The Power of Holy Week

               When I was the rector of my parish, we usually had an “enacted Gospel” on Palm Sunday.  Participants would sometimes dress in costumes, but the point of it all was to dramatize the very long Gospel describing the last days of Jesus’ life.  There was the betrayal by Judas, the moments in the garden with Jesus praying and the apostles sleeping, then the arrest, the moment before the high priest, then the time with Pilate and the trek to Golgotha and the crucifixion.  I always loved those dramatizations because they made the Gospel come alive in the midst of the congregation.  We would have the people in the pews cry out “Crucify him!!” when the time came for the crowd to act.  It also gave a wonderful wholeness to the story, not just something that a reader was providing to us from a book at a lectern. 

            The problem with this story is that it is incredibly depressing.  We already know the outcome; the death of our savior on the cross and the dispersal of the apostles.  We know that Judas will be the betrayer and that Peter will deny that he knows Jesus three times.  In my homilies on those days, I tried to tell the people to not think about Easter; that the week we were heading into would involve the last supper on Maundy Thursday, the crucifixion on Good Friday and then Holy Saturday when God is essentially dead.  I have to admit that when I would come into the church on Holy Saturday and smell the flowers that were being arranged for Easter by the Altar Guild that I would secretly cringe because that anticipation was keeping us from the utter despair of the death of God.  I know that there was nothing else that the Altar Guild could do.  But it is that despair that is so wonderfully redeemed at the break of day on Easter by the resurrection of our Lord.  Without living through the despair caused by the crucifixion, it is hard for us to understand the incredible gift that Easter is for us.  Easter is nothing that we do for ourselves.  It is something that God does after we have done our worst in causing the crucifixion.  That is why Peter’s denial means so much to all of us.  It is not only Peter, but all of us who have denied Jesus.  It is also all of us who are given the great gift of the resurrection of Jesus by our God whose love transcends all of the evil that is in our hearts.

            That is what Palm Sunday means for me.  It begins with the slow journey through the streets of Jerusalem with the crowds laying palms before Jesus as he rides his donkey.  It ends with those same crowds calling for Jesus’ crucifixion and those palms are turned into a cross to hold the Son of God.  It is a remarkable transition.  We are a part of that crowd, both in the laying of the palms and the calling for the crucifixion.  We are the ones who have done it.  Keep that in mind as we go through this Holy Week.  When we understand our part in the death of Jesus, we will also know the magnificent wonder that we are given when our Lord emerges from the tomb.

Grace and Freedom

            There is a wonderful story behind the writing of Psalm 51.  In the First Book of Samuel, we hear that after David had seen Bathsheba bathing on the roof of her home next to his palace and had invited her to come over and had an adulterous affair with her and then had her husband Uriah the Hittite killed by sending him into the front lines of the war that was being waged with the Ammonites.  The prophet Nathan came to David and told him a story about a farmer who had a lone lamb that he had raised and treasured.  The master of his land had a flock of many sheep.  A visitor came to visit the master, and the master took the farmer’s only lamb and sacrificed it and served it to the visitor in a meal.  When David heard the story, he said what a travesty it was and that the man who had done this ought to be killed.  Nathan pointed at David and said to him: “you are the man,” alluding to his adultery with Bathsheba and the killing of Uriah.  According to the story, David was devastated by this accusation by Nathan and went back to his room and wrote Psalm 51, confessing his terrible sin and asking for God’s mercy.

            I’ve always loved that story because it so perfectly mirrors our own experience during this season of Lent when we are trying to confess our sins and to get back on the right track with our God.  It isn’t easy to look our sins in the face.  We suffer because of them much of the time. We hide them from one another, but we still keep them in our heart. There are extremes of this.  I have a friend who is in prison with a life sentence because of a murder that he committed many years ago.  I have been working with him to find some way that he can forgive himself for this, but it is a very difficult thing to do.  That is also true for those of us who have lesser offences.  Forgiveness is a wonderful, freeing thing that can bring us enormous benefit.  It can result in a more fruitful life, much goodness and better relationships.  God has offered this great gift to all of us.  All that we have to do to receive it is to say yes.  What makes it so difficult is that we persist in not being able to forgive ourselves.

