Attentiveness | John 12:1-8
This week we Matt Maslin, Priest Assistant at the Cardboard Cathedral preaching for us.
Reflecting on that passage from John 12 where Jesus is anointed at Bethany, we see Mary being fully present to Jesus. She is fully present to her embodied life and conscious of Christ and what he is doing.
The challenge for us is that the world we live in makes it really hard to be attentive to Christ. Throughout history, Christians have often done this in two ways; through practices of abstinence and engagement, both of these things help foster our attentiveness to Christ.
This passage also calls us to question our understanding and our attitude to the ‘poor’. As Christian Activist Shane Claibourne says; the problem with wealthy Christians isn’t that they don’t care about the poor, it’s that they don’t know the poor.
We are called by this passage from John, to be present to Jesus. But it also calls on us to be present to the poor. To have the poor with us. To embrace the awkwardness, the discomfort, of all that it brings up in us, when we are attentive to and truly present to the other.
John 12:1-8
Prayers & Psalms
Each Sunday, prior to the sermon we have created a space for more voices from our community; One of our children read a Psalm from ‘Psalms for Young Children’ by Marie-Hélène Delval.
Followed by a prayer, shared by a member of our congregation, focused around what's happening in the world, our country and our community. We have included some of these on our Prayers Page for you to revisit and reflect on the words that they shared.