Lenten Virtual Series

The desert has profound significance in the Christian life. We are most readily drawn to think about the desert because of Jesus’s temptations there which mark the beginning of his public ministry. But that significant moment evokes the much earlier foundational event of the Exodus of the Hebrew people who escaped the clutches of Pharaoh on a long journey towards the ‘Promised Land’.

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Water is a vital element in the sustenance of human life. We can survive without water to drink for four days at most. In ancient civilisations, dwellings would only be built around, or near, a reliable fresh water supply. In Jerusalem, it was the Gihon Spring in the Kidron Valley which enabled King David to make the city his capital. If there was no spring, then an underwater supply would need to be found and if successful, then a well could be built over it to enable water to be collected and carried. (Read More)

A thoughtful reading of the Bible shows that many of the themes and important events in the New Testament are prefigured by themes and events in the Old Testament. This will hold true for much of what we consider in this Lent course. As mentioned before, Matthew, in his gospel account, can be seen to be presenting Jesus as a new Moses leading people out of slavery into liberation. So, it is not surprising that the mountain of Sinai should find some reflections in the life of Jesus. (Read More)

The Sea of Galilee has a special place in the faith and heart of every Christian. So many of us grew up on the stories of Jesus and all that he did on and around the Sea of Galilee. It feels like a familiar place to us even before we have actually visited it in person so, when we do make our pilgrimage to the Holy Land, there can be a sense of feeling as if we have arrived in our spiritual home when we get to Galilee. The Sea is a place of great beauty: a large expense of (usually) blue water and circled by high hills on all sides which afford spectacular views across the sea’s length and breadth. (Read More)

This fifth week of the Lent study sets us on course for Jerusalem. The road to Jerusalem was well-trodden by the Jews of Palestine in Jesus’s time, and before, because pilgrimage to the Holy City and to the Temple for the great festivals, was a requirement. A crux moment in Jesus’s life in Luke’s gospel is when Jesus ‘set his face to go to Jerusalem’ (Luke 9:51) and culminates in his Triumphal Entry on what has become known to the Church as Palm Sunday. (Read More)

It has often been noted that the Bible begins in a garden with a tree whose fruit leads to the first sin (Genesis 2 and 3) and ends with the New Jerusalem in which there is a tree whose ‘leaves are for the healing of the nations’ (Revelation 22:1-5). John Milton described this powerfully in the 17th century in his epic poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. It might not be entirely incidental that Jesus sought his Father’s will also in a garden (Gethsemane) and sought the strength to fulfil his divine calling, which of course he did (Matthew 26: 36-56). Adam and Eve’s failure to obey God’s will in the Garden of Eden is mirrored in opposite by Jesus’s faithful following of God’s will in Gethsemane.

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