The Power of Showing Up…

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anxious, beauty, church, comfort, expectation, gift, God, grace, Holy Week, kids, nervous, pilgrimage

Photo credit:  Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly; reuse with permission only

Most of you know that Holy Week is my favorite week of the year.  I love the way the week feels like a virtual pilgrimage, walking us from Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem, to his last meal with the disciples, to his trial and crucifixion, to his death and resurrection.  Each daily liturgy gives us the opportunity to experience that journey in unique, meaningful ways.  Knowing my passion for this week, my family is gracious every year with my absences from family life that week.  But this year, my husband had an evening work conflict he could not miss, and so I had some options for that night’s service.  I could skip the service – I was not serving that night, and was not physically needed.  I could hire a baby sitter, using some date-night reserves.  Or I could take the girls with me to the quiet service with long periods of silence, knowing how difficult it would be for them after a long day of school.

After much waffling, I decided to try bringing the kids with me.  I really wanted to be there for my own spiritual journey, and I hoped the kids might get something out of the experience.  I prepped the kids endlessly so that they would respect the periods of silence and the experience of those attending.  All in all, for their ages, the girls did amazingly well.  There were certainly a few too many wiggles and distracting noises, but for the most part, they were well-behaved.  I, on the other hand, was a ball of nervous energy.  I know how much I have reveled in the silence of that service and I really did not want to ruin that experience for anyone else.  I found myself so anxious about it, that I realized I didn’t get to experience the service in the way I traditionally do.

But here’s what did happen.  In the midst of trying to prevents disagreements, and minimize crinkling of papers, I was still able to sing and pray the words of the songs.  In the midst of desperately trying to keep kids at whisper-levels, I was able to catch snippets of scripture that hung in my ears and mind.  In the midst of impatient children, I was able to hear my children singing along and see my kids embrace participation – whether in lighting candles, handing out bulletins, or praying at the altar.

Here’s the thing about Holy Week services:  there are a lot of them, and you might not think you are mentally or spiritually ready for them.  You might be curious about some of the services, but are not sure your kids could handle them.  Or you might be thinking you are too tired this week to get anything out of the services.  No matter what is going on with you this week, I promise that if you can get yourself to Church, God will find you.  It may not be in the way you expect, you may not be able to be present as fully as you like, and you might not be convinced it is worth it.  But I promise you, if you figure out a way to get to Church this week, God will break through the chaos of life and whisper a word of comfort, and give you a glimpse into God’s grace and beauty.  My guess is that if you open yourself up to the liturgies of this week, you might just figure out how to carry those lessons into the rest of the Church year too.  The community is gathered this week and welcomes you, wherever you are on your journey, and especially when you do not feel like you have much to offer.  Holy Week is a gift the Church offers to you.  Your invitation is to just show up.

Photo credit:  Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly; reuse with permission only

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On Listening with New Ears…

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adjust, children, ears, God, hear, Holy Week, humanity, Jesus, listen, passion narrative, powerful, teach, voices

Every year on Palm Sunday, most Churches read the passion narrative.  We read the story from the night before Jesus’ death, all the way through the cross and the sealed tomb.  Because the story is so long (2-3 pages of text at least), many churches read the narrative as if it is a script, with parts assigned, to break up the reading.  This practice helps keep our attention, but also helps us hear the story differently each year.  As someone who has both listened to passion narratives and participated in them, I know how powerful the experience can be.  I will never forget the first time I was asked to read Jesus’ part.  There is something indescribable about having Jesus’ words in your mouth.  Likewise, hearing other people read parts can be powerful.  Imagine hearing the most faithful church elder say the words of Judas or denying Peter; or imagine how a well-placed pause by the narrator can make you hear differently.

As a priest, knowing the power of the voice in the passion narrative, I work hard to make sure the voices people hear on Palm Sunday are moving for them too.  Of course, I am sometimes limited by the available readers, but whenever I get the list of potential readers, I work hard to create synergy – looking for a mixture of male and female voices, looking for variations in age where possible, and also looking for visuals, like varieties in the physical attributes of the readers.  This year, I happened to have some children and youth offer to read and tried to find unexpected roles for them too.  What I did not anticipate was how powerful their voices would be for me.

You see, this past weekend, children and youth from all over the country and globe took to the streets because they feel afraid and threatened, and they are frustrated that adults are either not listening or are unwilling to find a way forward to make them feel safe.  Now, I know some of us may disagree with some of their proposed actions, but if nothing else, this past weekend made me feel like our inability to listen respectfully to one another and work for change was exposed.  Our children this weekend drew back the curtain on our ugly secret – that we are not acting as agents of love in the public sphere – on either side.

