The source of the River Thames in Gloucestershire is a muddy hole in wet times, marked by an almost indecipherable stone tablet but adorned by three wooden signs. The Thames Path will lead a walker to Woolwich and then to the sea.
Throughout Lent, I have been reflecting on the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, his resistance and relief as the threat passed. This, however, is Holy Week, and as today Christians recall the Last Supper, we know as well that Jesus was, on the day we know as Maundy Thursday, about to face an even greater trial. The temptations to derail God’s plan before Jesus’s ministry began feel tame beside the agony in the garden, as Jesus has more of the same but with the intensity settings turned right up. Everyone was after him, and friends would shortly melt away.
As we paddled about, trying to pick a path across the boggy meadow and looking for a definable stream to develop, my mind wandered to the Essex coast, where the river becomes an estuary and then synonymous with the North Sea, or is it the English Channel.
John Keble’s hymn, Sun of my soul, concludes in its final verse:
Come near and bless us when we wake,
ere through the world our way we take,
till in the ocean of thy love
we lose ourselves in heaven above.
Whether you are at the beginning of your journey of faith, somewhere along the path between the indefinable beginning and the ocean, what began with one temptation after another in the wilderness was consummated at the cross, as Jesus gave himself wholly to undam an ocean of love for all people of faith in all time.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, we cannot imagine what you felt on the day we mark here. We cannot understand how you endured what you did, nor work out why you did it for us. There is no rationale, because you are love, unmerited love that flows for us all. We rejoice! Amen.