One Day won't last forever

Passion Sunday for me is about being uncomfortable in a comfortable place.  A bolt hole, a place of refuge, a place to go before a difficult encounter.  A favourite cafe.  A bench on a hill.  A place with friends where one can be natural, uninhibited, perhaps.  A place to relax and let the hair down.  A place of calm before the storm.  A place to go running.  A favourite film perhaps that takes us away from reality for a while.  Something to watch and indulge in before returning to important tasks. During Lent I’ve been reflecting each week on the film One Day.  The film has taken us on a journey with two friends whose lives we visit once each year on St. Swithin’s day.  From terrible London flats smelling of onions to awful post university jobs in restaurants and television.  From meetings in France to returning to the family home.  From difficult conversations with parents to distant answer phone messages.  Missed calls and missed opportunities.  From new jobs, to new boyfriends.  From bad jobs to car crash employment.  Terrible live television to all star school plays.  Rows in restaurants to dead end relationships.  Break downs and making up to put downs and pick me ups.  By the end we are left with two people who we know so very well and who ought to be so very right for one another.  They are comfortable with each other, though not always comforting to each other.  Comfortable like an old sofa which has learnt our body shape.  By the end it is being in the sort of place that you might think ought never to come to an end.  Like a favourite book which we put down just before the final chapter because we would rather not finish it off.  But come to an end the story must.  Passion Sunday.  The moment before the final moment.  The calm before the storm.  Gathered with friends in a house sharing a meal together.  We are told that at least Mary, Martha, Lazarus, Judas and Jesus were there.  The comfortable moment is broken as Mary anoints Jesus with nard and Judas complains about the cost of it.  One Day only gives us a day a year, but it is enough to become close.  At the end it leaves us wondering about the missed moments and that we really need to make the most of each moment that we do see.  The Gospel readings are the same in that we only hear a little of the story.  Six days before the passover, we see them gathered together.  A place of preparation.  A time to reflect with friends over a meal, have you ever noticed the meal mentioned before?  Before make their way into Jerusalem.  What else went on at that gathering?  It seems to me that Mary and Martha’s house was a place to gather and plan their strategy.  We hear that Jesus visits this home on at least three occasions.  A friends house would be the ideal place to plan the next move.  To plan the events we are about to remember from Palm Sunday to Easter.  It seems a deliberate attempt was being made to provoke the authorities.  For such an encounter, preparation is perhaps the most important.  Not the twenty years as we see in One Day.  But the point of a comfortable place of refuge is for that space of preparation and if preparation is required, then there ought to be some form of confrontation.    Was that the point of meeting at the house of Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  We hear none of that sat around the meal table with Mary, Martha, Lazarus, Judas and Jesus.  The conversation turns sour as Judas remarks on the perfume and Jesus retorts about his future.  As we prepare to enter into that story at the passover festival, are we left in anticipation of the final moment? Or is the story a little too familiar.  One that perhaps we think we know very well and so read it through quickly.  So this Passion Sunday, I’d like to invite you to dwell with this image of Jesus sat around the table with his friends.  What would we like to know?  What questions would we ask at that table?  Would we be the one to break open the jar of ointment?  What was the smell like?  Was it this event that prompted the writing down of this event, turned into a prophetic moment of Jesus’ final days as he remarks that he will not always be with them.  The moment is gone as quickly as it came, the story moves on to the next moment.  For us, for a while, it is good to be left around that table with the remains of the meal and to consider where we might go after such an encounter.  Do we choose to walk onwards with Jesus to Jerusalem, or choose to remain in the place of safety and comfort?