Feeling raw and exposed by Sunday, imagine the wave of emotion that hits when a nine-year old reads the part of Jesus to our church in the passion narrative.  Having a child say, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough!” shook me to the core.  As I listened to his clear, steady voice, I began to not only hear the passion differently, but also began to realize that Jesus is speaking to us every day, with voices we may not expect, but voices that speak truth – raw, painful, beautiful truth.  As we continue our Holy Week walk this week, I invite you to listen to the Jesuses speaking to you in your everyday life.  What does God need you to hear this week?  How might hearing a voice that says something you oppose sound differently if you listen with holy ears?  Adjusting your ears will certainly change how you experience Holy Week, but more importantly, adjusting our ears might help to change how we experience humanity in this moment.  Those who have ears, listen.

Photo credit:  Picture taken at Hickory Neck Episcopal Church by John Rothnie, March 25, 2018.  Permission required for reuse.

Homily – Mark 11.1-11, 14.1-15.47, PS, YB, March 25, 2018

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complicit, God, Holy Week, homily, Jesus, love, Mary, Palm Sunday, participate, physicality, relationship, senses, Sermon, silence, sin, tomb, uncomfortable, visceral

When I did my AmeriCorps year of service at a food bank in North Carolina, the warehouse manager was from Liberia.  Eugene and I talked about a lot of things, but one favorite topic was the church.  When Holy Week rolled around, I remember Eugene telling me about Good Friday in Liberia.  On the way to church on Good Friday in Liberia, the children lead a procession.  The children carry an effigy of Jesus, and all the children take turns flogging the effigy of Jesus all the way to the church.  I remember being mortified when I learned about this tradition, wondering who in their right mind would invite children to participate in worship in such a gruesome, grotesque way.

The weird thing is, this mortifying tradition is not all that dissimilar to the physicality of our own worship today.  Today, we invite everyone to vigorously wave palms hailing Jesus Christ the king; then we have voices from our parishioners narrate the text, sometimes taking roles of people like Judas, Pilate, or denying Peter; and if that were not bad enough, then we put the words, “Crucify him!” in bold in our bulletins, reminding everyone to shout the words together.  The practice is so visceral that I often notice many people resist participating.  I cannot tell you how many photos I had to scroll through to find a good Hickory Neck Palm Sunday processional photo this year.  In what is supposed to be replica of joyously welcoming the Messiah, Hickory Neck-ers rarely take more than one palm, we hold them upright so as not to seem too zealous, and forget about a smile or look of excited victory.  I do not know if we feel silly or if we know all too well what comes next so we resist, but we struggle to engage in even the joyful part of today’s liturgy.

And I have rarely found an Episcopal Church anywhere who wholeheartedly joins in the chant, “Crucify him!”  We are so uncomfortable with that part of the liturgy.  More often people do not say the words at all, or they embarrassingly mumble the words.  Sometimes I see people tense up if those beside them enthusiastically participate too much.

Our resistance is futile though.  As if we hesitantly wave palms, or if we stay silent while the crowd demands we crucify Christ, we somehow avoid complicity with this humiliating atrocity.  But we are complicit with sin every day, in the most heinous ways.  We are complicit as our neighbors decide between housing, health care, and child care costs.  We are complicit as racism creates separate, unequal experiences for our citizens.  We are complicit as our God invites into a new way and we say “no.”

That is why the church offers us this very tactile, primal service today.  We wave the palms with fervor today because we remember the ways in which we see in part – the ways in which we manage to follow Christ, even if we do not understand what Christ is doing, even if we do not catch how Jesus inverts his triumphal entry on the back of a young donkey.  We fully participate in the words of today’s passion in order to remind us to “stop abusing the image of God revealed in the dignity of every human being.”[i]  And then we let those final words soak in today, as we stand with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses, silently at the tomb, seeing where Christ’s body is laid.

What we do in worship today is actually the perfect entry into this most Holy Week in Church.  Now some priests will tell you that we combine the liturgy of the palms with the passion narrative today because the designers of the Prayer Book knew that many of you would come on Palm Sunday, skip the days of worship during Holy Week, and then show up on Easter Sunday without having walked from this triumphal entry into Jerusalem through the cross and tomb.  And maybe they were right (though I know most of you rearranged your schedules this week for Holy Week services).  But more importantly, even if you walk through this journey with Christ this week, the reason we pair the Palms with the Passion is that we could never go from the Palms to the Resurrection without the connection to the cross.  The triumphal entry into Jerusalem makes no sense without the cross; the irony of that festive procession only makes sense when you are standing silently and bleakly at the tomb.

