Some of us have had dreams, hopes and plans that have been lost, as if buried in a grave - gone forever. 
I’m speaking of those times in life when we can no longer do what we used to be able to do. 
Perhaps because of a chronic illness, or financial problems, the loss of employment, or maybe a handicap that makes each day difficult and suddenly, we feel empty. 
 
Just as those first moments must have felt for Mary and Martha as they stood beside their brother's grave. 
They had sent word to Jesus about the illness of their brother Lazarus and then their world changed forever when he died. 
We remember that when the world was turning against Jesus, it had been Mary who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair and it was Mary and Martha who provided Jesus with shelter at Bethany. 


We sometimes feel the same as the sisters, when things are turning against us.
Despite having prayed, thought we were going the extra mile for others and knowing that we’ve been “good” people, nothing seems to be going our way.
There are times in our lives, when what appears to be an ending can in fact be a beginning. 
Where we only see death, we can also see the power of life.   
Where we see failure, God opens a new door.   
Where we feel abandoned, God draws near to us, and we find hope and assurance. 
 
What we’re celebrating on this road to Easter, is that even as we travel through the reality of loss and reversals, defeats and disappointments, there’s a power in the world that’s stronger than death. 
Today’s Gospel reading deals with: “Who will have the last word?”
At first, today's reading focuses on a sunset, but it quickly turns into a sunrise. 


But before we can get to the joy, John reminds us of the sorrow and grief in the lives of Mary and Martha. 
Even before Jesus arrived at Martha's home, she met him on the way, immediately confronting him with her belief that if he had been there, Lazarus wouldn’t have died. 
How easy it would have been for Jesus to have become defensive. 
He could have talked of his need to seek shelter to be safe, but instead, he dealt with her sorrow as he assured Martha her brother would live again. 
Jesus reminded her that he was the hope, when he said: "I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die." 
These words of hope are spoken today at many memorial and funeral services. 
 
So, Lent is a time of preparation for Easter and we can never know the full impact of the resurrection unless we’re honest about the times in which we’ve felt no hope, or felt we were alone - similar to how Mary and Martha must have felt, when Jesus wasn’t there for them in their time of need.


Yet, following this feeling of abandonment, came the overwhelming joy when Lazarus came out of the grave.  When we’re honest with our hurts and fears, we know the impact of the truth that God is with us. 
When we’ve dealt with the loss of someone we love and have had times of despair and sorrow, but we can also open our hearts and minds to the wonderful news of Easter.
The power of the Easter faith is that whatever happens to us in our world, God is greater - and we can trust and believe in him.   We’ll always have reason to hope. 
 
The road to Easter runs through a cemetery.  It’s not a road that detours past the realities of life, but one that empowers us to deal head on with the realities of living.
It was huge risk for Jesus to go back to be with Mary and Martha as some were seeking to stone him. 
His reply to this threat was to speak of “walking in the light”, so that no one would stumble. 
He wouldn’t allow the fear of others, the sorrow of death, or anything else, to darken his way, to keep him from going where he was needed. 


As he approached the grave of his friend, Lazarus, Jesus was deeply disturbed, but he took the first step of the miracle, when he asked for the stone to be removed. 
Martha, the ever practical one, questioned the move and she reminded Jesus that her brother had been dead for four days and there would be a very unpleasant odour. 
But Jesus knew that if we’re going to behold the Glory of God, then, at times, we have to go beyond the boundaries of the norm. 
He challenged whether Martha truly believed and so the stone was removed. 
Then comes that moment when Jesus calls to Lazarus to come out. 
The road to Easter had reached a very important turn - and Lazarus came out. 
When others saw that this man, who had been dead and buried, was now alive, they would have been drawn to the one who had such power to call him from the grave. 
In this scene, we see the power of God to give life, we also see the risk when that power is displayed. 


