Stir up Sunday

As a child I loved Stir up Sunday...we all got round the kitchen table to stir up the Christmas pudding and make the Christmas cake... and my family continued that tradition, making a really large cake to be stirred by the children at church, mixing in together all kinds of coloured fruit from cherries to dried apricots and raisins, remembering all the countries their parents had come from: all over Africa, the Caribbean, and parts of Europe as well...the symbolism of us all being stirred up together was not lost when everyone enjoyed a small slice of that cake on Christmas Day !

So why am I showing you this painting ?!

Well, this Sunday is now called “Christ the King”...and instead of a King with bejewelled crown & costly robes, the reading today is about the Crucifixion...of Jesus, somehow amidst the pain & mockery being able to look at his persecutors and say “Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing”... Luke 23 v 33 - 43...

c.Janet Driver: ‘Indigo Crucifixion...”Father forgive”

...stirring up...bringing people together to celebrate their diversity... or seeing people being torn apart...separated by walls...

perhaps we need to be stirred up by the pain & sorrow in the world, and in our own country...
maybe only then, as we begin to heal the divisions and forgive...