I know today is uncomfortable.  I know today is confusing, and oddly visceral, and may even be a bit overwhelming.  But today, and perhaps all this week if you are able to join us, allow the senses to take over.  Allow the sights, and smells, and touches, and sounds, and tastes to overwhelm you this week.  Allow the ache of standing with Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses to sink deep into the same body that has waved palms and shouted awful things today.  Because only when our senses are that overwhelmed are we able to see that the cross is not about suffering and death, but rather is about a relationship that holds.  Only then will we find a “love stronger than death, that can withstand whatever the forces of evil do against [love], and that can hold suffering even as [love] struggles to alleviate [suffering].”[ii]  What feels like an empty, guilty ache today instead becomes a sign of how God overcomes terror, enfolds us in Life, and dwells with us forever.[iii]  But until then, stand with the Marys and with one another at the tomb in silence.

[i] Michael Battle, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 182.

[ii] Margaret A. Farley, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 182.

[iii] Farley, 184.

A Gift from the Church…

Tags

Christ, church, diversity, Easter, gift, God, Holy Week, Jesus, liturgy, music, pilgrimage, powerful, variety, worship

Photo credit:  https://blueeyedennis-siempre.blogspot.com/2011/04/update-holy-week-poems.html

As a former United Methodist and preacher’s kid turned Episcopal priest, I have a pretty wide range of what I find liturgically inspiring.  I was raised on what I would call the “Ol’ Timey Hymns,” I discovered praise and guitar music in college, I found the joy of call-and-response preaching and participatory music at a primarily African-American church where I was a member, I discovered Anglican choral music at the Cathedral that sponsored me for ordination, I was immersed in “high church” worship during seminary where my alb constantly smelled like incense, I discovered the joys of a paid professional choir who could chant choral matins, and I have served in churches with praise bands.  I have been known to crank up the gospel channel on Sunday mornings on my way to church before listening to traditional chant during the services later that morning.

So imagine my joy when I found a church that seemed to capture a good portion of the variety and breadth of my own liturgical experience.  The diversity of worship at Hickory Neck reveals an embarrassment of riches.  We are so blessed with a variety of liturgical and music leaders that I still do not have a favorite service.  Of course, fitting that diversity into one Sunday can be tricky.  That is one of the millions of reasons why I love Holy Week so much, especially at Hickory Neck!  Over the course of a week, we celebrate Palm Sunday, we lead a quiet compline digitally via Facebook live, our Praise Band leads us in a contemplative Taize service, our Congregational Choir and local ecumenical clergy lead us in a healing service, our Choral Scholars lead us in a beautiful foot washing and altar-stripping service, we retreat into quiet on Good Friday midday, but then our youth lead us in a powerful Stations of the Cross service that night, our liturgical team puts together an amazing Easter Vigil, and then the brass rings in Easter Sunday.  In one week, we get the fullness of Hickory Neck on dazzling display.

I do not know what life is like for you these days.  But if you are in the position to give yourself the gift of Holy Week, I highly recommend it.  The full experience allows you to create a sort of pilgrimage, and certainly makes Easter Day a much more powerful experience.  But even if you can only catch a few services, realize that each night’s service is like a carefully crafted gift, meant to create an encounter between you and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Even if you have been feeling distant from God lately, I know most churches are happy to have you slip into a back pew, take in what you need, and slip back out into the world.  Lord knows I have sometimes showed up at the doors of a church not entirely sure why I was there, but left knowing exactly why the Holy Spirit had drawn me there.  If you do not have a church home and want to join us in the feast of Holy Week, you have a church home at Hickory Neck.  If you are reading from further away, I hope you will share with me your experiences this coming Holy Week.

The Pilgrimage of Holy Week

Tags

Christ, church, God, Holy Week, Jesus, moments, pilgrimage, sacred, Savior, worship

In Holy Week, I like to offer the parishes I serve a service for each night of the week.  It can be labor intensive, and people can feel overwhelmed by the idea of coming every night of a week for church (even if it is only once a year).  But, if you can make it through every night, you find yourself in the midst of a beautiful pilgrimage – an unfolding story and walk with our Savior, Jesus Christ.  This year, we are only three days in, but each night has given me little “God moments.”

