Forty days of Coronavirus wilderness: a thought for the week from Canon John Green
When Jesus went into the wilderness to spend forty days and forty nights fasting, in prayer and conversation with his heavenly Father, he surely can have had no idea what he was going to do with the time he had on his hands. We don’t know if he had a plan. Matthew records that at the end he was famished. In Mark’s Gospel the whole episode takes up one verse! Clearly for Mark this is less important than starting the ministry of preaching and teaching and healing that Jesus now embarks on after calling his first disciples. Luke has a very similar version to Matthew; John has no mention of it at all. How can it help us at this challenging time for us as individuals, as a church community in West Sussex, as members of a nation in western Europe and as members of the world-wide community? I have a sense that Jesus has been here before and so offers us some encouragement on our journey forward. For him the future stretched out ahead. Forty days means a jolly long time. We don’t know how long we shall have to endure this. Jesus had just such an experience. The hymn “Forty days and forty nights”, that some of us love and some dread, refers to the sun burning down from the sky by day and to the cold at night. We shall surely have such experiences over the coming days (and nights), a sense that this emergency is burning its way through our society and, at times, freezing us with fear. Jesus had such feelings too, but he had two things that we can also have - trust in his heavenly Father and knowledge of the Bible. As the devil comes to tempt him, it is with the power of Scripture that Jesus repels him. Jesus is hungry and is tempted to turn stones into bread. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 8.3. He is taken to the pinnacle of the Temple and resists the temptation to float down, supported by angels, with another quote from Deuteronomy (6.16). His final temptation to seek world power by worshipping the evil one is again countered by Deuteronomy 6.13. Defeated the devil leaves him and angels wait on him. Defeated this evil will finally leave us. What joy and relief when that happens. In the meantime let us use this time to deepen our knowledge of the Bible and let us start with this passage from Matthew 4.1-11. We can begin our wilderness experience with prayer and reading. In that way we can increase our faith in God and so make ourselves stronger to face what lies ahead. We can also join with Christians around the world by saying the Lord’s Prayer. John 25th March 2020
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February 2022
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