time ahead, let us keep that question at the forefront of our minds: where do we

find God? Where can we look out for God? Where is it that God needs us?

Tuesday Read John 12:20-36

Matthias Grünewald: The Crucifixion (detail) (1512-1516)

REFLECTION

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

Here this is the request of the Greeks who approached Phillip. No indication is provided by the text as to why they wanted to see him. But it is easy to surmise that they must have heard about the things he has done and now they wanted to see for themselves who this man is. However, from Jesus’ response one also senses that their request is about more than simply to see what his face or his appearance is like.

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 5

Their ‘seeing’ is a kind of ‘testing’. They want to ‘see’ whether he lives up to the talk about him.

The talk of the town was most likely about another prophet or messianic figure, of which quite a few appeared during the first century. From Jesus’ response, it is clear that his understanding of glory and their understanding of fame are in no way similar. “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

Those who want to ‘see’ Jesus, will likely be surprised at what he ‘looks’ like. And they might be even more surprised at where they find him.

Characteristic of all early century depictions of Jesus in art was that he was always clothed in glory. During the first ten centuries there are hardly any paintings of Jesus on the cross. And even when they did appear in the subsequent centuries, most of these had a sublime aura around them. In most of the paintings he looks at peace. There’s almost a kind of serenity about the crucifixion scene.

It is in the context of this that we should look at Grünewald’s depiction of Jesus. “The Crucifixion” as shown above is part of the Isenheim Alterpiece that was commissioned by a hospital order, the Antonites, in the early sixteenth century. At this point in time, most of their work would have consisted of caring for patients that were afflicted with a terribly painful skin disease, often referred to as ‘St Anthony’s fire’. The disease, among others, caused open wounds, painful seizures and spasms. Most people who were admitted to the Antonite hospitals knew that they would most likely die there.

The German artist, Matthias Grünewald, was invited by the Antonites to create an altarpiece for the their hospital chapel. The idea was that this work would help people meditate on the sufferings of Christ to help them cope with their own suffering.

There are very few other paintings that capture the brutality of a crucified death in the way that Grünewald’s does. Every detail of the painting seems to accentuate a sense of agony. But most important: Christ is depicted bearing exactly the same marks as the people who were in the monastery hospital. This is clearly seen on the enlarged detail.

On the right, John the Baptist is pointing at Christ

and saying: “Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui” (“He must become greater, I must become less”, John 3:30).

The cross in the middle and the crucified figure of Jesus dominates the entire painting. He is painted much larger than the other figures around the cross. Look at the size of his hands and especially the way his mangled fingers contrast with those of the others around him. The weight of his body and suffering hangs heavily on the crossbeam.

Mary, Jesus’ mother on the left of the painting is dressed in the same clothes of the hospital nuns. The apostle John comforts her. In the front of the picture, Mary Magdalene is kneeling and at her side is the ointment she would use to anoint his dead body. Somehow, almost everyone in the picture points to Jesus, some in anguish, some in prayer, their actions concentrated in the pointing finger of John the Baptist: ‘See, the Lamb of God.’

“Sir, we want to see Jesus.”

Yet the truth of God is seldom something we really want to see, even if that is what we claim. For in the scars of the man on the cross we see our own scars, the scars of the world. When we look at the cross to see Jesus, we are not looking away from the world; quite the opposite: we are looking at the heart of the world, to see what it is really like.

Holy Week is a journey deeper into life, in the heart of God and exactly therefore into the heart of the world. And it is in entering into this journey into the reality of the world’s suffering, that we see the face of Jesus. And it is in the face of anguished Jesus where we see the fear of the world.

However, this is not as easy as it may sound because we live in a culture and a world (as Kierkegaard already suggested) that assume that Jesus could be seen by simply looking. In a world that thinks about ‘religion’ or Christianity as a set of beliefs whereby we can attain something ‘spiritual’ in addition to all the other good things we already have. But it is not and never has been so easy to see Jesus. He doesn’t come to us as the answer to all our questions. Sometimes he comes as the question to all our answers. In the John’s Gospel Jesus often refuses to answer people’s questions, in a very similar fashion as he responds here to the request of the Greeks to see him.

In fact, the best places where we might see him often are exactly the places and people where we didn’t expect to see him. Reflecting on the people he had the

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 6

good fortune of meeting during his time as Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, says:

“The parents who have lost a child to gang violence; the wife who has seen her husband killed in front of her by an anti-Christian mob in India; the woman who has struggled for years to comprehend and accept the rape and murder of her sister; the Israeli and Palestinian friends who have been brought together by the fact that they have lost family members in the conflict and injustice that still racks the Holy Land - these are all specific people that I had the privilege of meeting when I was archbishop. And in their willingness to explore the new humanity of forgiveness and rebuilding relations - without for a moment making light of their own or other people’s nightmare suffering, or trying to explain it away - these are the ones who make us see, who oblige us to turn aside and look at Jesus, who asks of us initially just to stop and reflect, to stay for a moment in the light that allows us to see ourselves honestly and to see the world differently.”