On Holy Monday, my heart was warmed that our community was gathering “virtually” to celebrate compline (evening prayers).  We have been doing it all Lent, but it was a wonderful way to close my evening in my pajamas, knowing that others were on Facebook, praying together with our Curate.  On Holy Tuesday, as I sat in the silence of our Taize service, I was watching the flames of the many lit candles flicker.  Since I knew people had lit the candles with prayer intentions, I imagined each of those flames as a prayer, symbolizing the cares and concerns of each person in the room.  As our silence extended, I imagined the flames represented the prayers and concerns around the world, remembering how our Coptic Christian brothers and sisters must be hurting this week.  It was a powerful, transfixing image.  Then last night, on Holy Wednesday, during our healing prayers, two things happened.  First, my daughter came forward for prayers by me.  Her request was humbling, and the privilege of affirming her and praying with her in that space was incredible.  Second, another local pastor laid hands on me and prayed just the prayer I needed this week.  It was all I could do to hold back the tears.

So, I do not know what the next three days, the Triduum, hold.  But I can promise you there will be many more sacred moments.  If you have a church home, I encourage you to take advantage of their offerings for the rest of the week.  If you do not have a church home, and live in the Williamsburg area, know that you are most welcome.  You can find all our information on our website.  A continued blessed Holy Week for you.  As you ponder your own connection to church, I offer you this video as inspiration for your Holy Week pilgrimage to Lent.  Peace!

Sermon – Luke 22.14-23.56, PS, YC, March 20, 2016

Tags

burden, church, depravity, Easter, failure, gift, gratitude, Holy Week, Jesus, liturgy, Palm Sunday, profound, release, Sermon, sin

What strikes me this year about the passion narrative is the profound depth of failure.  We start off today with the glorious action of waving palms and declaring Christ to be the King, only to betray him and to deny that truth over and over again.  Judas, one of Jesus’ faithful disciples, fails Jesus by betraying him to the authorities.  The disciples fail Jesus by getting caught up in an argument about whom among them is the greatest – a self-centered argument on the best of days, but an utter failure of focus on Jesus’ last day.  Later the disciples fail Jesus by falling asleep while he prays in Gethsemane – when he had specifically pleaded with them to pray with him.  One of the disciples fails as he resorts to violence, striking one of the slaves of the high priest.  Peter, one of Jesus’ most loyal and insightful disciples, three times denies having known Jesus before others.  The leadership of the faithful fail over and over as they insist on Jesus’ death out of fear.  Pilate tries three times to release Jesus but succumbs to peer pressure and has Jesus killed despite the fact that he knows Jesus is innocent.  All the people gathered are willing to release a known murderer and insurrectionist in order to kill innocent Jesus.  Hanging in death, one of the two criminals by Jesus’ side derides Jesus to the end.  Even the soldiers mock Jesus as he hangs helplessly approaching death.

Jesus’ death on the cross is a grave enough sin to mourn today.  But when that sin is preceded by failure after failure after failure of the people to right their relationship with God, we see more clearly the deep recesses of human depravity.  The staggeringly long list of sins would be easy enough for us to dismiss as “those peoples’ sin.”  But that is part of the reason that we participate so tangibly in the liturgy today: waving palms, reading parts of the passion narrative, shouting “crucify him!”  We play an active role in the liturgy today so that we can understand how active our role is in the same sin of “those people.”  Listening to the story is heartbreaking – not just because watching others sin is hard to do, but also because we see ourselves in their sinfulness.  We know their failures because we fail too. We fail to honor Christ in our own day, we deny our Lord, we betray our God, we fail to be faithful disciples.[i]  Though there is a part of us that wants to claim we would never have been bystanders or participants in Jesus’ death, the scary reality is that we know we would have.[ii]  Their failure is our failure.

Acknowledging our utter depravity is important today.  We have spent the last six weeks pondering our sinfulness and working on amendment of life.  But perhaps we can never truly amend our lives without recognizing how deeply our sinfulness goes.  Our Lenten disciplines are meant to help us focus on one specific area of life that needs amendment, and in that way, our disciplines are effective means of bringing us closer to God.  But today, the Church reminds us that we have so much further to go.  Even if we managed to see amendment of life this Lent, today we are reminded of how our very nature is one of repetitious sinfulness that knows no bounds.