From the last verse of today's reading, it’s said that many of the Jews who had come out to be with Mary, saw what Jesus had done and believed.
To find the joy and hope of Easter, we must go through cemeteries of our defeats and disappointments. 
The Bible is full of stories about transforming situations that had become desperate and hopeless, but are radically changed with new opportunities, filled with promise and new life. 
There was Abram and Sarai, to whom God's promise seemed so impossible when being revealed, so impossible that Sarai laughed;
there was Moses, running from being wanted for murder, being called to lead his people through the sea;
there was David who faced a giant;
there was Elijah, after his greatest success seeing no reason to live, finding God in the still small voice;
there was Ezekiel's vision of the scattered bones of a defeated army coming back to life. 
In the New Testament, there’s Nicodemus shaking his head at being born anew and the Samaritan woman at the well, pushed aside by her village, finding in Jesus a new life;
And the blind man of last week's lesson being rejected by his own parents only to find new life in Jesus.
 
On the road to Easter, we move toward the eventual joy of Easter and the hope of the life everlasting, when we experience the power of Christ in our lives. 
This happens for us when the stones of bitterness, disappointment, and sorrow are rolled away and we experience the call to come forth and live, to live life at its fullest.
 
This is when we hear Jesus say, "I am the resurrection and the life, those who believe in me even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die."
Not only at the Holy time of Easter, but also in our world, in a cemetery filled with sorrow. 
Then, and only then, do these words come alive for us. 
That’s what I like about today's lesson; it comes when we least expect it. 
Jesus knew of God's power to deal with and defeat death.
 
In our lives, can the stones be rolled away?
Can we come forth to live? 
I believe that the answer is “yes” because the world will not have the last word and we will not have the last word – only God will have the last word, and this will be a day of new beginnings.                 

​Pastor Rick

Many of us know what it feels like to be used up by others and then discarded.
No matter how hard you try to give your best, being as helpful as possible, but you are taken for granted and later discarded like a used Kleenex tissue.  
Unfortunately, too many human encounters end up like that.
Such encounters diminish us as a person and belittle us, eating away at our sense of worth and wellbeing.
 
When we’ve suffered bad experiences and our good nature is exploited, we can become bitter, cautious and suspicious of future relationships.
We may even become anti-social characters; outwardly aggressive and abrasive types, while underneath we’re afraid, feeling the pain of old wounds and we erect barriers so that we’re never used that way again.
I believe that the Woman of Samaria, whom Jesus met at Jacob’s well, was like that.
She’d endured five, maybe six, marriages of the hurtful kind, and had taken to avoiding human company.
Isolation was better than more hurt, so when she found Jesus waiting at the well, she was on her guard.
 
It’s far too generally assumed that this woman was a hardened sinner. A brazen marriage wrecker, sly and ruthless, exploiting male weaknesses.
Many of the sermons I’ve read and heard have tended to paint her as a sexually promiscuous woman.
 
Personally, I believe the woman is more likely to be the one who was mistreated and demeaned.
We know that she had been divorced at least five times and now she was living with a sixth man.
But remember, in those days, men held almost all the rights to divorce. 
A man could divorce his wife on the smallest pretext, just by attesting “something unseemly in her.”
This unseemliness could be as trivial as the husband not liking the way his wife looked first thing in the morning, or the fact that she boiled his egg too hard.
To make a divorce effective, the husband just had to call a male witness and write out the dismissal notice.
 
A divorced woman, unless she had independent means, lost all status and value in the community.
She was seen as a rejected woman, a disgrace. 
Her own family often wouldn’t receive her back in their household and her existence became precarious.
High class women were not likely to employ a divorcee - and put temptation in the way of their husband.
In reality the options were: Find work as a servant, or marry again very quickly, or become some man’s mistress, work as a prostitute, or just starve.
 
I think this woman of Samaria was likely to have been greatly sinned against by men.
More than likely, she was exploited by men and then discarded.
Her status and dignity in the community would have been torn to shreds and like many of life’s victims, she may have been turned into a scapegoat, just to ease the conscience of “respectable” citizens.
The woman of Samaria was a diminished person; devalued; a tattered remnant of how God created her.
Her six close encounters with men were all of a damaging kind: used and abused.
Her ego had shrunk and her encounters with the righteous women of the village were damaging ones.
They had reduced her sense of self-worth to near zero.
 
