Who the hell does he think he is? This is the welcome Jesus receives from his hometown in Mark 6:1-13. Everyone is astounded by his wisdom and his actions but instead of being delighted they are suspicious and offended: He is just a poor carpenter from a poor family. Where, they ask, did this man get all this? Surely all this healing and miracles and wisdom does not come from him. In the second half of the passage Jesus sends out his disciples. He instructs them to take little with them but to rely on the hospitality of strangers. They, like Jesus before them, spread peace and healing. Not by their own skills or knowledge but because God has chosen to work through them. God has a preference for using those we least expect to bring in his kingdom: those with little power or authority in the eyes of the world. In case we mistake the work of God for something else; in case we place our trust in success and status and not in God. This morning we will be baptising Jack. Jack is too young to even know how to talk yet he too will be anointed with God’s spirit to do the work of leading, healing and serving God’s people. He too will be given the kingdom and sent out to bear Christ’s light in the world. In his infancy, he is a symbol that none of us have the gifts or talents necessary for the task God gives us, yet God will work through us if we are willing. God can and will use our strengths but how much more will God use our weaknesses, if only we would let Her.

This week is Pride week, we will join with others across the globe celebrating the diversity of God’s people and committing to fight injustice and pleading inclusion. We start our readings with Lamentations 3:22-33, and an assurance of the inclusive and universal love of God: God does not willingly afflict anyone; God’s compassion is neither deserved nor undeserved, it is given because God’s nature is steadfastly loving. The gospel, Mark 5:21-43, also gives us a powerful story of inclusion: Jesus is on his way to heal Jarius’ daughter when he interrupted by the bleeding woman. What is striking about this passage is not just the equality and impartiality of God’s gifts of healing and wholeness but the interdependency of the two healings. The little girl (child of the leader of Israel) can only be healed once the woman (an outcast) has also been healed. Our work to bring God’s gifts to the excluded is not just for their benefit it is for ours: injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere. If anyone is to be saved, we all must be saved, we need one another.

All of us have weathered storms at some time or another. Suffering is an inevitable part of life but how we respond to it is not. This morning both Job and the disciples are struggling with how to respond to chaos and difficulty in their lives. Job is looking for someone to blame for his misfortune. He is not to blame so God must be. In Job 38:1-11 God answers Job with a vision of God as midwife to ferocious storms and mighty waters. The storms of life are not beyond God or outside of God’s care. More than this, God right sizes Job who cannot look beyond his own problems. Jesus treats the disciples in the same way when they panic in the storm in Mark 4:35-41. No one wants to suffer yet it is part of the process by which the whole of creation is brought to birth. The task for Job, for the disciples and for us is to find meaning and purpose in our struggles. Does our suffering lead to self-pity or does it lead us to connect with and understand the suffering of others? does it paralyse us with fear or does it galvanise us to engage with the wider causes of suffering in the world? If the kingdom is to come, we need to do more than survive the storms of life, we need to be able to engage with God’s work of suffering and struggling to bring a better world to birth.

Both readings this morning use the image of something tiny and insignificant that, under God’s care, grows into something impressive: In Ezekiel 17:22-24, God plants a tender sprig that becomes a noble cedar, whilst in Mark 4:26-34, the mustard seed grows into a massive plant. In each case the resulting vegetation is remarkable not for its vitality and size but for the shelter and protection it provides for other creatures. In today’s service as we give thanks for and bless the creatures who share our lives and our homes, we reflect on our place in creation: we too are creatures, dependant on God to survive and thrive but we are also made in God’s image to share in God’s mission and ministry. We thrive, not just for our own well-being but in order to provide protection and care for the whole of creation. In the face of the royal mess that humanity have made of the earth, we may be tempted to despair at our ability to fulfil the task God has given us. Yet the seed in Mark’s gospel grows in secret without human effort, the sower does not know how it sprouts and grows. God’s kingdom, like our planet, is pure gift, it flourishes because God wills it not because we cajole it. Ezekiel’s Cedar is planted in the ruins of a conquered, ransacked land, a sign that, however ill equipped we feel ourselves to be, creation will be restored and life will flourish because God has promised it.

