Crater life

Sitting at home surrounded by silence apart from the hum of the laptop and the rain on the windows, I'm decompressing after preaching at church for the first time in 18 months.

It was a different experience to the last time I spoke there in October 2024. That felt more emotional as, preaching for the first time since my diagnosis, I outlined our cancer journey in some detail. Today, I used Palm Sunday as a diving board before sharing a bit about how we're finding life in the crater that we've learnt to inhabit after our world was blown up in 2023.

The moment of quiet across the church hall after I finished speaking felt apt and powerful. Sometimes we just need to honour that sort of silence, which is still lingering with me now.

During my talk, I thanked those who have stepped into our crater with us to grow saplings of hope. That includes many of you reading this who weren't with us at church today. I can't imagine how much harder things would be without your love, support and general distraction.

You can listen to my sermon here or the text is below, minus some improvised rambling;)

Palm Sunday Sermon

Good morning. It’s great to be here with you again. For those who don’t know me, I’m Pete.  Lisa, the kids and I have been part of Life Church since our youngest son Reuben was a baby, and he was 18 last week, so that’s some time! 

I last preached almost 18 months ago when I was then 18 months into a journey with incurable, inoperable cancer. So, doing the maths, it’s now almost three years since I was diagnosed with Stage 4 metastatic bowel cancer.  

When I last preached, my cancer had stabilised and I was off treatment. This respite from treatment continued for another year, which was great. Then, last autumn, a biopsy showed the cancer has spread into a small area in my liver. So, for the past five months I’ve been on a new mixture of targeted drug treatment and chemotherapy to try and contain my cancer again.  

I’ll talk a bit more about how this impacts life shortly. But first, on Palm Sunday, let’s turn to Mark’s description of the events of that day 2,000 years ago.  

Mark 11 

As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples, 2 saying to them, ‘Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 3 If anyone asks you, “Why are you doing this?” say, “The Lord needs it and will send it back here shortly.”’ 

 4 They went and found a colt outside in the street, tied at a doorway. As they untied it, 5 some people standing there asked, ‘What are you doing, untying that colt?’ 6 They answered as Jesus had told them to, and the people let them go. 7 When they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks over it, he sat on it. 8 Many people spread their cloaks on the road, while others spread branches they had cut in the fields. 9 Those who went ahead and those who followed shouted, 

‘Hosanna!’ 

‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ 

10 ‘Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!’ 

‘Hosanna in the highest heaven!’ 

11 Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple courts. He looked around at everything, but since it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve. 

This is a famous passage which many of us know from growing up in church - with its vivid images of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey while the crowds shout and spread palm branches in front of him. It feels like a celebration. 

It was the beginning of Passover Week, the most sacred week of the Jewish year. Jerusalem was, at this point, under the rule of the Roman Empire. I’d like us to briefly ponder the significance and symbolism of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem in this way at that time, in the first century. 

This is something that is laid out by Marcus Borg and Dominic Crossan in their book The Last Week. Borg and Crossan explain how there were in fact not one but TWO processions into Jerusalem that day. 

Every year on that day, the Roman governor of Judea would lead a military procession on horseback into the city. The governor at this time was Pontius Pilate. His military procession on horseback was to prevent any trouble or uprisings in Jerusalem during Passover, and to reinforce the power of Rome. 

Jesus would have known about this annual Roman procession. He would have deliberately timed his entry, from the other side of the city, on the same day to coincide with it. But Jesus’ procession was different. Whereas the imperial procession would have been an awe-inspiring and fearsome display of military might, Jesus took his cues from the Old Testament

book of Zechariah.  

Zechariah 9  

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! 

    Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! 

See, your king comes to you, 

    righteous and victorious, 

lowly and riding on a donkey, 

    on a colt, the foal of a donkey. 

10 I will take away the chariots from Ephraim 

    and the war-horses from Jerusalem, 

    and the battle-bow will be broken. 

He will proclaim peace to the nations. 

    His rule will extend from sea to sea 

    and from the River to the ends of the earth. 

This ruler processed not on a war-horse but on a donkey. It was a “lowly” procession in which weapons were broken and this king, on a donkey, would proclaim peace. 

The contrasts between these two processions – happening at the same time – were stark. Pilate’s procession of soldiers in a massive display of military might and power proclaiming the power of the Roman Empire - versus Jesus’ procession of rural peasants proclaiming the peaceful kingdom of God. Jesus deliberately set up this confrontation - knowing that it would lead to his death at the hands of this empire.

This Palm Sunday, Jesus asks me, asks us: “Which procession are you in? Are you in the procession that blesses power and might and dominance? Or are you in the procession of peace and solidarity with the lowly?”  

It’s ultimately a choice between the empire’s path of ascent and Jesus’ path of descent. 

Jesus’ path of descent is not the normal path, it goes against the flow, and it’s hard. But it’s the key to life and to accessing the Kingdom of God. 

Descent can be a deliberate choice, like climbing down some stairs. Or it can be something that happens to you, like being pushed down some stairs! We will all experience times of descent – losing a job, a marriage falling apart, losing a child or a parent, or getting a life-changing illness.  

Jesus talks about descent, about loss, and dying, a lot. In John 12 he says:

24 Very truly I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. 25 Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. 