Then one day, under the burning heat of the midday sun, unexpectedly, she had an encounter with Jesus.
I invite you to picture her at high noon, when all sensible people would be either indoors, or those out in the fields would be sheltering in the shade.
Imagine her shouldering the large water jar, slipping out of her dwelling, and scurrying out of the village, through the heat haze, to Jacob’s well.
 
The other women had been there in the cool of the early morning, chatting and laughing together.
And they would be there again in the shade of evening, exchanging the gossip of the day.
But this bruised woman makes the journey alone, to avoid the scornful glances and the barbed words.
She has had enough of that pain being inflicted on her and even the midday heat was preferable.
 
As she arrives near the well of Jacob, she has no idea that she’s coming to “the well of salvation”, so we watch her surprise as she finds a stranger there – a Jew. Samaritans and Jews did not get on well together.
Then Jesus takes the initiative, and the most beautiful encounter takes place.
Jesus neither ignores her, nor avoids her and doesn’t treat her as if she has some kind of disease.
Instead, he does something very lovely - he asks her to give him a drink.
The diminished person is asked to give help to the most complete human being who ever lived, empowering her enough to reply: “How come that you, a Jew, ask me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?”
Having given her some dignity, Jesus is able to offer her something: the riddle of the living water.
“If you could understand who it is who is talking with you, you would ask me for a drink of living water, welling up with abundant life.”
The woman scoffs, as Jesus has no bucket and the well is deep, but I hear no evasion in this response, no verbal fencing, as he did in his encounters with the Pharisees - just honest puzzlement.
Jesus treats the woman with respect, despite what others are accusing her of.
She tells him that they are awaiting the Messiah, so he informs her that he is the one they are waiting for.
 
At this point John tells us that the disciples returned from the village and they’re surprised to see him speaking with such a woman, making them feel awkward and probably embarrassed.
The disciples felt ill at ease in the presence of such an encounter. Like many converts, they saw themselves a cut above the other outsiders whom Christ came to seek and save.
 
I suspect that we sometimes feel the same way.
We can become ill at ease when we encounter others who may not be the same as us.
But the grace of Christ breaks down barriers.
 
I guess we’re secretly glad that his open arms have included us.
Even so, after a while we can tend to become smug, and a bit self-righteous.
Then we get uncomfortable whenever Christ includes outsiders and invites them to sit at his table and eat the same bread and drink from the same cup.
 
But this scorned woman, who an hour before had slipped out of the town like a moral leper in order to draw water from the well, now had the confidence to go back with her head held high, and preach to the people who had despised her.
Her encounter with the Lord had given her back her self-respect and her new dignity evidently impressed many in the village, because they invited Jesus and his disciples to share their hospitality for a few days.
 
Remarkably, we read that many people there put their trust in Jesus as a result of the woman’s testimony.
They also came to experience an encounter with Jesus, where old ways of thinking and acting are cast aside, and all things become new.
 
So, here we are, in our own time, and I guess we can feel that it’s a bit like it was at that well in Samaria.
Here we find the Messiah waiting for us with living water; with a wondrous, inclusive, healing love.
For us to be renewed in spirit and truth will only happen if we must allow this encounter to occur.
 
Christ is already here with us and he definitely is available, so the rest is up to us.
We should pray to Jesus, asking him to give US the living water, so that our lives may be cleansed.          
​
Pastor Rick

Reflection:  “Second Sunday in Lent”

Provided this week by Peter Andrews
 
I was sitting in a coffee shop waiting for my granddaughter when I noticed a sign on the wall – as follows
Community is much more than belonging to something.
It’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter.
 
The quote was attributed to Brian Solis, a world renown futurist and his observation really resonated with me from a number of perspectives.
 
Saltbush is a unique part of the Uniting Church in Australia that is supported financially by the Lane Cove Congregation.

Saltbush – Uniting the Scattered Community, seeks to encourage and connect Uniting Christian communities, irrespective of size or location.

Saltbush seeks to enable us all to embrace the reality of being in Christian community in the 21st century and to affirm diverse ways for people across the land to gather and be in mission together. Saltbush seeks to work with both individuals and Christian communities who are willing to confront traditions and habits of the past to shape new intentional gatherings for the present future!

