Colourful Dreamer

  5 th Sunday in Lent- Year A - 2026 Readings: Psalm -                         Psalm: 130           First Reading -            Ezekiel 37:1-14 Second Reading -        Romans 8:6-11 Gospel -                       John 11:1-45   What I want to say: I wonder how we are at this moment. - How many of us feeling like field of dry bones in Ezekiel – in need of breath of God? We are reminded by our gospel reading (John 11:1-45) that with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus we are invited to know Jesus as the “resurrection and the life.” Explore what this life might look like in our struggling church. What I want to happen: Where do we meet Jesus’s breathing lif...

Jesus weeps for his friends in their grief. He weeps at the death of Lazarus. He weeps as he stands on the edge. To raise Lazarus will change everything. He will deliberately begin his journey into his end – our journey to the cross. hree years ago everything changed for us, for better and for worse. Since Covid hit the news and then our shores we lived fear and grief. In this time war has erupted in Ukraine which has further exacerbated the western world’s Covid induced cost of living crisis. This year we have endured flooding and cyclones and watched people’s lives being inundated. It almost feels like we have stood at the cross for a long time. Jesus continues to weep. In this Sundays gospel reading (John 11:1-45) Jesus says that he is the resurrection and the life. Too often we drop “life” out of this and just read “resurrection” as refereeing to something happening later after we die. But this is all about now. Mary, Martha and Lazarus are invited to live life now in God’s image...

This week churches around the world are marking the end of another liturgical year and celebrating Christ the King or the Reign of Christ Sunday. For us it is also Aotearoa Sunday, which really reminds us of how slow we were in this land to live out the reign of Christ with ngā iwi ō Aotearoa and the first Anglican Church in this land. And it is Stir-up Sunday – all of this stirs us up, I hope. What is the deal with Christ the King or Reign of Christ Sunday? One of the people I read says it is a day to affirm God’s reign over empires that do not hunger and thirst for God’s righteousness. It is a day to remind ourselves that the reign of Christ as described in the Beatitudes and the Sermon on the Mount is what we are invited to work toward. And no political entity can ever bring that about.   As we end our church year this Sunday is an opportunity for us as God’s people to look back and ask how did we the church live out God’s reign, what have we done to further the kingdom of G...