Our readings start this morning with division and disunity in the garden of Eden, Genesis 3:8-15. Adam and Eve have separated themselves from one another (as Adam blames Eve), from God (as Adam blames God for making Eve) and from creation (as Eve blames the serpent). At the heart of the division in Genesis is a sense of scarcity: Adam and Eve wanted what they didn’t have and now they perceive their nakedness, their lack.

Our lives also seem saturated with a sense of scarcity; we worry whether there is enough: food, housing, welfare support, NHS time, for all who seek it. This fear can create a desire to divide people into those who deserve limited resources and those who should be excluded. This is the mindset that Jesus encounters the gospel, Mark 3:20-35, when the scribes cannot admit that his power comes from God. They wish to be the ones who determines who can receive God’s blessings. But Jesus will not divide people, instead he welcomes all who seek God’s will into his family.

Today we will be inviting you to engage with an eco-church project. Our hope is that we can respond to fears of scarcity by recovering a sense of God’s abundant provision and a commitment to work together to make a difference in our small piece of God’s creation.

Today marks the beginning of Ordinary Time, that stretches over almost half a year between Trinity and All Saints, in which we get on with the ordinary business of being God’s people; in our gospel today, Mark 2:23-3:6, Jesus reminds us what this is. For Jesus it is clearly not about observing the Sabbath: a day of rest echoing God’s rest after completing creation. The world is no longer as it was in the beginning, when God saw that it was good. Jesus encounters brokenness, injustice, exclusion and oppression and he cannot rest because creation is not complete. For Christians the Sabbath is celebrated not on the seventh day, the last day of the week, but on the eight day, the first day of the week. Week after week we are called again to participate in God’s work of renewing the face of creation until, not just we, but all creation, can once more enjoy the Sabbath rest.

Last week we marked the end of Eastertide and the gift of God’s spirit being poured out on God’s people. Today, Trinity Sunday, we begin again the journey of living as a people led by that Spirit. In John 3:1-17, Jesus makes it clear that this is not a matter of knowledge or intellectual understanding, Nicodemus, a teacher of Israel, does not know these things. He does not need knowledge, what he needs is to be in relationship with God. Isaiah 6:1-8 expresses some of the anxieties that humans experience when encountering the divine: God is so transcendent, so utterly different from us, that even the seraphs cannot look upon God, covering their faces with their wings. Neither do they allow God to see them: covering their feet (a euphemism for nakedness) with another set of wings. The prophet, “a man of unclean lips”, is afraid to be standing in God’s presence. Yet God chooses Isaiah, as we too are chosen, invited to become a part of God’s life and purpose. Our faith is not about what we believe or understand, it is about allowing the Spirit of God to lead us into an ever deeper relationship of love with God from which we move into a relationship of love with one another and with the world Christ came to restore.

In our gospel this morning, John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15, Jesus promises his disciples the gift of the Holy Spirit, also called the Advocate or Paraclete, which means the one called in aid, or called to be alongside. The Spirit will provide us with comfort and strength but also with purpose: the Spirit has a job to do with and in and through us. In Acts 2:1-21, the Spirit moves through the house (just as it moved across the waters of chaos in the beginning), fills the disciples (just as it was breathed into humanity in the creation story) and sends them out into the world. Pentecost then, is a recreation, a new beginning, but one in which we are to play our part in carrying the Spirit of God out across the world. Peter recalls the words of the prophet Joel, promising the gift of renewal and life to all without distinction, regardless of class, gender, race, religion. In today’s service, as we each take a flame from the Easter candle, we remember that God offers this gift of light, love and life to every one of us, without exception, in order that we too may offer it to every other, without exception.

