Category Archives: lent

What if the story is true?

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We were singing an old (1707) hymn on Sunday:

“When I survey the wondrous cross on which the king of glory died, my richest gain I count but loss and pour contempt on all my pride.”

I started thinking about writing theology as poetry, thinking it would be a good exercise in slowing down and reflecting. How can you write a crucifixion as a poem? Not a multi-point sermon, not a 6-part small group discussion, not an essay, but a poem. How hard is it to be clear and concise and evocative? How do you make yourself stop and reflect and write?

I do that, by the way. Not the poem part, the thinking part. I think often while singing, while standing in the church service. Nancy is used to me grabbing my Moleskine and writing. Sometimes I’m writing notes about conversations I had before walking into the service. Sometimes I’m writing notes about things that need to get fixed before next Sunday. Sometimes I’m writing things that show up here.

So as we were singing that song on Sunday, I grabbed my book and wrote, “But what if that story is true? The story of giving up everything for someone else?”

We had gotten to the third stanza about then.

“See from His head, His hands, His feet, sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e’er such love and sorrow meet, or thorns compose so rich a crown?”

Isaac Watts, the one who wrote this poem, was looking at the picture of one crucified, blood, tears, whatever else flowing down. Sorrow, he called it. Love, he called it. And if the story is true, if there was a real, willing, self-sacrificial, walk-right-into-the-trap death, that flow would make you think about a fitting response.

I guess that’s what a poem would do.

What Jesus did for Palm Sunday

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We know what everyone else did on Palm Sunday. Little kids were running around. People were throwing their cloaks on the road, creating a red carpet. People tossed palm branches on the road, creating a sidewalk. People were singing and shouting. Pharisees were telling Jesus that he should get the crowd back under control.

But what was Jesus doing? Was he doing the royal wave, arm still, hand twisting slowly at the wrist? Was he campaigning for king, shaking hands, kissing babies, encouraging precinct workers with a thumbs up?”

Matthew tells us that he was weeping.

He wasn’t worried about campaigning. There wasn’t going to be a vote that could make any kind of difference. He’d been talking about dying in Jerusalem for a while. It had marked the most recent part of his conversations with his followers.

He wasn’t worried about acting like royalty, maintaining positive public relations for the monarchy. That day or the next, he turned over the moneychanger tables and claimed that this house, this temple, this huge worship complex built over decades was his and was intended to be a house of prayer for all nations. A risky move for an itinerant preacher with followers unable to handle weapons.

That day, in the parade, as Jerusalem came into view, Jesus started to weep. He looked forty years into the future and saw the walls crumble. He saw these children and their children lying dead, Roman soldiers standing over the bodies, swords drawn.

During the next week, he would talk with the city leaders, political and religious. They would all focus on trapping him, all assume that he was a threat. They were right, of course. He was a threat to how they looked at everything.

But as he approached, he didn’t relish conflict. He wept.

–

Mostly from Luke 19:28-48

changing me.

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We were singing about the Bible.

Ancient words, ever true
Changing me, changing you

I looked across the room. I saw someone signing the song to her husband in his wheelchair. He had a stroke a few years back. He was in nursing care for a long time, but finally was able to move home last summer. They work really hard and they need help.

Most of us singing were looking at the lyrics. We were talking to each other, but we didn’t look at each other. Except for these two. They were looking right at each other. And when she signed “changing me” she pointed at herself. And when she signed “changing you” she pointed at her husband.

That’s just how the signs go. I know that. But it is one thing to sing words. It is very different to say them with your body, to acknowledge by pointing that the words of the Bible, the words from God are changing me. A physically tangible, identifiable, me. I can say lots of things. But when I have to raise my hand, when I have to sign my name, when I have to point at myself, I’m involved in a different way.

And it is a remarkable thing to point at someone and say, “I see that you are changing. God’s words are working at you, chipping at you, shaping you.”

Knowing the story of these two, I cried as I watched. As she signed, she was demonstrating gesture by gesture compassion and commitment and love. Suddenly the lyrics aren’t just words you sing. They are life. They are conversation. They are affirmation.

I’ve often had a sense that signing goes deeper into songs that singing. I don’t know whether that’s true.

But it was true on this Sunday morning.

—

Ancient words video

And here’s the link for today’s 7×7: 2.27.12 And you can subscribe for emails of 7×7.)=

Lyla goes to the monastery.

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Every week or so, Lyla goes to the monastery. She’s making headroom. She writes about her trip each week. More accurately, she writes from her trip.  She’s not providing steps on a journey somewhere. She’s providing rest areas.

I read her words. I stop. There is such immense quiet, paintings of silence between her words.  I want to sit on the little benches in art museums and look at the silence.

I am, I confess, a little jealous.

But in truth I am convicted. There is nothing stopping me from quiet except me.

I remember a sermon I preached once, four or so years ago. I talked about “be stilling”. Not about “being still”. That’s what happens when I respond to “be stilling.” “Be stilling” is what God did to Elijah.