In Luke 9 Jesus says: 

23 Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 

Jesus’ death and resurrection are not a one-time thing Jesus did FOR us, in our place. Death and resurrection are a way of life, a pattern and direction of living that Jesus calls us to join him in daily. We, like those on the Palm Sunday procession, are invited to walk with Jesus towards death and resurrection. And that - according to Jesus - starts with “losing our life.” 

Jesus really is for losers. And Lent, which this week we’re coming to the climax of, is a great time to be reminded of that. As American author Kate Bowler puts it, Lent “is the season where God is on the losing team.”

Our family path of loss, of descent, over the past three years has been tough. In the same week I was diagnosed with cancer, Lisa found out she was being made redundant from a job she loved.  More loss.  

It’s like our world was hit by a meteorite, or blown up by a missile, and we were left in the big crater it left. I can’t begin to explain how hard this has been at times. Seeing hopes, plans, a sense of future, just blown up - and being left sat in the debris wondering “what just happened?!” There have been several dark nights of the soul where God seems far away.

Christian cliches – like “everything happens for a reason” or “don’t worry, God is in control” - just feel like further stabs to the heart. 

Three years later, we are still in the crater. My cancer is still life-threatening and incurable. A lot of days are just about ‘getting through.’ The temptation is to try and scramble out of the crater and look for life elsewhere. Or to close our eyes and deny the crater exists.   

But instead, we’re slowly learning that the way of descent is about patiently waiting for new, unexpected, life to appear IN the crater. Like flowers that somehow poke through the cracks in concrete, or bird song in the middle of tower blocks. Or like these snowdrops that appeared in a graveyard near our home at the end of winter. Examples of little beams of light, of resurrection – often experienced for the first time. 

Some of you might also be experiencing – or have had a recent experience of – crater life. Floored by grief, or weighed down by depression, or stuck in family conflict, or not able to pay the mortgage....  The temptation is to see this as failure, to be ashamed, or to be unable to vocalise or admit the crater you are in. But Jesus is on the losing team. He is in the crater with you. And he invites us to climb into each other’s craters to look for signs of life and hope that we can gently, slowly cultivate together.  

Many of you have climbed into our crater with us. You’ve helped us shift the rubble, rake the stones out, and plant seeds which have grown into fragile saplings of hope. You’ve watered our crater garden with your tears and cooked or bought us meals and made us laugh. You’ve not denied our crater exists but also not been afraid of descending into it either. Thank you. 

The bible is pretty clear about crater life. Many of its best characters regularly inhabited craters. Read any of the dozens of Psalms of lament or most of the Old Testament prophets. Read Job or Lamentations. Read the gospels. 

Pete Greig, the founder of the 24/7 prayer movement, spoke about this in a recent Lent reflection on unanswered prayer. He explained the ongoing serious illness of his wife Sammy and how the church often struggles to accept or talk about the reality of unfixed human pain.  He concluded: “The church is less honest than the bible.”  

Many of us were brought up quoting these famous verses from the book of Jeremiah:  

“For I know the plans I have for you.” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11). 

I encourage you to read the rest of Jeremiah – or even just the rest of chapter 29 – for context. As biblical scholar Pete Enns puts it: “Jeremiah’s quoted promises are embedded in catastrophe.”  

God’s people had been humiliated in military defeat, captured and exiled to Babylon. Other prophets are telling the exiled Israelites that God would rescue them. But Jeremiah says the opposite. He told them they would be exiled for 70 years – stuck in a foreign land away from their home. But in this exile, in their crater life, he encourages them to “build houses and settle down, plant gardens and eat what they produce”. He tells them to get married, have kids and to do their best to contribute to the city in which they now lived. And then, only after 70 years, when many of the original exiles had died, these promises for “a hope and a future” would come to pass as they joyfully returned home from exile.  

Writing about this, the late Old Testament theologian Walter Brueggemann, says: “The riddle and insight of biblical faith is the awareness that only anguish leads to life, only grieving leads to joy, and only embraced endings permit new beginnings.” 

Speaking about Easter, Brueggemann adds: “The power and rule of God are established only after the fullness of dark Friday, never before. The hope is not spoken too soon.”  

You can’t hurry hope. And you can’t experience newness and joy until you have grieved. This is why Jesus says: “Blessed are those mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4) 

Holy Week – which begins today with Palm Sunday – invites us along this path, from sorrow to joy, from death to resurrection. 

If you don’t mind, as I draw this to a close, I’d like us to look a few days ahead to Good Friday.  

During the early months of my diagnosis, Jesus’ words on the cross helped me to voice the struggle and confusion I was feeling. This was because of their honesty and their trust. 

On the cross, Jesus experienced the howl of crater life, of separation from his Father. As he hung on the cross, he cried out a quote from Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). It was a cry of abandonment. 

And yet, as he breathed his last, he also spoke words of trust in the Father: “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46). This was a cry of reunion. 

As we sit here now, I’d like to dwell on these two prayers of Jesus for a moment. If you will, please open your hands and look at your palms.  

In the left palm, look at the lines, creases and marks. As you notice these, think about your disappointments, your pain, the things you regret, loved ones you have lost, or the crater that you might be in today. Pray with Jesus: “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” 

Now, look at your right palm. Try and spot the veins that carry blood and life through your body. Think about the things, the people, that bring you life and hope, joy and laughter. And trusting your life in all its fullness to God, pray with Jesus: “Into your hands I commit my Spirit.”