You could say this apricot has had quite a season. Scopes, scans, needles, and machines have mapped out parts of my inner terrain I never knew existed. They’ve been photographed, examined, and declared officially mine. And I am weary of it. I have had to be brave, though at times that bravery has felt thin. If someone offered an injection that would let me drift into blissful oblivion while eager hands and instruments did their work, I would gladly roll up a sleeve.

I used to tell parishioners facing treatment that they were brave. They often looked back at me with a kind of polite indifference. Perhaps they were naturally courageous. This apricot, however, freely admits to being a medical coward.

Courage and bravery are Godly things. Jesus was never caged by opinion or fear of offence. In these last Sundays of Lent, we see him speak openly with a Samaritan woman of the “5 husbands”, heal a blind man on the sabbath, and call Lazarus from the tomb — all actions guaranteed to scandalise the authorities. But his courage is not swagger or defiance. It is the courage of Love: the willingness to risk ridicule, rejection, and misunderstanding for the sake of another. To be seen with the gossiped-about. To touch the unclean. To lift up those judged as sinners. All “rejects,” all loved, all restored.

So does this kind of bravery help my medical cowardice?

Perhaps not in the way I once imagined. Jesus’ courage was outward-facing — a love that stepped toward others. But there is another kind of courage in his story too: the courage to be vulnerable, to be held, to be ministered to. The courage of Gethsemane, where even he trembled. The courage of allowing others to care for him.

That is the courage that speaks to me now.

Because showing up for scans and scopes when every fibre of me wants to flee is its own quiet bravery. Letting others tend to my fragile apricot self is a kind of trust. And admitting fear — instead of pretending to be naturally courageous — may be the most honest and human courage of all.

So yes, the bravery of Jesus helps.