        This season is a time to get rid of our sins by confessing them and receiving the forgiveness that God has promised to each of us. Psalm 51 is used in our Ash Wednesday service and it is there for us during all of this Lenten season as we get ready for the great festival of Easter with all of its promise of resurrection and eternal life.

            There is another story about the great hymn Amazing Grace.  It was written by an Anglican priest, John Newton.  Newton had been a slave trader, picking up slaves in Africa and transporting them to the United States.  One day when he was watching those slaves leaving his ship and the remains of those who had died on the journey being carried away, he was seized suddenly with terrible guilt when he all of a sudden realized what it had been that he was doing.  He carried this with him for years after abandoning his work as a slave trader.  Finally, later in his life, he was ordained as a priest and then wrote that magnificent hymn with the words:

                         Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound

                         that saved a wretch like me.

                         I once was lost, but now I’m found,

                         was blind, but now I see. 

            Every time that I hear that hymn, I think of John Newton and how he came to see his own sin and found forgiveness through prayer and his confession of what he had done.  It enabled him to live a valuable life as a priest who heard and understood others who confessed to him the things that they had done.  He experienced and then taught about that incredible intangible element that we call Grace: that touch of God’s love that lifts us out of the messes that we create and brings us back as the beloved children of God that we all are.  Grace is the blessing that awaits us when we look hard at ourselves and realize what we have been and what it is that we can be. 

      Lent is the time of the year when we are reminded of this great treasure that is ours simply for the asking.  The wonderful freedom that Grace gives us is nothing that we can create by ourselves.  It is a free gift from God to those who turn and confess what they have done and who ask to be included in that glorious love.  If there are things that are keeping you from receiving that love, simply confess them and hold out your arms.  You will find the freedom magnificent.

Scripture and God's Love

            There is a passage of scripture in Numbers that has always been a problem for me.  It describes the way that the Hebrews under Moses were struggling in the desert and had been given manna to eat, but were complaining of not only the manna, but also of being brought out of Egypt by Moses.  Why did you bring us out of Egypt to die in this wilderness? they ask.  They complain that there is no food and water, and that the food, the manna, is terrible.  God hears their complaints and sends serpents among them to bite them and some of them die.  They complain of this to Moses and Moses relays these prayers to God who tells him to make a serpent and put it on a pole and to tell all of those who are bitten to look at the serpent and that they will be saved.  Moses does this and those who are afflicted by the snakes are saved. 

            My problem with this is that is sounds to me as if God, who has saved these people from slavery all of a sudden doesn’t care very much about their comfort.  When they complain, he strikes at them, and only offers relief when Moses tells God of their problem. 

            When I look at my Christian faith, it is based on the overwhelming love that God has shown to humanity by over and over again trying to find ways to save us from the terrible things that we are prone to do.  Finally sending Jesus to come among us to discover what is like to be human, limited and fallible and from within that life giving us comfort that indeed God understands what humans endure not only from the world but from each other. 

            It is intriguing that when Nicodemus speaks to Jesus in John’s Gospel, and asks him some significant questions, that Jesus cites the story of Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness as the basis for the fact that Jesus himself must be lifted up also so that those who believe in him might have eternal life.   In that passage, John goes on to elaborate that those who do not believe will not be saved.  I’ve always thought that was the disciple’s own interpretation of that event, not necessarily something that Jesus said.  I would rather base my faith on the overwhelming love of God, who accepts all of us the way that we are and that love will see is through even though our different beliefs may seem to divide us. 

         Is it possible for those of us who don’t understand eternal life to receive it anyway?  I know that it is.  Our God loves us completely.  There is a reference in Paul’s letter to the Romans about the refiner’s fire that burns out all of our impurities.  I think that this is what happens when we meet our God.  None of us is perfect.  We all have parts of us that ought to be changed.  Our God certainly knows this.  But beyond our imperfections is the desire of God to keep us near.  To provide for us the kind of life that was intended for us from the beginning, and to have us be before God the way that we were originally created to be.  That for me is a primary statement of God’s love.  There is much in scripture that I think is there to scare us, to drive us by fear into the arms of God.  There is certainly enough in life already to do that.  I am comfortable relying on my God to take care of me even through death.  That is certainly the promise that we are given in the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus.

