It's a privilege to offer a short reflection for you this evening. My name is Daz. I'm on the staff team here. And recently, Justin actually sent me a copy of last year's talk that he gave on Judas, which is brilliant.
It's very creative and very thought-provoking. And I think if I've got it right, it's being published. Get a copy if you can. And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking you could have a year of more than your Thursday services because of the content contained within the Scriptures.
I think John's gospel is roughly 35% dedicated to this evening. The first 12 chapters are kind of three years. And then John kind of zooms in and says, let's slow down, notice, and linger. And the next four chapters are dedicated to this night.
So it's interesting, isn't it? Because we're lingering in a few things. We're lingering in the invitations that Jesus gives. But we're also lingering in the tensions.
I mean, Jesus is talking. We've heard it about love and service and unity. And this is all as chaos, misunderstanding, selfishness, and everything that sense that everything's about to break is unfolding. And so I was thinking for us tonight as we slow down and enter the story, we're going to zoom in on a particular moment, right in on a particular moment.
We're going to linger there. And I want us to zoom in on one moment, which will be in a sense, a study image. But I'm going to do something slightly different. Historical Christians have done this practice called imaginative prayer.
And so I'm going to lead that tonight. Imagining prayer is where you enter a biblical scene, and you place yourself there. You try and access feelings, smells, interactions. And so I will guide you through this process.
And the reason I'm doing this, I think, is because often for us who have grown up in the West, we've equated knowledge with just science and reason, data, in fact. But actually, there's a neuroscientist who reminds us, hopefully, for Christians, I think, that there's another part of the brain where imagination and intuition sit, and they are valid pathways of knowing. And so we want to access that part of our brain tonight, which happens to be also where the relational side of our brain sits. When you both of these parts of our brain online, I think the imaginative space can be slightly underdeveloped.
So if you think you will struggle with this, or that's actually OK, completely OK. This exercise is invitational, not mandatory. For some of you, this will be very easy to do. And for others, it might make you uneasy.
But that actually is OK, because if you're feeling that sense of unfamiliar and new ground, and I'm not sure, well, you're in good company with the disciples around the table of the Lord, nearly 2,000 years ago. So if you feel comfortable, what I'd like you to do is to close your eyes, and I will lead us through the foot washing scene from Maundi Thursday. I won't ask you to put yourself in first century Palestine around that table. I'm actually going to get you to choose the scene.
And I won't actually ask you to imagine yourself as Peter, or one of the other disciples, but rather you, a modern disciple. I'm going to leave spaces and silence. This will be about nine or 10 minutes. And don't worry, I'll keep my eyes open and on a time.
So if you feel safe and comfortable, if you would prefer, feel free to look at the image. But I'm actually going to paint a different image to that one in your imagination. So if you can join me, please do. So as you close your eyes, I want you to locate yourself at one of your favorite places of devotion with God, a place of beauty, a place perhaps a relationship, the place where you and God meet and talk.
It could be at a table, in a lounge, on a beach, a bush track, maybe even this very building at St Phillips. You find it, and I'll give you some time to locate yourself there. OK, now that you're in that place, I want you to notice that Jesus is coming toward you. And you know by his stride and his gestures that he's about to ask you something.
He approaches you. He looks into your eyes. And you hear him saying something like, take off your shoes, or your thongs or hiking boots, like boots, like boots, like boots, what would have been appropriate in your favorite place? You think to yourself that similar words are being said somewhere before, take off your sandals for your own holy ground.
He gets you to sit down if you aren't already. And I want you to hear him say your name. And he says, I'd like to wash your feet. There is a quiet in this space.
There's something unspoken. You suddenly notice there are others in your favorite place. It's not just you and him. How do you feel about this request to wash your feet?
What are your concerns or hesitations or hopes? And don't worry, no one can read your mind. What I want you to now notice is not just those words that request but his face. Bent before you, what is his face like as he asks to wash your feet?
Is he looking down, almost speaking to your feet? Or is he looking at the others around you? Or is he looking up at you? Are his eyes on you?
And where are your eyes? Can you hold his gaze? I will let you linger there for a moment. As you're looking at him, you realize all that he stands for is right there in this moment.
Love, service, humility, restoration, healing, cleansing, and direct concern for you. As you consider your own ability to look at him, other scriptures begin to rise in your mind. Let us run with endurance, the race that he set before us looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and he seated at the right hand of the throne of God, looking to Jesus. Suddenly, remember, even as you look at him now, he was looking at something back then, the joy set before him.
What was that joy? You dare to dream that you are somehow caught up in that, that you are a part of his joy. And in the ancient, priestly blessing, spoken over God's people for thousands of years comes before your mind. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord calls his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift his face upon you and give you peace. God's face can shine on me. God's face can look on me with delight or a staggering thought.
Wait, you remember something else. For God who said, let light shine out of darkness, has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. The face of Jesus does something to your heart. He didn't lightens it.
So now I want you in your mind to go back to that scene. Jesus again asking, saying your name and saying, I'd like to wash your feet. And I don't know what you imagined last time, where he was looking or where you were looking. But this time, see it as it is.
