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Viewpoint from Rev Andrew King 31/03/2023
 Rev Andrew King
Co-Superintendent of the Norfolk Broads Circuit 14/10
Minister of Acle, Fleggburgh, Freethorpe, Lingwood and Thurne
Dear Friends
This week we enter what Christian's call "Holy Week" (from Palm Sunday 2nd April to Easter Day 9th April), which is a time to reflect upon Jesus' last week on earth culminating in his death on Good Friday and also the Resurrection on Easter Day. The events recorded in the Bible sadly remind us that even though we live 2000 years on, our behaviour towards each other remains just as shocking and brutal. For example, we have entered the second year of the war in Ukraine, and as a Christian I have struggled with the way some aspects of the Church have tried to justify this ghastly war, especially the Russian Orthodox Church
 This should not surprise us as people throughout the centuries have used religion and ideology (just look at Nazism and Stalin’s version of Soviet Communism) to justify, what the theologian Walter Wink calls “the myth of redemptive violence” that some bloodshed is needed to create ultimately a better more peaceful world
For Christians the myth of redemptive violence is shattered by an event that took place on the first Good Friday when Jesus died on the Cross. When Peter confessed you are the Christ (the Messiah) he misunderstood what that meant for Jesus. He thought people would now accept Him without the need for Jesus (or Peter!) to suffer; and many in first-century Palestine saw a Messiah in military and political terms as a sort of king or warlord who would against all odds (because God was with him!) defeat the might of the world’s superpower of the day who controlled their land, the Roman Empire
 That was why Jesus forbade his disciples at the time to tell anybody else that he was the Messiah. Instead Jesus understood his ministry (his life’s purpose – in less religious language) as being the Son of Man. “That the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and teachers of the law (the leaders both secular and religious) and that he must be killed and after three days rise again” (Mark 8 verses 31). Rather than take life to achieve his goal, his life would have to be taken to bring healing and redemption to the world. The Son of Man in doing so identifies himself with us
Jesus’ death on Good Friday is an act of peace and reconciliation for the world, bringing peace and reconciliation both between God and us, and with each other
Christians are called to be “Easter People”, that means, to be ambassadors for God’s heavenly kingdom in actively seek Peace and Reconciliation through non-violence here on earth through our lives
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