Keeping The Ten Commandments

             I don’t know about you, but I think that I have broken all of the Ten Commandments.  Shocked?  I hope not.  Those magnificent laws for all of us are rules that we ought to live by, but really don’t.  I have never killed anybody, but sometimes my anger has ruled my heart and I have lashed out at people who have offended me in ways that have not been at all helpful.  Murder was certainly in my heart on those occasions, even if I never committed the act.  I remember taking a candy bar from a store when I was a little kid.  I ate it with great joy, thinking that I had really gotten away with something.  That was stealing.  I have certainly taken the Lord’s name in vain on a number of occasions, particularly when somebody pulls out in front of me at an intersection.  I haven’t committed adultery, literally, but I have looked at women in a way that suggested that I wanted something more than looking.  Jesus told us that when we look at women in that way, that we have committed adultery already with them in our heart.  So chalk that one up against me also.

            God gave us those magnificent commandments in an attempt to restore humanity to that wonderful place before our desire for control gave us the knowledge of the difference between good and evil and we have been suffering from it ever since.  But we have never been able to keep the commandments.  We keep stumbling over them, rationalizing them and coming up with excuse after excuse to enable us to keep living the kind of lives that we want to live.  So God sent the prophets to help us to understand the way that we were intended to live.  Amos reprimanded the rich people in Israel for their life styles and reminded them to take care of the poor.  Ezekiel warned the people of the coming judgment of God if they continued their way of living, and Isaiah spoke comfort to the people after they were rounded up by the Babylonians and taken into exile.  But we never really listened to the prophets either. 

            Finally, God sent Jesus to show us what we needed to see in order to live the lives that we were created to live.  But we crucified Jesus because what he demanded of us was to give up our greed and our power and to take care of each other and to love each other with the same kind of eagerness that God has when we are loved.  God sent Jesus to humanity because we are infinitely loved and cherished by our God.  That is the love that we are asked to lavish on one another.

            That isn’t easy.  We frequently offend each other, either by our selfishness or our absolute beliefs that we are right and the other is wrong and we have trouble getting along with each other.  Look at our politics.  Some people want to describe us as a Christian nation, but then they go on to disparage others because they don’t believe the same things that we do.  That divides us from each other and creates barriers to understanding.  I know that God loves each of us.  God doesn’t care if we are Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, or whatever.  God is still God.  It isn’t necessary for all of us to call God by the same name.  What is necessary is for each of us to love each other, despite our differences in the way that God has loved us.  If we can do that, God’s kingdom is built and secure. 

            So what stands in the way?  Our egos are certainly a large part of it.  We want to be right, which means that others have to be wrong.  That is what divides us over and over again. 

            Jesus went to the Temple in Jerusalem during the feast of the Passover and chased the money changers and the sellers of animals out of the place.  Here was our Lord losing his cool and challenging the religion of the time.  This, according to John’s Gospel was the point where the officials knew for certain that they needed to get rid of Jesus.  He told them that if they destroyed the Temple, that he would raise it again in three days.  They mocked him about this because it had taken many years to build the temple; but Jesus was talking about his body and the Temple of his Spirit.  And certainly this is what happened.  When he was crucified by the Temple leaders in collusion with the Romans, Jesus was indeed raised again in three days.  This is the power of God working even in the midst of our most grievous sin.  Certainly killing the Son of God ought to rank that high.

            Here in the middle of Lent, as we move toward the Glory of Easter, is a good time for us to look closely at ourselves and think about how we so often offend each other and our God.  Receiving the wonderful forgiveness that God offers is only a first step toward a better life.  Continuing to love each other in the way that we have been loved is the way that we continue.  God bless us as we work toward the building of the glorious Kingdom of God through our relationships with each other.