So why does the Church have us wallow so deeply in our sin today?  The primary reason we journey through the dark tunnel of our sinfulness and failures is so that we can more fully appreciate the enormity of next week.  Next week, our tone and content is almost the opposite – total joy and jubilation that our Lord is risen from the dead.  But in case we were tempted to become jaded by Easter – to be distracted by our new suits and dresses, the festive songs and flowers, or the bountiful meals – the Church wants us to remember how profoundly full of blessing Easter is.  The profound depth of our sinfulness is matched by the profound depth of love and forgiveness offered in Christ’s resurrection next week.  So although the depravity of this day may feel like overkill, that overkill is necessary for us to understand the shocking gift of Christ’s resurrection.  Although today’s sense of failure may feel overwhelming, I invite you to absorb the sobering reality of this day.  Carry that weight with you this week as we journey through the Holy Days.  If you are able to do that, the release of that burden on Easter Day may be more profound than any of the surface trappings of Easter.  And your cries of rejoicing will be born out of a place of deep gratitude and appreciation for the Lord our God, who loves us despite our failings.  As a people who know how little we deserve our Lord, we will rejoice with newfound appreciation of the God of love – the God who gave his only begotten Son, so that all that believe in him might have eternal life:  a tremendous gift indeed!  Amen.

[i] William G. Carter, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 182.

[ii] H. Stephen Shoemaker, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year C, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 181.

A few of my favorite things…

Tags

God, Holy Week, liturgy, pilgrimage, spiritual

When I went on a choral pilgrimage in England a couple of years ago, I remember finding that each day I had a new favorite sacred space.  Not once did we visit a place and I say, “Oh, well that one wasn’t as good as yesterday.”  They all blew me away, and I had such a hard time naming a favorite when I returned home.

In some ways, Holy Week this year was like that for me.  Every liturgy of Holy Week brought its own unique gifts and made me feel like the next liturgy could not possibly top the one I had just experienced.  At St. Margaret’s, we began Holy Week a day early with our Cemetery Memorial Service on the Saturday before Palm Sunday.  I am always amazed at how our Cemetery manages to create a community of faith, despite the wide variety of Christian backgrounds present, and I am grateful for the honor of helping that community remember their loved ones every year.

The next day, on Palm Sunday, we began our second service at the Cemetery cross and processed our way into the church.  The sun was shining down on us, and our procession captured some of the joy of that day in Jerusalem for us.  It was the perfect setup for our Passion Narrative.

We came back together Monday night for compline.  I was amazed at how such a brief service could be so profoundly spiritual.  As we chanted “Jesus remember me,” I could hear the echoes of our Passion Narrative from the day before.  The next morning, I renewed my ordination vows with the clergy of our Diocese, and then came home for evensong led by our guitar group.  We hosted the local Lutheran church, and I loved the musical selections of our music leaders.  Their music brought a new flavor to Holy Week.

Wednesday, we headed over to the Lutheran church for a healing service.  There is something quite sacred about laying hands on both parishioners and complete strangers that is entirely humbling as a priest.  I really am so blessed to be entrusted with this ministry.  That same humility overwhelmed me during our footwashing service on Thursday.  The experience of both washing and having your feet washed is a profoundly intimate and sacred practice.  Leaving the church with the bare, stripped altar that night brought a deep quiet over me that lasted until Saturday.

Our Good Friday liturgy electrified the experience of silence.  Without music and adornments, the silence left us with nothing but ourselves to face.  Though we did not sing at that service, I could hear the words from that favorite hymn, “sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble…”  That night, our confirmands led our Stations of the Cross service.  We used a devotional stations of the cross, and I was so proud of our confirmands.  Despite their initial nerves, they led as confident young adults, and invited us into deeper reflection on Jesus’ journey to death.

Saturday morning, we took a brief break from the solemnity of Holy Week, and welcomed tons of children to our campus for our Easter Egg hunt.  The laughter and enthusiasm of the children – whether with crafts, egg hunting, sack hopping, or simply running around – brought me back to why this life that Christ gives us is so precious.  Their energy brought me back to my favorite liturgy of all time – the Easter Vigil.  I cannot say enough about this service.  From hearing the haunting music and words of the Exultet, to listening to our salvation stories in darkness, to ringing in the alleluias, to feasting once again on the Eucharistic feast, that service is one of the most powerful service the Episcopal Church offers.

And after all of that, you might think Easter would be a let-down.  But looking at those much fuller pews just reminded me that no one can contain Easter joy.  Our alleluias are louder, and our hearts explode with love for Christ and one another.  There is no greater joy for us that day.

So you see, picking a favorite from Holy Week is actually quite difficult.  I think the difficulty in choosing a favorite is that each service captures an experience with God – and no one can rank or rate experiences with God.  They are all special in their unique ways, and would each suffice for spiritual strength for weeks.  So imagine my joy in experiencing them all in one week.  If going away for a pilgrimage is not an option for you, I invite you to consider using Holy Week as your spiritual pilgrimage next year.  I guarantee you, you won’t be able to pick a favorite!