Perhaps, just perhaps, during this time of isolation, of uncertainty we might stop long enough to really reflect, to look at ourselves and the world around us and exclaim with surprise: Lord, we have seen Jesus.

WednesdayRead John 13:21-32

Ben Willikens: Abendmahl (Last Supper) (1976-1979)

Paul Rubens: The last Supper (1630-1631)

REFLECTION

One does not often notice how different John’s version of the Last Supper is. All three the other Gospel writers talk about the preparation for the meal, about the institution, about the eating and almost as an afterthought about Judas’ betrayal. In John there’s nothing about the preparation, nothing about the institution; all the emphasis is on the one who will betray him. What is almost more disturbing are the words of verse 27: “After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him.”

Right from the beginning of John’s Gospel there seems

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 7

to be a suspicion about Judas. When he is introduced, he is called ‘a devil’. (6:70) But this ‘devil’ is not the incarnation of evil. John also takes a lot of effort to humanise him. He is a person with a human father whose name was Simon. John mentions that he was the one who kept the common purse, but also that he had his hand in the money jar. (12:6; 13:29) But none of these actions are described as evil, merely as part of his human nature.

In the second place, Judas, in spite of the fact that he was personally chosen by Jesus (exactly like the other disciples), seems keen to associate with a circle of Jesus’ enemies. Most dramatically, in Gethsemane, when Jesus was taken away by the soldiers, John points out that Judas “was standing with them”. (18:5)

At the very best he is described as a person with dual loyalties and increasingly the tendency to yield to the power of evil. This becomes complete in this passage: after Jesus gave him the bread, Satan entered into him.

The Gospel never speculates about the origin of evil, but merely how God uses the most unholy impulses, even evil itself as a way to fulfil God’s purposes. In spite of this Judas is not portrayed as a helpless tool in the game between God and the powers of evil, but as a person who fails to heed the warning already issued to Cain right at the beginning of Genesis: “Sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Gen 4:7)

New Testament scholar, Craig Koester, rightly observes: “As the story unfolds, Judas is a devil, but Jesus chooses him along with the other disciples (6:70); the devil puts betrayal into Judas’ heart, yet Jesus washes his feet (13:1-11). Jesus gives Judas a piece of bread, only to have Satan enter; so Jesus gives the betrayer permission to leave (13:26-30). Rather than causing the evil, Christ meets evil with gracious actions, finally turning the evil towards God’s saving ends.” (‘Symbolism in the fourth Gospel: Meaning, mystery, communion’, p75)

As we draw ever closer to Good Friday these aspects of the Passion story are very important. The events that led to Jesus being crucified on the Friday afternoon, is the culmination of a complex set of circumstances, people and historical events. But at the heart of it, is our inability to master the evil that is lurking at the door.

However, God neither proverbially washes God’s hands (as Pilate has done) in the face of this, nor does God circumvent this. Instead, the entire structure of our

humanity and the plight of our humanity are weaved into the events of Easter. We are not only part of the problem; we also become part of the solution. Not ‘part’ in the sense of an active contributor, but ‘part’ in the sense of an active respondent.

Therefore the Passion Story is a perpetual challenge. It never leaves us undisturbed. It never leaves us indifferent. One could never be a neutral observer to it.

This involvement is strikingly captured by both paintings, in two very different ways. The second painting by Rubens depicts the group of disciples as perplexed and perhaps even shocked by Jesus’ revelation that one of them will betray him.

All the disciples are taken aback by Jesus’ announcement; all look at Jesus in expectation of an answer – all but Judas. He looks away – he knows the answer. He looks a bit worried; as if he doesn’t want to be there or as if he is not feeling part of the group or perhaps contemplating to or about to leave. His eyes are big; like someone who has been shocked. He looks directly at the viewer; not seeking Jesus’ verdict but ours.

He represents the one who is part of the group, but only in appearance. His heart is somewhere else. That is where all betrayal starts.

The second painting is entirely unique in the wide-ranging collection of pictorial depictions of the Last Supper. It was created by the German artist, Ben Willikens. But it speaks most dramatically and most directly into our current context: the Easter weekend when almost all communion tables in the world will be empty – perhaps for the first time ever. Here our involvement is not the involvement of presence but the involvement of absence.

