Each day in Holy week Christians on social media are being encouraged to post under the tag #OURHOLYWEEK on a different subject each day.  So here goes!

What is your take on rage?  Is it something to be avoided at all costs or something to harness?  Perhaps it depends on your view of control and your definition of rage.  I suspect that if you grew up in a family where uncontrolled rage was a common experience you are not that keen on it.  But perhaps sometimes extreme anger is required.  Perhaps Jesus turning over the tables in the temple is an example (or perhaps not – although I find it difficult to imagine such behaviour without an element of anger); without it where does the energy to fight injustice come from?

What do you think?

On Palm Sunday the crowds welcome Jesus to Jerusalem as the Messiah; and yet, they seem to be expecting him to behave differently to the way that he does.  They were expecting someone who would “rule the Jewish people during the Messianic Age and World to come“, and at a time that Israel was ruled by the Romans this would require their overthrow.

Every Thursday local clergy discuss the following Sunday’s Gospel, and this week one of the discussion points was whether the crowd who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem was the same one who cried out for his crucifixion a few days later.  The arguments centred on whether people would have changed their minds so quickly.  The choices were broadly: “no they wouldn’t” and “if they were disappointed by the failure to overthrow the Romans…”; no doubt there are others too.

It certainly looks as though they didn’t expect the kind of Messiah that Jesus was, ruling by influence rather than by power, indeed, refusing to use power when the opportunity arose, rather allowing himself to be put to death rather than invoking the power of God.  Indeed,

So my question is: “What kind of Messiah do you believe in?”.

Richard Rohr writes that:

Jesus did not come to change the mind of God about humanity (it did not need changing)! Jesus came to change the mind of humanity about God

Over the years many people have had a view of God as somewhat like a medieval King; someone who it made sense to be afraid of, and to try and keep on the right side of.  Jesus came to tell us that God love’s us, and that nothing that we do can stop him loving us.

Regardless of where we stand on Brexit, surely we can agree that there is a need to be civilised about the process?  Some of the leavers at present appear to think that threatening the EU will get them what they want.

It perhaps says something about British business; my (10 year old) experience was that what was increasingly valued was to decide what you wanted and to be as obnoxious as possible to get it, trusting that the other (weaker) party would give in, as something was better than nothing.  I suspect that this works for moderately large companies, so supermarkets can treat suppliers that way, but very few suppliers are big enough to treat supermarkets that way.

When it comes to Brexit, the question is which is the stronger party?  Those threatening the EU, or expecting them to change their mind at the last minute appear to think we are.

That said, I think the underlying assumption that we can bully our way into a good relationship is practically and morally wrong.