Sermon – Luke 19.28-40, PS, YC, March 24, 2013

Tags

Holy Week, Messiah, Palm Sunday, parenting, passion, prophecy, Sermon

When I was in third grade, I had one of those classic rite-of-passage moments.  The day started out simply enough.  At school, my friend, Buffy, who normally sat right behind me, was out sick that day.  On the way to lunch, another friend, Holly, lamented how much she missed having Buffy there.  I agreed, but casually mentioned that I was getting more work done because Buffy was not distracting me by talking so much.  The comment was a rare, blatantly honest comment about how, although I loved my friend Buffy, Buffy did tend to talk a little too much.  That moment of rare, brutal honest cost me dearly.  That night, Holly called to tell me how upset Buffy was that I said she talked too much.  I was devastated and embarrassed.  I could not believe Holly had betrayed my confidence and told Buffy what I said.  Now I was forced to call Buffy and figure out how to meaningfully apologize.  This was a tall order for a third grader.

What I remember most about that interaction is the presence of my mother.  Before I got up the courage to call Buffy to apologize, I came to my mother weeping.  I was weeping out of remorse, I was weeping out of embarrassment, and I was weeping because I felt like I had no legitimate excuse for my words.  How could I keep Buffy as a friend with her knowing how I felt about her talking habits?  My mother stood by my side, encouraging me to face my fears, assuring me that everything would eventually be okay.

As I look back at that day now as a parent, I can only imagine how my mother must have felt.  She must have felt awful for me, knowing how painful removing one’s foot from one’s mouth can be.  She must have known that this kind of grievance would take a long time to forgive, and that I would have to maintain a tone of repentance, without the assurance of forgiveness.  She must have anticipated how difficult my apology would be and how vulnerable offering that apology would make me.  But my mother must have also known that all of those experiences are a part of growing up and being in relationship with others.  She could not navigate my mess for me.  She could not take away my discomfort.  She knew I just needed to go through the experience, and would be transformed in the process.  I remember my mother being infinitely supportive; but years later, I imagine my mother must have felt impotent and helpless as I navigated the realities of growing up.

In some ways, I think that Holy Week leaves us with that same sense of impotence and helplessness.  We would love nothing more than to finish our worship today with Jesus’ story on that blessed Palm Sunday.  Everything is there.  The prophecies are being fulfilled:  Zechariah already foretold of how the Messiah would come triumphantly, but humbly, riding on a donkey.[i]  Everyone is already singing those words from the Psalms, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”  There is no mistaking that the pieces of the puzzle are all present – Jesus is the long awaited Messiah and the people finally get it as they lay down their blankets and celebrate their king.  We should be able to say, “The end,” today and all go home, ready to celebrate again next week.

Unfortunately, we do not get off so easily.  Like a mother who wants to shield her children, we want to shield Jesus and ourselves from the pain that will come this Holy Week.  We want to skip the Passion Narrative – or at least save the narrative for Good Friday – delaying the inevitable.  But our liturgy today does not let us avoid the uncomfortable remainder of the story.  I have long been told that the reason we read the Palm liturgy along with the Passion Narrative is because so few church-goes actually attend Holy Week services.  But I think there is more to today’s liturgy than cramming everything into one Sunday.  I think we hear the Passion Narrative with the Palm liturgy because the Palm liturgy can only be understood in light of the Passion.  If we try to claim victory today with our palms, we miss the work of the Messiah.  We forget the rest of prophecy if we stop with the palms.  The palms simply mark our acknowledgment of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah.  The Passion gives us the consequences of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah.

Using the parenting lens this year has helped me with my normal disappointment in Palm Sunday.  Normally, Palm Sunday makes me feel like a failure.  Here I am in one moment singing, “All Glory, Laud, and Honor,” joining the festival procession with my palms, and the next moment shouting “Crucify him!”  This liturgy has always made me feel like a failure.  But the parenting lens changes things for me.  If I think of this day not as a failure on my part, but as the experience that Jesus must live through in order to free us from our sins, somehow I feel less impotent.  Somehow I am better able to sit with Jesus today, knowing that I cannot change his journey, but also knowing that his painful journey will lead to greater things.  Without the recognition of Jesus’ identity in the palms liturgy, and the shameful death of Jesus in the passion narrative, we cannot get through to the other side – to the Easter resurrection that awaits us.

