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Love Set Free: Meditations on Christ's Passion
Love Set Free: Meditations on Christ's Passion
Love Set Free: Meditations on Christ's Passion
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Love Set Free: Meditations on Christ's Passion

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We think of love as being selfless and unsullied, yet it is often mixed up with other conflicting emotions. These short meditations on the Passion narratives in John’s Gospel show how love as we often understand it must die in order to be reborn as love set free.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJan 3, 2013
ISBN9781848253780
Love Set Free: Meditations on Christ's Passion

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    Love Set Free - Martin L. Smith

    Love Set Free

    Love Set Free

    Meditations on Christ’s Passion

    Martin L. Smith

    canterbury_logo.jpg

    © Martin L. Smith 1998, 2011

    First published in 2011 by the Canterbury Press Norwich

    Editorial office

    13–17 Long Lane,

    London, ECIA 9PN, UK

    Canterbury Press is an imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Ltd (a registered charity)

    13A Hellesdon Park Road, Norwich,

    Norfolk, NR6 5DR, UK

    www.canterburypress.co.uk

    First published in the US by Cowley Publications 1998

    All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.

    The Author has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this Work

    Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

    British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

    A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

    978 1-84825-100-7

    Originated by the Manila Typesetting Company

    Printed and bound in Great Britain by

    CPI Bookmarque, Croydon, Surrey

    To Nicholas John Romans in friendship

    Contents

    Introduction
    1 Embodiment
    2 Vulnerability
    3 Intimacy
    4 Desire
    5 Union
    6 Silence
    Sources

    Introduction

    I gave a series of meditations on the passion according to Saint John in 1997 during the three-hour Good Friday service at the renowned Trinity Church, Boston. When they were issued as a book, Love Set Free, in the following year, they were welcomed by a wide readership as a resource for prayer and deep reflection on the meaning of the Cross of Christ for individuals and groups. It is a great joy to offer this new edition for a wider public.

    It used to be the convention that the addresses in this kind of Good Friday service should focus on the ‘seven last words’ of Jesus from the cross, gathered from all four Gospels. Instead of following this tradition, I chose to lead the worshippers in meditation through the passion narrative of a single Gospel, the Gospel of John. One reason was that, at that time, I belonged to the Society of St John the Evangelist, a religious order whose spirituality is rooted in the fourth Gospel and whose members frequently draw on its riches in retreats and preaching. In addition, I also wanted to be more faithful in meditative preaching to one of the most significant advances in biblical interpretation of the twentieth century.

    In recent decades scholars have become sharply aware of the distinctive character of each of the Gospels. In the past Christians have tended, usually unconsciously but sometimes deliberately, to underplay the differences in style and content among the Gospels and to blend them together. In the early centuries writers produced harmonies of the Gospels, composite works that wove stories and sayings from all four Gospels into one narrative. The same instincts were at work in Christian art, storytelling, preaching, liturgy, drama and theology, so that by now this blending of the four sources has become second nature to us. For example, even though strict examination shows that the stories of Jesus’ birth in Luke and Matthew are really different traditions, rather than elements that simply slot together into a whole, Christmas devotion in all its expressions quite happily combines these alternative traditions. In

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