Willekens created this work, not with any virus or disease in mind, yet there is something hauntingly prophetic about it. Both the feet of the table as well as clinically white linen remind us of hospital beds. The table and the surrounds are clearly a reference to Da Vinci’s famous setting of the Last Supper. But instead of communion we have isolation. So much so, that Christoph Vitali could describe it as a work of ‘breathtaking isolation”.

When Willekens painted this work he was in his mid thirties and in a very dark place in his life. He had lost his job; he was angry and was without hope. He regarded the seventies as an era of broken promises: both the promise of Christianity but also the promise of the Enlightenment. Neither could help him in his need.

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 8

Hans Schwebel, professor of theology at the University of Marburg, describes the painting as ‘an ode to emptiness’. In his interpretation the painting evokes something of the cultural malaise of a post-Christian era in the European community and the clinical white space evokes the idea of a laboratory rather than a dining room.

Yet and fascinatingly enough, prof Schwebel also points out that the three windows with the dazzling white light from the back, recall something of the Trinity and the infinite eternity of God.

But most moving, he reckons, the complete emptiness and the white linen could remind us of something entirely different: the white linen in the empty grave.

Perhaps that is our real challenge this Easter: to see, perhaps for the first time, how an empty table could become the most eloquent and powerful witness to an empty grave.

Maundy Thursday Read John 13:1-17; 31b-35

Tintoretto: Jesus washes his disciples’ feet (1548-1549)

Giovanni Stefano Danedi: Christ washing the feet of his disciples (late

1600’s)

REFLECTION

It is John’s introduction to this event that I find utterly moving:

“And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet…”

In other words, at the moment that he knew he had received both the presence as well as the power of God, thát was the moment he got up from the table. And listen carefully how John creates suspense and tension by stacking up the detail of what follows: He got up from the table… took off his outer robe… tied a towel around himself… then poured water into a basin…and at that point every reader would have wondered: what next?

What next? And then he began to wash the disciples’ feet.

His momentary vision of glory and power enabled a radical and dramatic act of service.

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 9

There are a few things in the Greek text that emphasises this. To give one example: Instead of saying that Jesus “took off” and “put on” his robe, the text says Jesus “laid down” and “took up” his robe, using the same words that referred to him laying down and taking up his life. (10:17-18; 13:4, 12). Unfortunately this seems to have been translated away in most modern English translations.

The focus here is on the act of serving, literally Jesus waiting on the disciples. Very closely linked in the passage, with the act of serving, is also Jesus’ death. To characterize the passion and death as service is not peculiar to John. In the early church one of the most significant interpretations of Jesus’ persecution and death consisted in identifying him with Isaiah’s suffering Servant. So, in the foot washing Jesus is presented as servant and symbolically characterizes his impending suffering and death as a work of service.

Perhaps the true meaning of Jesus’ action becomes apparent in Peter’s indignation. The way the Greek text places the pronouns, gives two important clues.

First, Peter was not merely objecting to having his feet washed by another, but objected specifically to the reversal of service roles between himself and Jesus: “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

Second, his protest was not simply an embarrassed objection but a categorical refusal to accept what this reversal of roles implied: “By no means, never will you wash my feet”. Literally it says “unto eternity”.

Both the two painting are attempts to capture something of this moment. Tintoretto’s painting is unusual in the sense that the main characters in the painting are on the far right side (and not in the centre). The reason for this lies in the fact that it was hung in a space where one would have approached it from the right side. To appreciate it, one has to almost go and stand there and allow your gaze to take you from there (from the right) into the room.

Starting from the right you will see the upright person of Peter, still trying to prevent Jesus from washing his feet. At his side is the young John, pouring water into the basin. Jesus is kneeling in front of him. Most of the other disciples are in the process of taking off their shoes. Right in the front of the picture is a dog – a common figure in most paintings of the time. A dog often depicts the presence of faith or humility or both.

If you allow your gaze to travel from right to left and follow the natural path of the room leading out through the open arch, you will find Judas. He is the figure

standing under the arch, not quite outside, but also not quite inside; in that impossible position of trying to serve two masters.

Danedi’s work, interestingly enough, places both Jesus and Peter slightly off-centre. Right in the middle, but in the distance, is someone preparing the table for the Last Supper. So the foot washing becomes part of the meal. Again, the emphasis is on Peter’s response to Jesus’ act: “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

There are more people than only the disciples in the room here. Among others, two women and a child. But if one counts the men, you can clearly see the faces of eleven of them. The ones at the front are in the process of taking off their shoes. The twelfth one is at the back on the right and his face is almost completely covered in darkness: Judas.