So today, we take on the role of supportive parent.  We sit in the kitchen, pretending to read a magazine, while intently listening to the painful journey of Jesus.  If we are good parents, we let the drama unfold as the drama needs to unfold.  But we also keep watch, waiting to be called into the fray to offer our love and support.  We cannot control Jesus’ journey, and in the end, that is for the best – because the end of Jesus’ story is much better without our meddling ways anyway.  Amen.

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[i] George W. Stroup, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 152.

Holy mess…

Tags

Holy Week, incarnate, messy, Prayer Book

Last week I was officiating a committal service in our cemetery.  It had rained the day before, so not only was the ground very soggy, but also the dirt that I use to throw on the casket during the service was a bit wet too – despite the fact that we tried to keep it covered overnight.  What I did not realize was just how wet the dirt would be.  After I tossed the dirt, my hands we covered with crumbling mud.  Despite my efforts to rub the dirt off my hands, my Prayer Book pages got dirty and even the back of my Prayer Book had smudges on it.

As someone who loves books and likes to show my respect for books by caring for them gently, normally something like this would freak me out.  But my Prayer Book lives a very different life than my other books.  My Prayer Book has been sullied with dirt and sand from funerals and interments.  My Prayer Book has gotten damp from baptisms and the use of an aspergillum.  The pages in my Prayer Book that have the ordination liturgy have oil smears because the bishop anointed my hands so that I may anoint others.  No one could ever argue that my Prayer Book is pristine.

But that is exactly why I love my Prayer Book.  My sullied Prayer Book reminds me of the incarnate life we all live together.  Each dirt smear reminds me of a beloved parishioner, or a family who was completely unknown to me until they came to me for liturgical help.  Each hint of a drop of water reminds me of the babies and young adults I have baptized into the faith.  Those touches of oil remind me of the many times I have said healing prayers with others.  My Prayer Book caries in it the incarnate memories from this blessed vocation I am privileged to live.

As I think about next week – Holy Week in the Church – I am looking forward to more of those incarnate moments with others.  Palms that will be shoved into the back of my Prayer Book, Chrism that I will receive from the Diocese that may drip on those pages, water from the washing of feet that may splash into the book, and wax from the Vigil candles that may drip on a page of my beloved Prayer Book.  The liturgies of Holy Week not only encourage us to remember Jesus’ journey toward the cross and resurrection, but also the liturgies involve our senses, our bodies, and our messy incarnate ways.  I am looking forward to messy memories next week with St. Margaret’s!

Sermon – John 12.1-8, L5, YC, March 17, 2013

Tags

community, death, faith journey, God, Holy Week, Jesus, Judas, Lazarus, Mary, poor, Sermon, tension

With Holy Week only a week away, today’s Gospel lesson throws us into preparation for that significant week.  Six days before the Passover – six days before Jesus will sit down with his disciples for their last meal together – Jesus sits down for another significant meal.  Jesus returns to Bethany, to the home of the family he loves – the home of Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.  The foreshadowing is all there.  Lazarus, and the lingering smell of his once-dead body, is at the table as a vivid reminder of the death that awaits Jesus.  The two of them sharing table fellowship together both brings to mind the resurrection of Lazarus, and foreshadows a more important resurrection that is soon to come.  Even Mary is preparing us and Jesus for his death, as she uses costly perfume, nard that she has saved for the day of Jesus’ burial, to anoint Jesus now.  Death is heavy in the room.  What sounds like a simple reunion of friends is actually the foretaste of what is to come in a mere week.

So in the midst of this sacred, significant moment, what does Judas do?  Judas totally misses what is happening in the moment.  On one level, Judas is right.  That bottle of nard – a whole pound of fragrance – would have cost about $20,000 in today’s terms[i].  Judas has spent years with Jesus hearing nothing but Jesus’ preference for the poor.  We cannot fault Judas for seeing the potential good that the same bottle could have done for the poor.  But like any good church member, Judas gets stuck in the ways he has learned.  Judas takes a really good practice – Jesus’ passion for the poor – and makes that practice rigid and lifeless.  This valued practice blinds him to the other realities that are unfolding right before him.