We are all experts at loving: between us we have done an awful lot of it; tenderly cared for dying relatives; been alongside loved ones in distress; persistently put the needs of family and friends above our own. But is it enough? In John 15:9-17 Jesus does not just command us to love; he commands us to “do these things” “in order that we might love”. What things? Well, he has just finished washing his disciples’ feet. For Jesus, love is about acts of service, it is about responding to the needs of others. Moreover, it is offered to all indiscriminately, without exception, whether they deserve or not and whether we like it or not. Jesus doesn’t pick and choose, he washes the feet of Judas who will betray him and of Peter who will deny him. It takes the disciples some time to appreciate just how indiscriminate God’s love is. Last week in Acts Peter is astonished when the Ethiopian eunuch demands that he too be baptised. This week, Acts 10:44-48, the disciples are all astounded when it becomes clear that the gift that God has given them God has also given to Cornelius’ household, even though they are gentiles, even though they are Romans. Love that is in the service of the needs of others, love that is given without partiality stretches us beyond our usual acts of loving, takes us out of our comfort zones and out into a world that is crying out for love. The kind of love that can transform the giver, receiver and the world around us. We cannot love like this on our own but God is always going before us (sending Peter to the Ethiopian, pouring the spirit upon Cornelius’s household). God’s love will flow with or without us but God invites us to abide in this love, to share in its outpouring. God choose us so that our joy may be complete.

This morning Jesus calls us to be rooted and grounded in him, John 15:1-8, he is the vine we are the branches. Divorced from Christ we can do nothing yet if we abide in him, we must also abide in one another, the branches are all intimately connected. In Acts 8:26-40 we encounter someone who does not feel connected and who experiences the pain and injustice of not belonging. The Ethiopian eunuch is wealthy and educated (he rides in a chariot and reads Isaiah) yet he is enslaved; he has come to Jerusalem to worship yet he is not Jewish and would not have been allowed to enter the temple; he was born male but no longer has the status of a man; and, when Philip meets him, he is travelling the non-man’s land between Jerusalem and Gaza. He feels his outsider status keenly for he recognises in Isaiah’s meditation on the suffering servant, the description of one who, like him, has been “cut off from the land of the living” because he can have no offspring. He is searching scripture for a reflection of himself, for a place where he can belong. We may have many questions for him but he has questions for us: what will it mean for all of us if the gospel is indeed good news for all people, without exception? He holds up for us a mirror and asks us to see if he is reflected there. Is there a space for him in our community? are we, rooted and grounded in Christ, a place where he too can belong?

Today is Good Shepherd Sunday and we hear, John 10:11-18, Jesus telling us that he is the good shepherd, the one who lays down his life for his sheep. More than this, he knows the sheep, they belong to him. To whom we belong is also at the heart of Acts 4:5-12. Here the disciples are being questioned by the authorities about healing the man born lame. They appear less interested in the fact that the man is healed than by “what power and what name” he was healed. To whom do the disciples owe allegiance? Are they one of “us” or are they one of “them”. Jesus does not only look after the sheep of this fold, he must gather all the sheep, so that there may be one flock. For him there is no “us” and “them”, we are all one. When we belong to Jesus we also belong to this great flock and they belong to us. If Jesus is out there, finding, gathering and protecting them, we should be alongside him.

Resurrection is harder than it looks. In Acts 3:12-26, the disciples are full of confidence, addressing the crowd immediately after healing a man who was lame. Yet, in Luke 24:36b-48, when the risen Jesus appears to them, they are described as: startled, terrified, frightened, doubtful and unbelieving. Jesus shows them his hands and his feet, he asks them for food, telling them that it really is him, just as they knew him. Perhaps this is the problem. The risen Jesus is too much like the Jesus they knew, still wounded, still hungry. The resurrection has not removed the scars of his mistreatment or his very human needs and limitations. If God’s power can defeat death surely it can make everything new? God’s power is not like human power, it is revealed not in strength but in weakness. By the time we get to Acts, Peter has recognised this, asking the crowd: “why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we had made him walk?” Accepting our weakness and brokenness, our inability to repair our mistakes and fix things on our own is the necessary first step needed before we can allow God’s power to work in us and through us.

Last Sunday we rejoiced at the resurrection, the disciples, however, didn’t. A week later our gospel, John 20:19-31, finds them hiding away in a locked room afraid of what the future holds for them. Thomas often gets a bad press for doubting but the other disciples are not doing much better: Jesus has already come to them offering peace, sending them out as the Father sent him but a week later, when Jesus returns, they still haven’t moved. Perhaps Thomas did not believe them the first time because despite encountering the risen Lord, they hadn’t changed. However, the fact that they doubt, that they fail to act, is what makes them perfect for the job; because the job is forgiveness, and who better to know the joy of forgiveness, the significance of a new beginning, than someone who has been in need of forgiveness not just once but again and again. By the time we come to the story in Acts 4:32-35, the disciples have changed, they have started to live as if new life were truly possible.

