Reflections on Mortality and Holy Week

 It only lasts a minute, maybe two.

That sense of stepping off a cliff -

when a lump rises in your throat,

and immediately catapults into your stomach. 

Or maybe it's more like being blind-sided by a phantom,

a phantom with snarling breath that blows down the back of your collar 
and frizzes the ends of your hair.

You can be living your ordinary, everyday life - 

driving the car, for instance.

Or having lunch with someone you love.

Or resting after minor surgery. 

And wham! It hits you like a bracing splash of ice water:

death happens everywhere.

We are surrounded by it, 

entangled in it,

bewitched by it. 

And most of the time, we are oblivious.

Quite intentionally so, I believe.

We cover it up,

tuck it away,

move it aside.

And we do that with all kinds of things, 

in all kinds of ways.

We do it with food,

or alcohol,

or television,

or reading,

or even - gasp! - writing. 

It's the spectre on everyone's horizon,

the uninvited guest at the table,

the devilish imp around every corner. 

And we don't want to see it.

And much of the time, we don't.

We don't. 

But then, you turn just a little,

and you cast a glance over the wrong shoulder,

you catch a glimpse 
just there - 
off to the side - 

and the rawness of it socks you in the gut. 

Two sisters, having lunch. 

Best of friends, longtime traveling companions,

singing life's song together for over 85 years.

You stop to take a picture - 

and you see it.

Just there, in the sagging skin.

Or there, in the squinting struggle to see something -

anything that's recognizable.
Or to the right - see it? - the big red walker,
just there,
the one that carries the frail, flailing, failing body
slowly and carefully from place to place.

And you know:

it won't be long now.

Or you take a little drive,

off to find a new dress for a 90-year-old.

You go down familiar streets,

remarking on changes made here and there.

And then - there it is.

The shabby motel where he lived,

your youngest brother,

the one who hid so well -

who hid the drinking and the illness and the shame,
the one who died, far too young.

Over there -  
just there - 
lurking by the office,

just down from the dark, dank corridor

of his room - you spot it.

And your stomach clenches,

your eyes fill ever so briefly,

your breath catches

between the pleasantries you speak. 

Or you're driving home from the dentist

after a routine surgical procedure,

and your face begins to pound and swell.

Within hours, you look like a prize-fighter,

so you pile in the car for some urgent care.

And you see it again!
Just there,
in the bright red gauze,
the deepening purple of bruise,
the slow, constant tender aching.
No longer a wraith, but a sharp, clear reflection
in the window pane behind the surgeon's worried face. 
The ever-present visitor that no one
wants to see, to wrestle with, even to acknowledge:
we all age;
we all die. 

For these intimations of mortality are all around us,

constant reminders of the ephemeral nature of our

sojourn on this planet.
No one escapes,
no one is immune,
no one is immortal. 

But then...

Holy Week arrives,
right in the middle of the muddle,
amid the weariness of watching death in action, 
inexorable and overwhelming. 

 And a tiny green thing begins to wriggle its way 
to the surface of your soul.
A sprig, really.
A small, tender shoot of hope and life. 
Because somehow,
in the very middle of death itself,
there is this ever-growing wick of light.
As we follow the story 
to the upper room,
to the garden,
to the house of the high priest,
to the halls of Herod and Pilate,
through the narrow winding streets
of the city,
up that pathway marked by the blood of Jesus himself -
even there...
even there.

There is a whiff of green, a scent of spring. 
EVEN THIS, Jesus knows.
This sinking queasiness, this revelation and recognition
that death is an unavoidable part of life -
Jesus has been here, too.
Jesus has been here ahead of us.
And Jesus walks with us when the 
dark, shadowy fears show up and torment us.
Even this, Jesus knows.


So today, and tomorrow, and the next day...
I want to shelter this bit of life amid the ashes;
I want to water it with my tears,
and nourish it with my songs of thanksgiving.
And then I want to position it  
just there,
where the sunlight, 
streaming forth from the empty tomb,
can help it to grow strong and true,
always and forever stretching toward the Light.

"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade."

1 Peter 1:3-4

Joining with Michelle at Graceful and Jennifer and the Soli Deo Gloria Sisterhood at Finding Heaven and the generous Kimberly at Journey to Epiphany, who is temping for Emily Weirenga for a while. I'll also join it to the Lauras, even though it's not a particularly playful post nor is it so much about a place physical as a place emotional and spiritual. And with Ann V, too. (Although I can never get her button to work here.)





 

Jesus and Prayer

Reposting an older reflection for this Maundy Thursday, thoroughly re-edited for today.

What a topic. The text is Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane - Mark's version. The assignment is to confine my remarks to 20 minutes or less, to capsulize the teaching and the modeling of Jesus about prayer, and to do it with truth and love.


How did I ever get myself into this???


The preaching task is always an overwhelming one. An intriguing, challenging, convicting, enormously rewarding one, but still....to think that any human person has the right to speak on behalf of Almighty God, to bear the good news to the church, to parse sacred text...yikes.


And, of course, living with the text over time means that the preacher is the first to hear the sermon. If the text doesn't knock me to my knees, shouting truth into my own heart and spirit somewhere in the process of reading/researching/thinking/praying/talking it through with others, then I will have nothing to say to anyone else. And this one has just knocked me flat.


And as always, I am impressed at how the Spirit weaves together the study and research I do in my office with the conversations and experiences I'm having elsewhere. To illustrate - a brief, but deeply thoughtful conversation with our son and daughter-in-law about prayer - about how we so often view prayer as another in a list of tools to help us manipulate God, to work 'magic,' to utilize (in the philosophical, utilitarian sense) our faith to bring about a desired end. Yet the text before me was anything but manipulative, and everything about relinquishment. Hmmm...


Illustration #2 - a wonderful gift from my friend Anita, a small, brilliant book entitled "Everything Belongs," by Richard Rohr, about contemplative prayer, a book that touches on some of the same ideas that are flitting round this brain of mine. Like...the 3 fold admonition to 'watch' given to the sleepy disciples. Isn't that a lot of what prayer is truly about? Placing ourselves regularly, preferably continually, in a position of prayer, of watchfulness, of presence, of paying attention, even more than it is about saying the right words - or even saying anything at all.


And all of these lovely serendipities of daily life help to thrust me back again into the text before me. As I read through Mark's account, again and again I am blown away by Jesus' wrestling match in that olive garden on the night in which he was betrayed. Such a powerful study in contrasts:

....from warm fellowship in the upper room to the cool solitude of the garden

....from the comfort of the reclining supper chair, to the hard reality of the rocky ground

....from a place of acceptance and understanding of what was to come, to a place of resistance and fear about the painful death ahead.


I am humbled by this story, I am moved by it and I am deeply, deeply grateful for it. It gives me great hope to read that the Savior of the world wrestled with the harsher realities of this life, that, if possible, he wanted to avoid pain; that he struggled with the dark stuff, the hard stuff, the ugly stuff. It helps, of course, to know the end of the story, that end toward which we have been moving during these weeks of Lent. It helps to know about and to firmly grasp the reality of the empty tomb.


Yet what I truly cherish about this passage in Mark 14 is how it shows us the fullness of Jesus' humanity in ways that many of our Jesus stories do not. Here we gain insight into some of his emotional and spiritual struggles. Just days before this time of pleading prayer, Jesus was able to speak prophetically about the restoration of the 'temple' of his body in 3 days. Yet here, he begs God to let this cup pass. It seems that Jesus was frightened by the prospect of suffering and death on that night when he stared directly into the abyss. All of us human creatures resist death, we deny it, we cry out against it. Even Jesus cried out for deliverance from the painful unknowing-ness of it all.


Many biblical scholars tell us that this struggle in the garden was about Jesus' fear of his coming separation from the Father. Maybe. But maybe he was just plain scared of the pain, scared of the suffering, scared of the unknown, just like the rest of us would be. And there is something strangely comforting to me in that idea. To think that the son of God, our fully human, fully divine savior, was frightened by what lay ahead of him somehow helps to relieve my own fears. It's a paradox, maybe even an oxymoron, to say that. And yet it's true. There is a wonderful way in which Jesus' wrestling in the garden helps me to lean into my own humanity a little bit more willingly and easily, to accept my own feebleness and fearfulness with less self-condemnation and disdain.


But here's what truly, strongly cheers me in this story: after the struggle, after the tears, after the first of what would soon be an avalanche of disappointments and betrayals from his friends - after all of that, Jesus moves out in confidence and trust to meet his enemies, to meet his future. "Rise. Let us go," he says to the speechless, feckless disciples. "Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners."


At the end of the day, at the end of that long night, Jesus chose to trust God.

Jesus chose to believe that God was at work, even in the ugliness of betrayal and conflict, even in the midst of false accusations and illegal trials, even in the brutality of torture and death. Even there, God is.

Once it became clear that God was not going to intervene in the way that Jesus wanted him to do, he made a conscious, deliberate choice to trust God anyhow. To trust that God would take the mess and work a miracle in the midst of it. To trust that God would accomplish something so beautiful, so powerful, so filled with hope and promise that the world would never be the same again.


"For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known," the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth. I believe that for the period of his 'tabernacling' with us here on earth, Jesus gave up his right, his divine ability, to see 'face to face,' to 'know fully.' Jesus lived within the limits that we as humans experience.

But here's what our truly human Savior learned through living a life of prayer, prayer that came to fruition in that garden across from the temple mount:

He learned to trust that he was fully known,

he learned to trust that the one who fully knew him, fully loved him,

he learned to wrestle through his fears...in the presence of the God who knew and loved him...

and to emerge on the other side with a confidence and a courage that challenged every definition of confidence and courage that his world had constructed.

Oh, may I learn from his example!

Ashes...

Today is Ash Wednesday. We held a small, intimate service at midday, maybe 30 people came. Dan played the guitar beautifully, everyone sang so well and the space was welcoming. Jeanne and Alice set up a beautiful Lenten tableau of bare sticks, rocks, dark candles and Spanish moss, all of it calling us to a quiet space, a simple space, a sober space, a remembering space. Because this is a day for remembering, for remembering who we are - the dust of the earth - and for remembering who God is: the one who comes in love, willing to suffer on our behalf.

Three members of the gathered community read the words of scripture for us, the familiar words for this day from the prophet Joel, the apostle Paul and Jesus himself, in Matthew's gospel. Arleen read so beautifully, her voice full of pathos, almost to the point of tears as she closed out her passage..."The priests, who minister in the Lords' presence, will stand between the people and the altar, weeping..." Frank worried about his voice holding up, but he made it through the verses from 2 Corinthians just fine. Jim wondered if he'd still be there when the gospel reading came to pass, as he had a commitment at 1:00 p.m. He had time to spare, and then stayed longer anyhow. It was a rich time, filled with grace and tenderness and I am grateful to have, once again, been privileged to lead and to offer ashes to dearly loved friends and even a few strangers. We missed Don very much, but are grateful for his and Martha's ministry in Kenya these early weeks of Lent.

Dan was the last to receive ashes from my thumb, and then he impressed them on me, offering the ancient words, "Remember you are dust; repent and believe the gospel." We offered prayers on behalf of others, we passed the peace and we read the final blessing to one another as we went back out into the world. And even though the dark marks on my forehead brought strange stares in the supermarket, I was grateful for their presence. For these dark specks in the shape of a cross testify to this day, this season, of reflection and repentance and remembering. May God bless us all as we live Lent this year.