Do you see it? His face is shining upon you, delighting in you, blessing you and giving you peace. You know, the one that passes all understanding. He is delighted to be around you.
So now, in your mind, let him wash your feet. Feel the warm water. Feel his hands on your feet. Now, feel the towel drying your feet.
And notice what you might be feeling. You may feel clean. And suddenly, you understand something of what joy is. Joy is seen in the face of the other, their delight, to be with you.
Jesus, washing your feet, is looking up at you with delight. And his joy abounds. You hear him say, do you understand what I have done for you? I have given you an example.
And so now, in your mind, I want you to look around at the others who are in your play place. And you notice they have the same shining, peaceful faces. They too are delighted to be with you. And so delighted that you said yes to him washing your feet.
This lowly service of one another. This is our calling from Jesus. Another scripture comes to mind. Strive for peace with everyone and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
Yes, you think we can offer each other this peaceful, serving way of being. In fact, we must. This is part of how anyone will see the Lord. Somehow, our own faces offer something in service.
I guess we indeed become like those we are with, or perhaps they're differently. We begin to carry and radiate the faces of those around us. If you can, linger for a moment, seeing the radiant face of Jesus and of those around you in your favorite place. As you begin to come back into this room, allow your mind to be conscious that this Jesus, as we together, see it in the gospel story, April 2, 26, he's about to endure an absolute horror for you.
And he knows it. Allow that to quietly amaze you. That he can be so full of peace and joy, washing your feet with a shining gaze moments before he's about to endure an agony, no one on earth could. And then remember Jesus' words about those that would follow him.
They too take up a cross. All those faces smiling and shining around you. They're also facing trials and challenges in following Jesus. Allow that to center you.
Somehow, joy and suffering, just like the song we sing, beautiful him from Horatio's effort. Joy and suffering held together in tension and without resolution. Allow yourself to feel whatever it is you're feeling, sorrows and fears mingled with love and compassion. And linger there for a moment.
I invite you to come back now into the room slowly. And before I pray, I just wanted to offer a couple of reflections zooming in on the passage from John 15. I prayed that all who attended tonight could enter into this space and if you weren't able to, I do apologize, but I hope something of that was helpful. But in John 15, 9-11, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.
Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Love and joy there in those verses.
And I think the degree to which we believe these things is the degree to which we also offer them to others. I mean, do we really believe Jesus loves us with the same love the Father has for him? Do we have full joy and what is joy? It must be a companion, even in suffering.
Because James in his epistle says, consider pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. So it can't be me a happiness. So how can trials be pure joy? And I think that's why I chose the focus of tonight, that a part of joy is seeing in the face of the other their delight to be around you.
And this is true even in suffering and hard times. There is belonging there. And because you belong to Jesus and to one another as we meditate it on, your trials actually come about in large part because of your followership of him and your connection to him. But no matter the circumstances, his face is always delighted and shining upon you.
And I have many thoughts which I'm happy to share after this if you wish. But because you are so connected to him or attached in the language of attachment theory, this is joy. But it is also hessed, which is God's covenant love. And I just want to say this in case this is true for you, that some of us because of our human relationships, especially our early primary caregivers, can misunderstand God and his love.
We can see him in ways that he perhaps isn't. Our attachments may not be secure and so we doubt. Or another way of saying that might be, we know facts in our left hemisphere of our brain, but in the right where relationship and our relational wiring sits, imagination sits, we're not sure. But we need this heart knowledge.
We need both knowledge and knowing. And the way to get that online is through the faces of those around you. And so much more could be said, but the most important face is that of Christ Jesus. And now I have to say this because the scripture says, the knowledge of the glory of God comes here into our hearts.
But none of us have seen the physical face of Jesus. So face must mean something more than that and it does. Our faces are representative of ourselves. It's how we show up in the world, what we are known for and what we are like.
It's how we're recognized. And so I think that's why tonight we attempted to activate this part of our brain, imagining what the left part of our brains have heard so many times. And I want to say it again, there is a face that calls you the beloved. You are loved in high and wide and wide and deep way.
This is Ephesians three. And you notice even in this, Paul says in his powerful prayer that you might know this love that passes knowledge, are knowing that passes knowledge. And I think that's what this is, are knowing that passes knowledge. And actually Paul alludes to this in his opening prayer, in Ephesians one, he says that the eyes of our hearts would be enlightened.
That is a heart knowing. And that is our quest. And so my hope and prayer for you in this little encounter that we've had together, was that there would be a glimpse of that reality for you, as you enter the journey of these next few days for Easter, that there would be a heart knowing of love and joy amidst your trials and your good times, but that this would be activated as we enter. Let me pray for us.
Father, we would like to declare our love for you because you first loved us. Thank you for the sure and secure promises of your love. And thank you for the reality of all that you endured, all that you are to bring us back to you. I pray that in the trial and the challenge and in the story of what you're about to hit to in the cross, that our hearts will also hold both the challenge and the joy that you have given salvation to us.
Thank you so much for this gift, Father, and we thank you in the name of Jesus, our King, Amen.