Christ is always returning to us, continually offering us the gift of the spirit, repeatedly inviting us to begin again. The fact that we are failures makes us perfect for the job too. Knowing how rubbish we are at being Christian, at doing God’s will, puts us in the perfect position to forgive the faults and failings of others and invite them to begin again alongside us.

Palm Sunday begins with joy as Jesus enters Jerusalem in Mark 11:1-11 surrounded by crowds shouting Hosannah and ends with the same crowds watching his execution on the cross in Mark 14:32-15:39.

At the heart of today’s gospel readings is the question of what kind of God we want and what kind of God we have. The entry into Jerusalem is a beautiful piece of political satire: Jesus is mocking the imperial triumphal entry, when the ruler would enter a city in a chariot hailed by all the most powerful and important people to mark his rule over them. Here Jesus is on a donkey, hailed by the poor and the dispossessed. During his subsequent arrest, trial and execution there are many ironic references to his kingship:

Pilate refers to him three times as the King of the Jews and then has the term inscribed above him on the cross; the soldiers mock him as King whilst flogging him; and the scribes taunt him as he is dying “Let the messiah, the King of Israel come down from the cross.”

In Mark’s version of the passion Jesus is almost entirely silent except when he is asked by the High Priest if he is the Messiah. Jesus replies “I am”. This is not just an affirmative answer: I AM are the words that God uses to describe Godself. Here, when all human power is stripped away, God is revealed. A ruler who never exerts power over others but gives his own power away for the sake of others.

In the midst of all the human attempts to retain power, gain power, secure power in this story: the disciples’ denial, the High Priests pandering, Pilates capitulation to the crowd, here is the divine counterpoint. A God who never coerces, never manipulates, never uses power over anyone.

God gives us freedom and asks us to consider our own power and how we use it.

Over the course of Lent we have been reminded of God’s covenants with Noah, Abraham and Moses. Today, Jeremiah, 31:31-34, foretells a time when God will make “a new covenant” with all God’s people. This covenant will not be written in a sign in the sky (like Noah’s rainbow); nor in ritual (like Abraham’s circumcision); nor on tablets of stone (like Moses’ laws) but in our hearts. Nothing will stand between us and God, each of us is invited into a relationship with God. This is what the Greeks in John 12:20-33 are seeking when they ask to see Jesus. In response Jesus speaks of glory, which means God’s presence. The time has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, for God to be glorified. Jesus is telling us that the presence of God is fully seen in him at the moment when he gives all of himself for God. This glory, this presence of God is available to each of us when we empty out ourselves and give God room to shine in our lives. Such glorification may seem like a death, like a grain of wheat falling to the ground; our selfish concerns, our attachment to all that separates us from God and one another, needs to fall away in order that the life of God can spring forth in us. Paradoxically, this giving up and giving away, allows us to become most fully ourselves: the glory of God is humanity fully alive.

On Mothering Sunday the church gives us the story of three mothers: Hannah, Jochabed and Mary. Each of these women endured danger and difficulty to bring their child to birth and each bore a child who would also endure danger and difficulty to bring new life to their people. Their labour was not for themselves and their families but was for the benefit of all the families of the earth. Today we will hear Hannah’s song from 1 Samuel 2 and Mary’s song from Luke 1: in response to the new life they are about to bring forth they sing, not of their own hopes and fears, but those of all God’s children.

Throughout the scriptures there are descriptions of God as our mother: struggling in labour; weeping in sorrow; nursing and protecting her offspring; and, before his crucifixion, Jesus describes himself as a mother hen who longs to gather her children to her breast and hide them under the shadow of her wings. The mother is both a symbol of God’s love for us but also of our calling to love as God loves. Romans 8 speaks of the whole creation groaning in labour for the glorious revelation of the children of God. This is our labour. To commit ourselves to struggle with hope to bring to birth the promises of God for all God’s children.