As part of that aspiration, Saltbush makes available a variety of resources including a weekly visual message and liturgy.

This Sunday, the second Sunday in Lent, we will be using some of the Saltbush material – including the Reflection that was prepared by Rev Mark Faulkner, the leader of the Saltbush team.
Mark shares with us some thoughts about the story of Nicodemus who was a prominent Pharisee and most probably part of the ruling counsel, or the Sanhedrin, which ruled over the religious affairs of the nation and of every Jew.

Nicodemus came to talk with Jesus at night – perhaps choosing that time because he did not want his peers to be aware of what he was doing or perhaps he was just determined to have Jesus all to himself.
There was an honest seeking after the truth on the part of Nicodemus. The conversation with Jesus was not just some philosophical exchange of ideas.

Jesus response to Nicodemus’ question ‘’how can someone be born again’’ is the point at which Nicodemus’ new life began to take shape.
 
The conversation culminated in one of the most recognised and powerful statements in the Bible.
v16 For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life for God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.
 
Something worth pondering – even if not for the first time!

If you are unable to join us in worship on Sunday morning, I invite you to watch Rev Mark Faulkner’s reflection at
https://saltbushcommunity.uca.org.au/video/the-word/lent-2-nicodemus-jesus-john-3-1-17/

Every blessing                   Peter

Reflection:   “Lent – tell me more”

provided by Peter Andrews this week.

So what is today all about – the first Sunday of lent?

The origin of the word lent can be traced back to old English - lencten, or lengten  - spring season.

Literally it means lengthening of hours of daylight which of course refers to the lengthening of days in the northern hemisphere.
So the word embraces a sense of moving out of darkness towards the light
 
Of course that makes less sense to us here in the southern hemisphere – an undeniable fact that led to one brave member of the assembly’s transforming worship group to hypothesise “could we shift the church calendar to suit us? Everything - lent, Easter, Christmas - the whole shebang moved six months so it works for us. It might actually help to make people aware of both the origins of these festivals of faith and decouple them from the secularisation/commercialisation of things like Easter and Christmas so they regain some spiritual meaning".

I’m not brave enough to go down that path (although I am sympathetic to the reasoning) so lets approach the subject from a more conventional perspective.
Lent is a season of preparation and discipline that begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes at sundown on Holy Saturday -  a period of forty weekdays and six Sundays - a period of grief that ends with the great celebration of Easter.
 
Interestingly in eastern orthodox circles the season is known as "bright sadness"
 
Lent is a time when the church especially remembers the life and ministry of Jesus and renews its commitment to him in Christian discipleship.

Some Lent-observing Christians incorporate a Lenten spiritual discipline, such as reading a daily devotional or praying through a Lenten calendar. Other Christians commit to fasting, as well as giving up certain luxuries in imitation of Jesus’s sacrifice during his journey into the desert for 40 days.

Our catholic friends often observe the stations of the cross, a devotional commemoration of Christ’s carrying the cross and crucifixion.

This practice has been incorporated into other forms of reflection and celebration such as the stations of the cross art exhibition that has been staged by St Ives and then Northmead congregations with art pieces offered by a wide range of religious and secular artists -thus providing the opportunity and fresh stimulus for reflection.

Some churches remove flowers from their altars and veil crucifixes, religious statues that show the triumphant Christ, and other elaborate religious symbols in violet fabrics in solemn observance until Good Friday.

In most Lent-observing denominations, - following the New Testament narrative -  the last week of lent coincides with Holy Week, starting with Palm Sunday.

Beyond the factual narrative, what of the personal aspects?
 
Lent provides a special or focused opportunity for self-reflection, simplicity, and sincerity (honesty) to pay attention to ourselves and our surroundings, to leave some things behind and become more open to the spirit of God.
 
Over time three entwined practices have come to be associated with the period of Lent.

1. prayer (justice toward God)
2. fasting and abstinence (justice toward self)
3. almsgiving (justice toward neighbours)

The question that hangs in the air is how we might experience and celebrate Lent in 2023 – both as a church community and also as individuals.

I invite you to take a moment to reflect on your own Lenten journey.

Peter