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Welcome to Westminster Abbey's Lent and Easter reflections.

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On the second Sunday of Lent,

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we begin with the book of Mark, chapter eight,
verses thirty-one to thirty-eight.

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Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man
must undergo great suffering,

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and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests,
and the scribes,

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 and be killed, and after three days rise again.

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He said all this quite openly.

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And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

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But turning and looking at his disciples,
he rebuked Peter and said,

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‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind
not on divine things but on human things.’

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He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them,

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‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves
and take up their cross and follow me.

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For those who want to save their life will lose it,

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and those who lose their life for my sake, and for
the sake of the gospel, will save it.

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For what will it profit them to gain the whole world
and forfeit their life?

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Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?

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Those who are ashamed of me and of my words
in this adulterous and sinful generation,

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of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed

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when he comes in the glory of his Father
with the holy angels.’

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Above the altar in the Lady Chapel,

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two angels present the viewer with a plain
Cross on the south side,

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and a pillar with a crowing cockerel on the north.

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The cockerel has a nice ambiguity;

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reminding us of Peter’s denial of Jesus,

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but also heralding the Day of Resurrection.

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Peter features, again not terribly flatteringly,
in the reading from Mark’s gospel.

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Jesus predicts his own suffering, death, and resurrection,
and Peter is appalled.

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It is often said that we stand to learn more from our failures
than from our successes.

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Peter has just excelled himself in identifying Jesus as the Messiah,

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but within a few verses he is being rebuked
in the strongest possible terms.

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He has failed to understand the significance
of what Jesus is saying

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about his suffering, death and resurrection.

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We might have sympathy with Peter,

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because this is the most difficult thing for
anyone to understand.

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Jesus challenges his disciples to take up their
cross and follow.

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He wants them to approach suffering and death as he did;

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with faith that neither will have the last word.

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He says, in fact, that this is the only way to have life,

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now and at the final cock-crow.

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Lord God,

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whose blessed Son our Saviour

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gave his back to the smiters

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and did not hide his face from shame:

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give us grace to endure the sufferings of this present time

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with sure confidence in the glory that shall be revealed;

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through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen