Easter Sunday 2012...

Ok we're taking a break from the blessings of worship and community starting... NOW!  After a truly sweet week of worship and reflection - service and renewed commitment - we're into our jammies and a time of feasting and rest. (I just place the Indian take-out order!)  Then, tomorrow we'll drop the dog off and head to Brattleboro for some quiet time to rest and reconnect.  (I'll sneak back into town for a necessary meeting but then won't do anything work related until next Sunday.)  We have a fun jazz gig on Thursday night for the parents of local jazz students that should be a gas, too.

What a festival of hope and commitment we experienced in worship today:  a perfect culmination to Holy Week.  Excellent music - jazz trumpeter, Rob Fisch, joined us for some mellow reflections as well as a smokin' riff on our gospel anthem - and Carlton was tender and powerful on organ and piano as the music and mood dictated.  As one old timer who has been around the block said:  we've come a LONG way in five years!  And we have: Christ is risen - He is risen, indeed!

"Well, it's the most profound holiday in the Christian tradition," Lamott says. "And I think two things really come to mind. One is something that the great writer Barbara Johnson said, which is that we are Easter people living in a Good Friday world. And I think that every year the world seems more of a Good Friday world. And it's excruciating, whether... it's Japan, or Libya, or whether its your own best friends and their children who are sick, which is something that makes no sense when you think about a loving God. But it's a time when we get to remember that all the stuff that we think makes us of such value, all the time we spend burnishing our surfaces, is really not what God sees. God, he or she, loves us absolutely unconditionally, as is. It's a come as you are party."

Blessings abound at the close of holy week 2012...

Blessings abound in our home this night:  the last two nights of worship have been rich and humbling encounters with the sacred that were filled with beauty and mystery.  Maundy Thursday was filled with new/old wisdom as we listened to John's gospel about the "new commandment" and then washed the feet of some of this year's confirmation group.  We shared the Eucharist deeply aware of the Passion to come ~ and wept as we stripped the communion table and Sanctuary.  And as the candles were extinguished to readings from the gospels leading to the Cross, we sat waiting together in the darkness... before sharing the Lord's Prayer.

Friday was an equally moving gathering - this time grounded in a reworking of the ancient Reproaches and Veneration of the Cross - saturated with contemporary music.  Each song took us all deeper into the emptiness and shame and hope of the Lord's Cross.  At the same time, each song and prayer took us closer into God's heart in community, too.  We left aware that Christ's resurrection changes everything even as we live in these strange and often dark days.

Today we dressed the Sanctuary with flowers and banners in anticipation of Easter - then I played a jazz gig with my mates to honor a young woman at a local college.  It, too, was filled with fun and beauty and now I am home to rest before rejoining my faith community for the Feast of the Eucharist.  Lent 2012 has been a challenge and blessing on many levels ~ and I actually ache waiting for tomorrow's celebration.  (And then we're heading out of town for three wonderful days of rest and renewal far away from the phone!)

As one band mate wrote to me tonight:  how far we've come in five years together!  Christ is alive and present in our community ~ we have tasted and experienced darkness and light ~ and something of his new life on the other side of Easter, too.

We rejoice, mighty God, that you have raised Jesus Christ from the dead. We praise you and celebrate your presence within and among us - and throughout the world. New life blossoms where dead hopes were once buried. Today we know that the world is being reborn by your love.  Help us stay awakened to your grace and trust always in your resurrection power.  For we pray through Jesus our crucified and risen Savior.  Amen.

Easter Sunday 2012...

NOTE:  Here are my worship notes for Easter Sunday, April 8, 2012.  This has been a full and very satisfying Holy Week and Lent.  After Easter we're "heading outta Dodge" for a few days of quiet rest and renewal.  Blessings to you all.

Grace and peace to each and all of you on this resurrection morning: it is always my joy and privilege to stand with those who gather for worship on Easter Sunday. Because whether this is your first time here– or your 400^th – the Easter message always challenges us to go deeper in life and faith and living and loving – and that includes this pastor as well as everyone else in this great hall, ok?

On Easter Sunday I often think of the old African American spiritual: It’s not my sister or my brother – not my father or my mother – not even the deacon or the elder – who’s standing in the need of prayer but… who? IT’S ME, right?

Easter almost forces me to sing: It’s me –it’s me – it’s me, O Lord: standing in the need of prayer. It’s me – it’s me –it’s me, O Lord: standing in the need of prayer. Not my brother or my sister but it’s…

Let’s face it: Easter is the most counter-cultural worship experience of the whole year. In the Christian tradition we don’t worship bunny rabbits and chocolate eggs, right? And this day has nothing to do with “flower bulbs emerging from their winter sleep” or green blades rising in the fields. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Grinch about springtime – I love it – and cherish the daffodils and tulips in my yard as well as in the Sanctuary this morning – and I think chocolate bunnies are pretty cool, too.

But the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is NOT about springtime – or flowers –or birds or Easter bunnies. It is about God’s liberating presence within and among us that refuses to accept sin as the final word of creation. It is about the totality of a blessed love that is bigger than our good and bad times, deeper than both our celebrations and sorrows, stronger than the Cross of Good Friday and more shockingly salvific than anything we might ever create in our deepest imaginations.

So I don’t want to talk about incidentals with you today –fluff that would waste our time – or spiritual platitudes that would bore us all. No, I want to talk with you about the love of God – the peace of God – that passes all understanding. I want to talk with you about how all of life is different because Christ has been raised from the dead.

I want to talk with you about a grace that never quits no matter how sinful or stupid or stubborn we might act, ok? And in order to grasp the magnitude of this sacrificial, God-saturated and Spirit-inspired love, I have to tell you something about what God hates. Did you get that? We don’t often speak about what angers the Lord in our tradition – especially on Easter – but sometimes we can better understand things by looking at them in contrast. Sometimes a shadow can help us see into the light…

And when it comes to grasping the depth of God’s love that raised Jesus Christ from the grave we have to be certain that we don’t envision the Lord as some benign, doddering, heavenly grandfather who seeks to pat the world on its head and hand out blessings to everyone in the room. Some people today try to paint God like that – they think that if we can just make God sound more palatable and reasonable – more modern and politically correct – then people will get it and start to act with greater kindness in the world. But here are the facts:

The Lord our God, Creator of heaven and earth and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is NOT some generic, glorified heavenly social worker imploring individuals to just try to get along. No, the testimony of God in the law and the prophets makes it clear that the Lord HATES injustice: It angers God when people wound one another and oppress their sisters and brothers.

The great biblical scholar, NT Wright, put it best: “When God sees human beings enslaved… if God doesn’t hate it, he is not a loving God.”

When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone’s political agenda, if God doesn’t hate it, he isn’t a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grafting and preying on one another, if God were to say, ‘never mind, I love you all anyway’, he is neither good nor loving.

(You see) The Bible doesn’t speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures. And the Bible doesn’t tell an abstract story about people running up a big debit balance in God’s bank and God suddenly, out of the blue, charging the whole lot to Jesus.

No, the Bible tells a story about the creator God calling together a people through whom he would put the world right, living with that covenant people even when they themselves went wrong… allowing them to become the place where the power of evil would do its worst, and preparing them all the while for the moment when, like the composer finally stepping on stage to play the solo part, he would come and take upon himself, in the person of his Son, the pain and shame, and yes, the horror and darkness and tragedy of death.

Whooooah: I know that was a mouthful so are you still with me? Do you sense what I’m trying t?

If we want to know something about the deep, saving, game-changing LOVE of God made real on Easter, then we have to understand what God has hated and continues to hate today. Because that’s what the Cross of Good Friday shows us – it exposes everything that God hates – the sin and violence, the stupidity and selfishness, the fear and evil of self-absorbed and broken people like you and me.

They call that part one of the Easter story: the Passion and the Cross show us what God loves and what God hates. Part two of the Easter story goes on to show us that God’s love is so much greater than all the hatred. In fact, it tells us that God lovingly takes all the hatred of creation into himself in Jesus and offers us a whole new way of living. And in the Easter story set out for us today in the readings, God asks us to see what this new life meant for Mary Magdalene – and what it could mean for you and me, too.

You see, like many of us here today, Mary is heart-broken – disappointed – and confused. She knows pain, she knows shame and she knows the agony of feeling empty inside and out. Everything she has ever believed in has been taken away from her and she is lost, worn out and afraid.

Maybe that sounds familiar to somebody today? Maybe you know what I’m talking about? Sometimes, you know the Scriptures sound like they’ve been reading our mail. So if you know what it means to be messed up and in trouble, left out with the garbage and abandoned, hurt, alone and confused…keep listening.

Could be this story is talking to you because what happens next? What does Mary do in the midst of all her pain? She goes to the tomb. She goes to grieve… The Bible tells us she goes out to weep– she can’t put on a happy face – that would be a lie. All she can do is cry – and I don’t know about you but I’ve been in that place – it is horrible and alone. I hate it – and what I’ve come to sense is that God hates it, too.

That’s why we’re asked to read this part of the story on Easter Sunday morning: many of us – maybe even most of us – have been in similar places where we’ve come face to face with the fact that we cannot all fix all of our problems all by ourselves. And we hate that feeling – we think there’s something totally wrong with us – so we try to push it away or medicate it or distract ourselves until we forget.

But here’s the thing: that feeling you hate – that sick emptiness and fear – that is God calling to you – pleading with you to let go so that he can come close and embrace you. And here’s one more challenge: as a rule we Americans hate to face our emptiness: that’s why we’re one of the most addicted, sex-obsessed, over-worked, over-weight and stressed-out people on God’s green earth.

In something called the paradox of our time some old salt summarized our condition like this: The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints… We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems. We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values…We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. For we live in a time of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men and women and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships.

In a word, as a culture and as individuals, most of us hate to face what Mary Magdalene faced. And the tragedy is that in this hatred we lock out God’s healing love. Maybe that’s why all four gospels tell us that Mary became the first apostle and witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When she went back to the tomb, you see she became a model for us: Mary let go.

She went to the tomb and wept. She let go – and when she did that something else happened beyond her control: Jesus came to her. Now we don’t have a precise time table here –there is no chart documenting just how long it takes for Jesus to show up after letting go – but the Bible tells us that at just the right time Mary noticed something besides her grief. She noticed two angels in the empty tomb… and someone she mistakes for a gardener.

Now for the longest time I thought that this was one of the goofiest details in the Bible: why in the world would John’s gospel tell us that Mary Magdalene noticed someone else in the burial grounds that she thought was a gardener? Sure we know from the end of the story that eventually Mary recognized him as Jesus –the God who comes to her in the darkness of her grief – but why does she mistake him for a gardener in the first place?

For the longest time I was clueless, but try this out: could it be that John’s gospel is telling us that when we let go and surrender like Mary – when we quit lying and distracting and avoiding the truth of our lives – then we can see God waiting there to meet us? And let me push that thought just a bit, because could it also be true that when God does meet us it feels something like a garden?

Remember: our faith tradition begins with a story in Genesis that says in the beginning, before there was time, in the primordial darkness “when "the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep” God’s spirit came and created order out of the chaos. And St. Paul grasped that, too when he told us that in the death and resurrection of Jesus we will all experience a new creation where "everything that is old has passed away and everything real has now become new!"

My limited but very real experience with meeting God’s grace and the healing forgiveness of Jesus Christ feels something like Mary meeting Jesus as the gardener: Mary has experienced Jesus “as the gardener who brings new life to this world” and welcomes us into a new creation. This is part of that great reversal of the upside down kingdom where the last are first and the outcasts are welcomed, don’t you think?

Back in the first creation story, what did God do after Adam and Eve sinned? Drove them out of the garden, right?  But here – in another garden born of the hatred of the world and the love of the Resurrection it looks to me like God welcomes and embraces a broken Mary. What’s more, once the light and love begin to warm her from the inside out, she isn’t banished from the garden, she runs out into the world rejoicing.

Mary has found a reason to live and share life in a bold new way: so Jesus sends her out to tell “everyone that the darkness has not overcome the Word made flesh who has lived among us. Not only has Mary seen her Rabbi and experienced "the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." She tells us: "I have seen the Lord." (John 20:18)

Today I stand with Mary – one faithful servant – the first witness of the resurrection – who shows me that God aches to take all the hatred of the world and transform it by love into a new life. And that, beloved, is the good news for today. I have seen the Lord: He is risen!

Good friday in holy week 2012...

Good Friday is a full and emotionally challenging day in our faith community:  this will be the 10th year we've been exploring an experiment we call "doing theology with the arts" in worship.  As noted in another post, creating this genre-bending combination of contemporary and traditional music -with visual art of many types - in the service of a meditation on Christ's cross is theologically and artistically demanding.  All good and satisfying, to be sure, but it takes its toll.

These words from a clergy resource really spoke to me today:

Take care of yourself... pay attention to the simple, basic stuff of your life this week: healthy food in healthy amounts, sleep, exercise and - of course - prayer... Remember: you do not need to pick up and arrange the lilies because Joan forget that her sister was coming from out of town on Saturday.  No, you do not need to vacuum the worship space again because the custodian can't be there on Friday.  The women didn't go to the tomb to dust. If there are no lilies at all, God is not going to abandon this people... so stay focused and centered. You have permission to let everything else go.

And so I have...

Thursday in holy week 2012...

Here's a portion of what I sent to my congregation earlier today - part of our weekly update - with an emphasis on the Triduum.

Tonight we begin the Triduum - the Holy Three days that are at the heart of the Christian faith - in a series of worship gatherings we know better as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday.  Each day (and the worship set aside for that day) offers us an encounter with what it means to live into the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  And at the risk of being overly pedantic just before Easter, let me share a few theological thoughts with you about our worship in the hopes that it will enrich and even deepen your experience.  For, you see, theology is the careful exploration of what we can know about God - and the liturgies of the Triduum offer important insights:

Maundy Thursday (begins @ 7pm tonight) - Rowan Williams, the soon to be retired Archbishop of Canterbury, once observed that in our history most Western churches "have at times settled for celebrating the Eucharist as if Easter had nothing to do with it - indeed, as if Easter had never happened." What he means is that we have sometimes practiced a Maundy Thursday spirituality that remains trapped in the Upper Room before the Resurrection.  Consequently, this trains believers to only know Holy Communion - and by implication the fullness of Christian community - only in its most sorrowful form.  Thankfully, this sad practice has been changed over the past 50 years in the Reformed tradition.

Tonight, therefore, we all enter the Sanctuary quietly as penitents - those seeking forgiveness - and enter three acts of commitment.  First, we will reflect together on what St. John taught us about Holy Communion.  Richard Rohr has written that only John puts this Thursday feast in perspective by telling us about the way Jesus knelt and washed the feet of his disciples. He writes:

Perhaps John realized  that after seventy years the other Gospels had been read. He wanted to give a  theology of the Eucharist that revealed the  meaning behind the breaking of the bread. He made it into an active ritual of  servanthood and solidarity, instead of the priestly cult that it has largely  become.  Peter symbolizes all  of us as he protests, "You will never wash my feet!" (John 13:8). But  Jesus answers, "If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with  me." That is strong!  We all find it hard to receive undeserved love from another. For some reason it is very  humiliating to the ego. We all want to think we have earned any love that we get by our  worthiness or attractiveness. So Jesus has to insist on being the servant  lover. Thank God, Peter surrenders, but it probably takes him  the rest of his life to understand.

After our conversation about the Scripture, two of this year's confirmands will come forward to have their feet washed.  Then, in the spirit of a servanthood made even more clear on Easter, we enter into Holy Communion and serve one another.  We will also keep alert to the presence the Cross knowing that it leads beyond the deep sorrow of this night. After stripping the communion table so that no more celebrations take place until after Easter, we will share a series of readings and sung responses known as Tenebrae - the Service of Shadows - before leaving in silence. 

It seems that moving some old Puritans beyond the non-Easter spirituality of Maundy Thursday has been one of my life's work - and so it goes tonight.

PS ~ there was a chance we might sit in with our jazz buds tonight after worship, but by the time we were singing, "When I Survey the Wondrous Cross" I was toast.  I felt like Eric Little in "Chariots of Fire" saying:  No, I'm not going to run on the Lord's Sabbath - not gonna play no jazz tonight either... ok?

Wednesday of holy week 2012...

Last night, after a demanding band practice for Good Friday, as I was reading my mystery novel before going to sleep I had a long and deep weeping jag.  It was totally unexpected but set off by holding two friends in prayer - a band mate with excruciating pain and a young friend from Tucson whose father just died very unexpectedly - and before I knew it, the tears were flowing and would not stop.  They poured out for 30+ minutes in the wee hours of the morning as one sorrow bled into another - soon all the sorrows and pain of those I love (and so many more who are strangers to me) gave shape and form to my prayer until it began to feel like Psalm 22.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?
O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;
and by night, but find no rest.

Yet you are holy,
enthroned on the praises of Israel.
In you our ancestors trusted;
they trusted, and you delivered them.
To you they cried, and were saved;
in you they trusted, and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm, and not human;
scorned by others, and despised by the people.
All who see me mock at me;
they make mouths at me, they shake their heads;
‘Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—
let him rescue the one in whom he delights!’

Yet it was you who took me from the womb;
you kept me safe on my mother’s breast.
On you I was cast from my birth,
and since my mother bore me you have been my God.
Do not be far from me,
for trouble is near
and there is no one to help.

Many bulls encircle me,
strong bulls of Bashan surround me;
they open wide their mouths at me,
like a ravening and roaring lion.
I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint;
my heart is like wax;
it is melted within my breast;
my mouth^*is dried up like a potsherd,
and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
you lay me in the dust of death.
For dogs are all around me;
a company of evildoers encircles me.
My hands and feet have shrivelled;^*
can count all my bones.
They stare and gloat over me;
they divide my clothes among themselves,
and for my clothing they cast lots.

But you, O Lord, do not be far away!
O my help, come quickly to my aid!
Deliver my soul from the sword,
my life^* from the power of the dog!
Save me from the mouth of the lion!

From the horns of the wild oxen you have rescued^* me.
I will tell of your name to my brothers and sisters;^*
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him;
stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!

For he did not despise or abhor
the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me,^*
but heard when I^* cried to him.
From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
The poor^* shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the Lord.

May your hearts live for ever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember
and turn to the Lord;
and all the families of the nations
shall worship before him.^*
For dominion belongs to the Lord,
and he rules over the nations.
To him,^* indeed, shall all who sleep in^* the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust,
and I shall live for him.^*
Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord,
and^* proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it.

There is an rhythm to this Psalm that honestly expresses both emptiness and trust - lament and gratitude - and I have come to know them both in pastoral ministry and the wisdom of Holy Week. I know a lot of people who are feeling this despair right now - and I've been their myself.  What's more, I have come to believe that pastors can't just go through the motions - we have to truly let down our defenses and simply feel the pain and fear and agony in the lives of those we serve in the church - from time to time. Any thing less isn't ministry.  Simultaneously, we have to maintain clear internal boundaries that both entrust our people to God's care and make certain we don't violate an other's journey into the shadows or confidence.

Fr. Patrick Henry Reardon writes about Psalm 22:  Whatever is to be said (of the story that Jesus silently prayed this Psalm upon the Cross) there is no doubt about the importance... in reference to the Lord's suffering and death. Not only did Jesus pray this psalm's opening line on his gibbet of pain; other lines of it are also interpreted by the Church, even in the evangelists themselves, as prophetic references to the details of Holy (Good) Friday.

Today, as I followed up on my friends and celebrated Eucharist, this Psalm haunted me as did their sorrow.  The whole day drew me closer to my Lord's own pain and alienation as he journeyed by faith from betrayal to shame and death.  And like Psalm 22 itself, I both hate and treasure this intimacy with Jesus and the people I love in my congregation. It is a beautiful, frightening, demanding and sometimes overwhelming load. Fr. Ed Hays once wrote that the prayer of our tears is the most intimate expression of our love and solidarity we can express.  I think he was right.

Tuesday in holy week 2012...

Usually I prepare my notes for Sunday on this day - and I've gotten a good start - but there are three other liturgies to deal with, too.  So, Easter's notes will show up later here.  Today I made a first attempt at framing our Good Friday contemporary music presentation re: the Cross and our Context.  These are the introductory remarks I will share after we do Nina Simone's take on "Isn't It a Pity."

Introduction
Greetings and blessings to you all tonight:  I am so very grateful that you are here for our prayerful reflections on the Cross of Jesus Christ in our 21^st century context.  We are engaged in an experiment you might call “doing theology through the arts.”  Tonight we are using music and poetry – prose and prayer, movement and rest, as well as silence, sound and a sculpture that brings together light and darkness – to illuminate our connection to God in the Cross.

·      Theology, you see, is the careful exploration of what we can know about God.   We are given some insights, of course, through Scripture and worship.  And in this community, we take those words very seriously.

·      So seriously, in fact, that tonight we are trying to go deeper – to discover and listen and experience what can be known about God’s words in the Cross – because the wisdom of the Lord in not simply a linear, rational truth.  It touches our hearts – and souls – and relationships.  It changes the way we see and listen and move in the world.

As artists – who are also people of faith – we are going to use our gifts and imaginations to wrestle with the horror and hope of the Cross.  What does it mean, for example, to follow a Messiah who is a total loser in the eyes of the world?  What does it feel like to have all your expectations destroyed by the Lord?  Or to feel abandoned, alone and forsaken as Jesus did?

Insights
What we have done for tonight has three layers – and let me try to clearly illuminate them so that you might enter this encounter more fully.

·       First, we have taken one of the oldest prayer forms in the Christian tradition – the Veneration of the Cross and Reproaches – and rewritten them.  Not only did we seek to strip the old form of its ancient anti-Semitism – for we stand in solidarity with, not judgment of, our spiritual forbearers in Judaism – but we also wanted to understand how the mystery of the Cross touches us today.  We believe that what we do in worship is a matter of life and death.

Another artist – the painter Mako Fujimura – has written:  What we do is about the Life we can live generatively verses commerce driven, celebrity crazed frenzy.  When we encounter bodies of casualties like Whitney Houston, or Amy Winehouse, we wonder what struck us.  And yet, we do not realize that we have been worshipping the wrong idols all along, and all of us are capable of such misplaced devotions, misaligned liturgies. It's not so much about excluding ourselves from the secular liturgies, but to repent that we have not understood what a beautiful liturgy is, or to discover, for the first time, that gifts and stillness was there all along behind the voices of the casualties of culture wars and flash bulbs going off.  This is a time to rediscover why and from whom the Greatest Gift of All has come from.  But it's more complex than to diagnose and speculate on what went wrong, when really, Houston and Winehouse are just the tip of the iceberg.

·       Consequently, we have tried to remove any false or misleading distinctions that so often separate the secular from the sacred:  that is the second layer of tonight’s presentation – an awareness that the Cross speaks to our politics – our use of money – how we see and treat one another as much if not more than what kinds of prayers we say when we’re all alone.  That’s why we have chosen mostly secular songs that have spoken to us part of the wisdom of the Cross.  “Isn’t It a Pity” is pure lament. 

When the “Long and Winding Road” is set alongside the story of the Cross we see how often we find ourselves at a crossroads aching for help in choosing the most compassionate road home in the midst of often terrifying options..  When we deconstructed Paul Simon’s song, “The Boxer” it pointed to Christ’s own discouragement and shame on the Cross.

And then we discovered a taste of the fear the disciples themselves must have felt in a song called “On the Way Home.”  That will be a hard song for some to hear – it is dissonant and harsh – and all about losing faith, being shamed by trusting Jesus and living for a time without any clear foundation.  But like St. Paul taught, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.For it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.’

I hope you will let yourself go into the deeper truths of the song even as the music challenges you…

·       And third, each artist tonight has brought to this presentation a new sense of artistic creativity and humility:  Brian has written a powerful new song about what the Cross looks like in our contemporary world.  Eva and Dianne are singing songs waaaaaaaay outside their comfort zone as they listen for the truth of God in new ways.  And Dave and Andy, Jon and Carlton and Sue bring their abiding and healing commitment to beauty and grace to the mix, too.

Conclusion
So that’s what we’re going to share tonight: 

·         a way of doing theology with the arts about the Cross

·         a commitment to breaking down sacred/secular distinctions

·         all within the context of creativity and faith and trust

Throughout the evening – during the music or the readings or even the silence – if you feel moved to express yourself in a visual prayer, let me encourage you to come forward and light a candle on the cross, ok?  Ted has constructed it to be a place where you can offer prayers of hope or despair – sorrow or celebration – fear or trust.  And you can come up whenever the Spirit moves you – from this point until the close – so let your heart be your guide.

Listen now for the wisdom of the Lord as we come to the Cross in our own Context…

Monday in holy week 2012...

It felt like I was run over by a truck this morning:  a full Palm/Passion Sunday, confirmation group with 7 bright and creative middle school youth and then a 4 hour band practice for Good Friday - plus a glass of wine and dinner with my band mates - and I was done in today. Totally played... and the drill is just beginning.   (OMG the music and prayers for this year's Good Friday are incredible... but that must wait for now.) There is a lot to get in order as Monday melts into Tuesday... and suddenly Holy Thursday, Good Friday and then Easter.  (For the time being we're skipping the Easter Vigil ~ one of my all time favorite liturgies - because there are just so many hours in the day for one clergy person, yes?)

Each liturgy of this week ~ and all our practice to get the mechanics right ~ are a sacred privilege to me.  And this section of a sermon by N.T. Wright explains why:  he is so very clear that the God we serve is NOT some abstract, Diest spirit of relativism that seeks a bland and generic sense of good will for all people.  NO our God loves us so much that the Lord HATES all that wounds, oppresses, exploits and enslaves people and creation.  (I am a BIG Wright fan!) This gets it just about perfect for me... and encourages me as Holy Week starts beyond my weariness.

Face it: to deny God’s wrath is, at bottom, to deny God’s love. When God sees humans being enslaved – and do please go and see the film Amazing Grace as soon as you get the chance – if God doesn’t hate it, he is not a loving God. (It was the sneering, sophisticated set who tried to make out that God didn’t get angry about that kind of thing, and whom Wilberforce opposed with the message that God really does hate slavery.) When God sees innocent people being bombed because of someone’s political agenda, if God doesn’t hate it, he isn’t a loving God. When God sees people lying and cheating and abusing one another, exploiting and grafting and preying on one another, if God were to say, ‘never mind, I love you all anyway’, he is neither good nor loving. The Bible doesn’t speak of a God of generalized benevolence. It speaks of the God who made the world and loves it so passionately that he must and does hate everything that distorts and defaces the world and particularly his human creatures. And the Bible doesn’t tell an abstract story about people running up a big debit balance in God’s bank and God suddenly, out of the blue, charging the whole lot to Jesus.

The Bible tells a story about the creator God calling a people through whom he would put the world right, living with that covenant people even when they themselves went wrong, allowing them to become the place where the power of evil would do its worst, and preparing them all through for the moment when, like the composer finally stepping on stage to play the solo part, he would come and take upon himself, in the person of his Son, the pain and shame, yes, the horror and darkness, yes, but also, in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, in Paul and Acts and Hebrews and 1 Peter and Revelation, in Ignatius and Irenaeus and Augustine and Aquinas, in Luther and Calvin and Cranmer and Hooker, in Herbert and Donne and Wesley and Watts – he would take upon himself the condemnation which, precisely because he loves us to the uttermost, he must pronounce over that deadly disease we call sin. To deny this, as some would do today as they have for hundreds of years, is to deny the depth and weight of sin and the deeper depth and heavier weight of God’s redeeming love. The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

(See the whole sermon @ http://www.ntwrightpage.com/sermons/Word_Cross.htm)

Tonight we practiced the Maundy Thursday liturgy - readings leading up to the Cross in the context of foot washing - and I give thanks to God for a humble people still willing to move deeper into the folly of the Cross despite the ridicule and shame of our contemporary culture.

Entering holy week in an ordinary way...

Over the past few years I have started to enter Holy Week in an ordinary way.  That is, while I mark it and honor it as a deep part of my journey into the wisdom of the Cross, besides my role as public celebrant during the various worship gatherings of Holy Week (which is a pretty big public role, I agree) I don't engage in many extraordinary spiritual practices.  I used to - used to fast, spend extra time in liturgical prayer and for a few years even went to confession with my spiritual director - but not any more. 

