Two weeks ago, I invited people to think of 4 words we would use to describe Jesus, and then how these words also described God. Last week we began lent and entered with Jesus into the wilderness. I suggested that for Jesus this was a time of testing his identity as the Beloved Son of God, and how he would live that out. For us it is a time to prayerfully reflect on who are we as the people of God, the God we name using those four words. How do those four words apply to us? What might we need to let go of, fast from, to be made in the image of this God? And what might we need to take up? The gospel writers understood Jesus – the Beloved Son, to be the way we know God and the means by which this covenant of renewal would be fulfilled. But the kingdom of God would not be established by force – that was the test of the wilderness, and is the test in Mark 8. In Caesarea Philippi – a place build by the Greek conquerors to honour their god Pan at the source of the Jordan, and then...
