Lent 2024 Introduction

“We are invited to a conversion…to seek communion with God and also communion with others.” Brother Alois, Taize Community

This Lent we are guided by the thoughts of Brother Alois and the late Brother Roger of the Taize community: Lent is a season to sing the joy of forgiveness… for His constant forgiveness allows us to renew an inner life; Lent leads us to sense that there is no spiritual growth without consenting to give something up, and to do so for love; Lent is a season to share freely while setting everything in the simple beauty of creation.

‘Did you know that there are ten different meals recorded in the Gospels, an extraordinary thing for a book of spiritual guidance.  The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and we have remembered him ever since simply doing this…[Let’s] cultivate the plural in the Kingdom of God, and give priority to those activities that we share’ John V Taylor

Conversion and communion

Our theme is Conversion and Communion with a particular focus on the frequent occurrence of meals (both outdoor and indoor) as a context in which we find Jesus relating/socialising and teaching. Here his choice of companions challenges prejudices and aims to alter perspectives. His, the Trinity’s, is a large vision for all humanity, at the heart of which is hospitality, both physical and especially spiritual, fellowship (koinonia) and the good of the other.

But we shall sit and speak around/one table, share one food, one earth.- From Rublev by Rowan Williams

To follow and be with Jesus is to rub shoulders with people with all kinds of needs and ill-repute where Jesus, food and drink serve as a bridge in crossing any divide. This is echoed in Paul’s comment in his letter to the Galatians: there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.  The sharing of food, of life, is the context to celebrate forgiveness for each and flourishing for all within the embrace of Jesus; to have a rewiring of both heart and mind regarding God and others. Regarding God for he came eating and drinking! Regarding others for ‘to give something up, and to do so for love’ is more than a soundbite for Jesus, it’s his, the way.  

Reflections, from various writers, will start on Wednesday 14th February, then weekly on Thursdays until Thursday 21st March until Good Friday to Easter Sunday, when they become daily reflections.

Footnote on Eularia Clarke’s The Five Thousand painting

Matthew 14:13-21

Eularia Clarke sets the feeding of the five thousand in modern dress and follows Matthew’s account in which women and children are present. The multitude has sat down in the grass, as Jesus requested, and is eating, not the fish and bread referred to in the Bible but, as in so much of Clarke’s work, a twentieth Century equivalent, fish and chips. The scene is more reminiscent of a church picnic than the biblical miracle. Tea is brewing in the lower right corner, bicycles and footballs are discarded, children and babies are remarkably well behaved, some people doze, others pay attention to the priest – or Jesus (whose head and shoulders are uncomfortably cut off by the edge of the painting). The artist said: ‘I daren’t paint Christ, I put in a pulpit, the priest is reading the notices before the sermon.’

Commentary from A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.