For a while I thought it had to do with growing lazy, but I don't really think that is what drives this more ordinary embrace of Holy Week.  And it isn't just that I've grown older and lost some of my earlier evangelical zeal. No, I think it has  more to do with my experience with the ordinary way Jesus shows up in my life.  Frederick Buechner once wrote:

Jesus is apt to come, into the very midst of life at its most real and inescapable. Not in a blaze of unearthly light, not in the midst of a sermon, not in the throes of some kind of religious daydream, but... at supper time, or walking along a road.  This is the element that all the stories about Christ's return to life have in common:  Mary waiting at the empty tomb and suddenly turning around to see somebody standing there - someone she thought at first was the gardener; all of the disciples except Thomas hiding out in a locked house and then his coming and standing in the midst; and later, when Thomas was there, his coming again and standing in the midst; Peter taking his boat back after a night at sea and there on the shore, near a little fire of coals, a familiar figure asking, "Children, have you any fish?"; the two men at Emmaus who knew him in the breaking of bead.  He never approached them from on high, but always in the midst, in the midst of people, in the midst of real life and the questions that real life asks.

Peterson speaks of this as the work of the pastor - not the big things about the nature or condition of our soul - but the everyday things "that specialize in the ordinary." For 30 years I have journeyed with God as a pastor...

It is the nature of pastoral life to be attentive to, immersed in and appreciate of the everyday texture of people's lives - the buying and selling, the visiting and meeting, the going and coming. There are also crisis events to be met: birth and death, conversion and commitment, baptism and Eucharist, despair and celebration. These also occur in people's lives and, therefore, in pastoral work. But not as everyday items.  Most people, most of the time, are not in crisis.  If pastoral work is to represent the gospel and develop a life of faith in the actual circumstances of life, it must learn to be at home in what novelist William Golding has termed the "ordinary universe" - the everyday things in people's lives - getting kids off to school, deciding what to have for dinner, dealing with the daily droning complaints of work associates, watching the nightly news on TV, making small talk at coffee break.

There was a time when I wanted more than the small talk - I wanted to make things happen in the world - I wanted every worship to be a mountain top experience.  I wanted every day to be Pentecost.  But I think I started to wear people out with all the demands and activities. And I know I burned myself out with all that fretting and planning and doing. So now I sense a different way into the mysteries of Holy Week:  a way that is open to the ordinary - curious and receptive about the small talk - and far less hurried.

This morning, while setting up for Eucharist, my helper asked, "So, um, where is the bread?"  Hmmmm.... I thought to which she immediately whispered, "OMG, I was supposed to bring it, right?"  Well yes I replied but let's find someone who can run an errand, ok?  She quickly took care of business and then met me on the steps to the Chancel during the opening music for centering:  "Ok, we're covered but... when will we bring it to the Communion Table?"  How about at the same time we bring forward the offering I smiled?  She smiled, too and said, "Whew... had to think about these kind of problems before, hey?"

It made me laugh - almost out loud. Because while I never have faced just this exact problem before, I have had to learn how to roll with the surprises.  Like the time I was doing a baptism only to find there was no bowl in the fount.  (Apparently, my secretary had seen the bowl to be washed in the kitchen and washed it - and then made green jello in it for the potluck later that day.  Or the time I was doing a wedding ceremony for some local gang kids and we had to delay the ceremony because the best man had been in a fight with the groom and now they were searching for somebody who could fit into the rented tuxedo.)

As I sat listening to the gorgeous centering music, I thought: "what a human way to start Holy Week - worrying about the bread that was overlooked in the midst of all the other demands in this family's life - like raising two very active children and going to work and cleaning the house and paying the bills."  What a sacred opportunity, too:  we were given a chance to worry or ask someone else in the community to help out - a simple challenge - yet a clear place place where love and trust could be deepened in the midst of ordinary things. 

By the time I read the Passion Narrative - at the closer of worship this year - I could feel that the King of Glory had entered the house in the midst of us.