John’s Gospel is a bit like a spring being wound as we hear the repeated refrain of ‘It is not my time yet’ from Jesus. And we wait, with the disciples, for the moment of ‘the time’. We are good at waiting in church, good at reflecting and maintaining and waiting. But what if now is the time? What if God is calling us to action?
What is happening around us? Thousands wait anxiously to know if they will have a job in a few weeks, charities are looking around to see if they will even exist in a few months, all at the same time as bank bosses are being given millions and the government announce a freeze on council tax. Why have they abolished Labour’s increase on council tax? Because an increase would ‘hammar middle England’. At least we know now, if we didn’t before, where this government’s priorities lie, and it’s not with the poor, the vulnerable and the marginalised. Services to those on the edges of society are being reduced or removed and people will suffer and even die because of it.
And what is the church doing this week in the face of all this? Giving up chocolate and the internet.
Give up giving up! While you’re eating your chocolate biscuit and dunking it in a caffeinated coffee, why not pray, meet with friends and colleagues, find out what’s going on and see how to respond. And while you’re on the internet, why not do some looking and searching, follow blogs of people who know things, write emails of protest, get informed and act.
My plea is that we stop ‘giving up’ stuff for Lent and start ‘getting on’. The great thing is, it will be at least 40 days before anyone will respond!
Isaiah 58….. 6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