We behave like Judas all of the time.  We too have ideas about what we should do and how that should be done.  Our reasoning might be very informed and, under normal circumstances, deeply rooted in our faith and tradition.  But sometimes we too are off base.  We miss the big picture.  When I went on my mission trip to Honduras, we spent an entire winter and spring preparing for the trip.  One of the many books we read was a book by a woman named Elvia Alvarado.  Elvia was a poor Honduran woman who saw much strife in her country and who slowly became an organizer and advocate for change.  But along the way she tells of many atrocities that happened in Honduras to the poor.  As I read the book, I became more and more outraged and incensed about what was happening to the Honduran poor – so outraged that I wanted to go and do something, to make a difference for the people who could not speak for themselves.  But in her concluding remarks, Elvia says something quite shocking.  Elvia asks every gringo reader (gringos being white people from the United States) not to come to Honduras to solve their problems.  In fact she tells the gringos to stay where we are.  She says that this work is the Hondurans’ work to do.  But what she does charge the gringos with is working on our own stuff.  She asks us to look at the systems in our own country that encourage oppression – governmental trade policies, manufacturing and farming practices, and our own purchasing patterns.  Elvia’s words to me were like a slap in the face.  Elvia basically said to me, “Don’t bring your savior mentality down here and think that you will save us all.  Instead, stay at home and work on the ways that you and your country are a part of the problem.”

Elvia’s words to me and all of us are not unlike Jesus words to Judas that night.  What Elvia taught me is that we do not always have the whole picture.  We may have learned a lot, we may have spent a great deal of time studying our faith or developing our relationship with Christ, and we may feel like we have a pretty good idea about what God calls us to do and be.  But what we forget in our confidence is that God is always on the move, always breaking into the world in new ways, and always opening up new paths for us.  The moment that we think we have God figured out – and particularly the moment that we start telling others what they should and should not do – is the moment that Jesus slaps us in the face with another reality.

So if we are not to be imitating Judas in this story from scripture, what do we glean from Mary’s actions?  I once heard a story about an experience at a stewardship conference whose theme was generosity.  When one of the presenters spoke about offering a gift directly to God, the clergy began to yawn.  The presenter then pulled a $100 bill from his wallet, set it on fire in an ashtray, and prayed, “Lord, I offer this gift to you, and you alone.”  The reaction was electric.  Clergy began to fidget in their chairs, whispering about the legality of burning currency, and murmuring about how they would happily take any more money he felt like burning.  In that nervous room, the speaker asked, “Do you not understand?  I am offering it to God, and that means it is going to cease to be useful for the rest of us.”[ii]

In many ways, Mary “wastes” her perfume on Jesus much like this presenter wasted that $100.  But Jesus does not see Mary’s gift as wasteful.  He declares the gift to be appropriate in that moment, and is gracious enough to receive the gift with gratitude.  He understands that the extravagant gift is rooted in Mary’s confidence in the boundless capacity of God’s love.  “Mary pours out her whole bottle of perfume without regret because she knows it is only a trifle compared to the magnitude of God’s love that she sees in the Messiah before her.  Mary knows that Lazarus will die again, and she knows that Jesus will die, but she believes with even greater passion that Jesus can bring victory over death.”[iii]

This tense interaction between Jesus, Mary, and Judas invites us into another kind of tension.  The story invites us to live into the tension of what we know about God and what is still unfolding.  We need to learn the “rules” or the “law” of this crazy life of faith.  But we also need to learn the “way of being.”  We need to learn when to focus on the details and when to see the big picture.  We need to learn when the time has come to “waste” an extravagance on another.  When Jesus says, “You always have the poor with you,” Jesus is not giving us an out for caring for the poor.  Instead Jesus invites us into a “both-and” tension.  Yes, we are to care for the poor.  That is living into the law of our life together.  And, we also need to have the presence of mind to see when something so significant is happening, such as losing our Savior to the cross, that we pause our other work.  This is the way of being in our life together.

Ultimately, we need both Judas and Mary for our faith journey today.  We need that person in our community who will always remind us of the laws that we live by and who will always remind us of the ways things should be done.  But we also need that person in our community who is the crazy one who will open up for us the lavish ways of God and who will remind us to let go of the law enough to see God’s bigger picture.  Without each person in our community, including those individuals who have not yet come to St. Margaret’s, we only have a portion of the community we need to fully embody the community of faith.  Without the “both” and the “and” we are incomplete.  Sometimes that means we will not agree.  The “boths” and the “ands” of our community will experience a tension so strong that we may hear Jesus shouting, “Leave her alone.”  But both the “boths” and the “ands” need each other.  Jesus gives us all value today, but Jesus also requires us to value one another.  Amen.

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[i] George W. Stroup, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 142.

[ii] William G. Carter, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 142.

[iii] Beth Sanders, “Heaven Scent,” Christian Century, vol. 124, no. 5, March 6, 2007, 19.