Roads of Repentance.

Dear friends,

Striding Edge – on the Ullswater side of Helvellyn - is not your easy Sunday afternoon ramble: a tortuously narrow rocky path, with a steep crumbling shale fell on either side. I love walking and high places, but have no appetite for danger or taking stupid risks. But I did do Striding Edge forty-odd  years ago, gasping to keep up with Dad. I was 21, he was 60, very unsuitably shod, me in sandals, Dad in his old falling-apart suede shoes and with our carrier bag picnic in one hand. But he was as sure footed as a mountain goat. “If I can keep up with him,” I remember thinking, “I might just get off this wretched ridge alive!”  We both did.

Roads, Lord, roads Lord: how hard my road can be!

Take me by the hand, and walk this road with me.

As we fall into stride with Jesus during the weeks of Lent this year we are treating it as a journey. We’ll be visiting some of the places that figure in the ministry of Jesus, from Nazareth to Jerusalem, and reflecting on our own spiritual journey on the way.

We have been enjoying Around the World in 80 Faiths, Revd Peter Owen Jones’s amusing, alarming, whistle-stop religious world tour. It has involved him in baptisms, exorcisms, animal sacrifices, snake handling, hallucinogenic drugs, fire and blood and much else. On a special holy day in Latin America, pilgrims “walk” the last miles to the shrine of the Virgin Mary on their knees, as a mark of repentance. It looked extremely painful - probably meant to be. Lent is not just a scenic ramble. It’s a road of repentance. “If anyone wants to come with me,” Jesus said, “he must forget self, take up his cross, and follow me.”

“Love is never having to say you’re sorry.” I wonder. We’ve heard rather a lot of “sorries” recently: Jonathan Ross, Prince Harry, Carol Thatcher, and from very rich bankers who have made  a lot of  other people very poor, and remain..very rich. What price saying sorry, if it doesn’t change anything – or anyone?

Repentance is a good word. It means turning round, turning away, making a change. Like the rich young man who wanted to be a disciple of Jesus, but was told to give away all he had, then follow him. It’s the toughest story in the book. Not even fundamentalists take it literally, and no more do we. He went away sad, because he was very rich. It seems there’s more to repentance than just being sad – or sorry.

There is a lovely vision in Isaiah chapter 35 which puts us back on the road with Jesus: 

There will be a highway there called the Road of Holiness. No sinner will ever travel that road; no fools will mislead those who follow it. They will reach Jerusalem with gladness, singing and shouting for joy. They will be happy forever, forever free from sorrow and grief.

If we can just keep up with him, we won’t be protected from risk - or excused the need for repentance: - but we’ll find him sure footed enough to lead the way to life.

With every blessing,

David