The foot washing is the last act of service that Jesus did for the disciples during his earthly life. This act summarises his entire life. It was a parable of the ‘humiliation of the Son of God’ and as such it represents and foreshadows the cleansing by his blood that lies ahead on Good Friday. John says that this was a sign to them that Jesus loved them right to the end. But it was also a sign of something even more important, a sign of a reciprocal kind of love that should characterise their relationships with one another: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

This is the kind of love that has to do with endings: it comes from the end. It resembles the end. It’s a foretaste of the end. Not so much the end of the world, but the end of an old world and the beginning of a new world. Such love always carries a risk: the risk of losing your life in order that you might gain it. The risk of having to choose between two masters. The risk of serving a Lord that challenges all other Lords.

South African author, Alan Paton, in his novel Ah, but your land is beautiful recalls such an event that took place a few years after the introduction of apartheid. During this time an Afrikaner judge, Jan Christiaan Olivier, who was also the acting chief justice received an invitation from Reverend Isaiah Buti, a pastor from the black township of Bochabela to come and visit his church during Holy Week. Reverend Buti explained to the eminent judge that this invitation was in the service of reconciliation and an attempt to demonstrate that love is never rejected. He also explained that since this was a Maundy Thursday service, the custom was that a few people from the congregation would be invited to

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 10

have their feet washed by other members. He himself would wash the feet of mrs Hannah Mofokeng, who was the oldest inhabitant of Bochabela.

So that Maundy Thursday evening the judge went to the service and by doing so put his entire career in jeopardy. As promised, there was the feet-washing ceremony and the judge was ready to take part in this. First, Reverend Buti did as he said he would: he called mrs Hannah Mofokeng to the front of the church and he bowed down to wash her feet. Then judge Olivier was called to the front. Together with him was called, mrs Martha Fortuin, the woman who washed the feet of all his children, the woman who worked in his house for more than thirty years. When the jugdge’s name was called together with Martha’s, an audible gasp went up in the congregation, but Martha Fortuin remained silent.

Alan Paton continues: “Then Mr. Buti gave the towel to the judge, and the judge, as the word says, girded himself with it, and took the dish of water and knelt at the feet of Martha Fortuin. He took her right foot in his hands and washed it and dried it with the towel. Then he took her other foot in his hands and washed it and dried it with the towel. Then he took both her feet in his hands with gentleness, for they were no doubt tired with much serving, and he kissed them both. Then Martha Fortuin, and many others in the Holy Church of Zion, fell a-weeping in that holy place.”

Alan Paton added that at the end of service the first person to leave the service was a journalist who was keen to be in contact with his editor. When the newspapers reported the incident the next day, judge Olivier learned exactly what the price of such love was.

As we prepare tonight for Good Friday tomorrow, we do that in a way that we’ve never had to do before. Often on Good Friday I have found the contrast between the profound solemnity in the church and the seemingly oblivious joyous and frivolous attitude outside almost too big. It is so hard to reconcile the two in one’s actual experience of what the day signifies.

This year there will be not one of these: neither the weight of the service nor the lightness outside. It will be almost like the disciples that returned from Golgotha, deeply disillusioned, deeply isolated and perhaps even profoundly lonely and sad.

The transition from Good Friday to Silent Saturday will be almost seamless. The silence and emptiness of Good Friday will last through Saturday. It will resonate deeply with everything we experience around us. It will resonate even deeper with the growing death toll in the world.

But this is the space we have to keep open, the empty time we should not try and fill with noise or connection or community. This is the time where nothing seemingly happens. And that is the time that the Spirit of God is already stirring. This is the time when the mystery of what is happening in the seed of the new creation is about to be revealed.

As mentioned in a previous meditation, Bonhoeffer’s poem ‘Christians and Pagans’ begins with the first verse saying that Christians and non-Christians are similar in that they go to God in times of need. In the second verse, he says ‘some’ – the Christians – go to God in God’s time of need.

In the third verse Bonhoeffer articulates his experience in his prison cell: In the final instance, ‘God turns to all people in their need, nourishes body and soul with God’s own bread, and takes up the cross for Christians and non-Christians alike.’

And the last line of the last verse: ‘And while forgiving both, is slain.’

But perhaps it is his last surviving poem, written from his prison cell in December 1944, just around Christmas that will ring particularly true this time:

When now the silence spreads around us,

O let us hear the sounds your raise…

The forces for good surround us in wonder,

They firm up our courage for what comes our way,

God is with us from dawn to the slumber of evening,

The promise of love at the break of each day.

Rev Dr Ockert Meyer is the Lecturer in Preaching, Worship and Theology at United Theological College

When now the silence spreads around us,

O let us hear the sounds your raise…

The forces for good surround us in wonder,

They firm up our courage for what comes our way,

God is with us from dawn to the slumber of evening,

The promise of love at the break of each day.

Holy Week Reflections 2020: Preaching Pictures from the Gospel of John 12