Elijah had told the king that it wouldn’t rain. It didn’t. Years later he had a face-off with the king’s prophets. It was a call-down-fire-from-heaven face-off. Elijah – and his God – won. Then Elijah told the king that it would rain. It did.

In that moment of victory, the queen said she’d get Elijah. His heart, bouyed by adrenalin, collapsed.

You know the feeling. I do too. We get to the top and find it an emotional abyss.

Elijah ran til he collapsed. An angel gave him breakfast and courage. He walked forty days to the mountain of God. A whole lent of fasting and wondering and waiting to hear God, waiting to tell God off.

Yes, we know that feeling.

At the mountain of God, God said, “yes?” Elijah dumped his fear, his anger, his devotion, his doubt. There was tornado. And earthquake. And firestorm. The godly acts of power useful when you fear an enemy. But that wasn’t God’s voice.

Instead, a quiet whisper. Elijah was “be stilled.”

–

If you are joining me in 7×7, read Mark 1. (Here’s an FAQ page). If you would like a couple questions to ask after you read, ask Jesus how exactly he made himself take time away. Or how he handled all the requests he always got.

Saturday reflection: Lent 2012

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The second most visited post on this blog is one I wrote about Lent in 2011: 33 things to give up for Lent. All year long people have come to this post by searching for Lent. Which is interesting, since Lent is a period of forty days (plus 6 Sundays) between Ash Wednesday and Easter. It doesn’t last all year.

Several years ago, some friends and I wrote about Lent. When I started that blog, I said

What I’m seeing is posts from you which would wrestle with what we learn when we give up that which we enjoy for the sake of better understanding that in which we delight. Not all of us are from a liturgical background. That’s the point. I want to have some wrestling with lent, with fasting, with self-denial as self-discovery, with the relationships between forms and faith and relationship.

For 2012, I decided to gather some of the posts I’ve written about Lent and fasting. I also decided to post it 10 days before Ash Wednesday in case you want to plan ahead.

And so you know, in 2012 Ash Wednesday is February 22 and Easter is April 8.

Some comments on fasting from Matthew 6

Some comments about silence

  • Deliberate silence - Excerpt: “I am involved regularly in deliberate unsilence. Every day I am generating words and thought images and stories and photos with the intention of disrupting silence. And so are you.”
  • habits of sight. - Excerpt: “Some habits are desirable. We call those “disciplines.” Some habits are not. We call those “addictions.” Some are neutral. We call those “drinking coffee.” For the last six weeks I gave up a way of seeing called twitter. When Lent started, I hadn’t exactly intended to give it up. However, I was beginning to wonder whether Twitter was a discipline (staying in touch with a group of people that I was beginning to care about and for) or an addiction (staring at the flow of comments in every spare moment) or neutral (stopping to say ‘hi’ while walking to the office coffee pot).”
  • listen – Excerpt: “I discovered that I use noise. I discovered that when I drive and start talking with God, I finish a couple sentences and reach for the radio. I didn’t realize how often I do that until I watched my hand reach for the radio that no longer was there.”
  • 8 ways to get better at following, part 2 - Excerpt: “Most of us have heard about sabbaticals. A sabbatical is a break from something. It could be taking a day each week with electronic devices turned off or six months away from work. The idea of sabbatical is rooted in the idea of sabbath.”

Some comments about Sabbath

I know that Sabbath seems like the opposite of Lent. It’s time to eat and rest, where Lent seems to be about suffering. But for many of us, truly taking time off, giving up the franticness for family and feasting and frivolity and fellowship, would be its own kind of fast.

  • Our sabbath group - Excerpt:  We started a couple years ago. Just for six weeks. Now we can’t stop. It’s not complicated, by the way. It starts with “you hungry? For supper and God?” And goes from there.
  • Burdens and breakfast - Excerpt: “These were people who weren’t just tired. They were tired from living up to expectations. They were tired from having to look over their shoulder, expecting pastors to pester them, expecting Pharisees to flog them. Every step was a burden. And Jesus says, “try my yoke”.
  • A question of stopping - Excerpt: “Late at night, when being driven by the list, rest seems desirable, but out of reach. In the morning, when being driven by the list, rest seems long gone. In the middle of the day, between the calls and the visits and the ambiguity and the precisely-phrased demands, rest seems impossible.”
  • On rests - Excerpt: “I used to play tuba. As such, there were often long stretches of music pieces we played during which I didn’t play. We would spend these times counting very carefully (1-2-3-4, 2-2-3-4, 3-2-3-4 and so on). It was stressful at times because you had to make sure you entered at the right place.”
  • Time is hard to take - Excerpt: “Ironically, it is easier to confess to you my inability to stop than it is to just stop. Is it possible that there is in the confession a desire to receive compassion, empathy, understanding…from you? I mean, you know exactly what I’m talking about. You are, as I am, a part of a culture which, whether inside or outside church, finds stopping difficult. We feel as though we must be productive in our work, in our rest, in our play, in our wasting of time. If we can’t do something, we must at least create the facade of busyness.”