Our readings this week are Hebrews 9.24–28 and Mark 1.14–20.

Over the last few weeks, we've perhaps become accustomed to hearing the language of Hebrews in reference to High Priests and sacrifices - but there are some chilling echoes when we read it again in the shadow of Remembrance Sunday. The idea of lives being ‘offered again and again’, and blood being offered ‘that is not his own’, and suffering ‘again and again since the foundation of the world’ hits my ears somewhat less triumphantly, and significantly more poignantly, set against a backdrop of warfare and violence.

Our newspapers are too full of stories at the moment of world leaders offering generations of lives, and blood that is not their own, to ideals that too often are. The truly scary thing is that there has never been a time when they weren’t - every conflict is surely terrible enough to be the last, but every act of violence seems to beget another born of revenge, or entitlement, or self-righteous anger...

Occasionally, though, we catch glimpses of moments of violence that lead somewhere else. This little section from Hebrews points us towards one such moment. A bloody, battered, falsely accused god-man hanging on a cross, breathing out his last from a moment of solidarity with our most abject suffering. And with that breath came not threats, promises of retaliation, or a call for an almost certainly justified vengeance - but a plea for forgiveness. A plea that covered not only that moment but every moment that ever was, or is, or is to come, that needs it. A plea that means the judgement handed from the Father to the Son - a judgement that, as this letter reminds us, we will all face - has already been passed. And that judgement turns out not to be one of guilt, but innocence, as every sin died with that man on a hill far away - so that when we stand before him it will be as those saved, as those eagerly waiting for him.

In its reach into the heart and soul of every human being, it’s certainly a unique event in history; but in being a moment of violence that ends in forgiveness, and the promise of reconciliation, it’s not - it’s just far, far too rare. We may not have the power in our hands to end wars, but we do each carry the capacity to make those moments less uncommon, to forgive instead of retaliating; to love instead of hate.

In the years leading up to his death - as we read in Mark - Jesus spent his time inviting others to walk beside him in the way that leads to life instead of death, and to join him in encouraging even more to do the same. In Mark we watch as James and John drop their nets, their literal business, but perhaps also their metaphorical mental trappings and ingrained prejudices and views, in their rush to accept that invitation.

In the years since his death, he hasn't stopped extending that invitation, and you are one of the people he's inviting. Will you share the enthusiasm of James and John? Will you follow them in following him in the ways of peace?