Easter Sunday prayers

Beautify prayer and video from Christine Sine. Enjoy!

Jesus Christ you have risen and we see you,

In the faces of the poor,

In the hurting of the sick,

In the anguish of the oppressed

Jesus Christ you are risen and we see you,

In the weakness of the vulnerable,

In the questions of the doubting,

In the fears of the dying.

Jesus Christ you are risen and we see you,

In the celebration of the saints,

In the generosity of the faithful,

In the compassion of the caring.

Jesus Christ you are risen and we see you,

You transform our world with love and hope,

You ignite our hearts of stone with compassion and care,

You transfigure our world with the spirit of life.

Hallelujah, Jesus Christ you are risen and we see you.

Tags: Easter

Propelled into God's future

Life-changing and world-changing events are hard to fathom, at first. Mary, reeling with grief for her executed Lord, goes to the tomb expecting to prepare his body. The open tomb has her thinking more of grave robbers than resurrection. Peter and "the other disciple" race to the scene of the crime, and looking at the evidence, the light begins to dawn. So...they go back home.

Would you or I respond differently? Without the perspective of 2000 years of tradition, the roller coaster of emotions from "Hail, King Jesus!" to the trial and execution of the "King of the Jews" to dark despair to an empty tomb would seem just as perplexing and disorienting. Would we run off to tell anyone what we had seen?

The meaning of these events, and the subsequent appearances of the risen Jesus, will become clear with time. But these disciples are starting to get the message: Nothing will be the same again, because Easter does not look back into our experience or history but propels us into God's future!

Broken connections

This Lent's theme was "brokenness," and our kairos exploration followed Christine Sine's excellent guide.  We summed up the season by looking at the broken connections that allow us to accept hunger, homelessness, and abuse of our environment. 

We started with a discussion of how we fragment God's family:

• Look at where we erect barriers – when have you been conscious of being “out”? When have you erected barriers to keep others out?
• In what ways do you notice the fragmenting and breaking of the family of God in the world you live, work and play in?

Most of our time was a deep meditation on Matthew 25:
31-33"When he finally arrives, blazing in beauty and all his angels with him, the Son of Man will take his place on his glorious throne. Then all the nations will be arranged before him and he will sort the people out, much as a shepherd sorts out sheep and goats, putting sheep to his right and goats to his left.
34-36"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Enter, you who are blessed by my Father! Take what's coming to you in this kingdom. It's been ready for you since the world's foundation. And here's why:
I was hungry and you fed me,
I was thirsty and you gave me a drink,
I was homeless and you gave me a room,
I was shivering and you gave me clothes,
I was sick and you stopped to visit,
I was in prison and you came to me.'

We’re often tempted to look at the people Jesus mentions as categories of people that we need to do good to. It’s natural to think of them as “others,” as unfortunate, as different than us.

This passage comes late in Matthew’s gospel, and by this time we know that Jesus has met, fed, chastised, wept with, challenged, healed and marveled at the faith of thousands and thousands of people. Looked them right in the eye. Touched them and been touched by them. It’s very safe to say, in my view, that Jesus is not talking about abstract categories. He is talking about the woman who sought him out and stole healing power from a touch of his cloak. He is talking about the blind man who called out to the Son of David when he heard Jesus coming. He is talking about his friend Lazarus, dead and stinking in the tomb, and his friends Martha and Mary in their busyness and their grief. And I believe that he is also picturing you and I, and all the people his father has given him.

We did an exercise of looking deeply into the people in this story in order to really see what Jesus is talking about.

• Think of people who need to be fed and clothed. Do you know of anyone who lacks for these basics of life? What is it the causes their lack? Who is at fault? In what ways might you be in need of these things? In what way are you blessed with these things? How do your blessings relate to the needs around you?
• Think of people who need wholeness and inclusion. Who do you know who needs to be healed, or is excluded because of the color of their skin, or their sexual orientation? What causes them to be on the “outside” of what we think of as normal? In what ways have you ever felt excluded or left out? In what ways do you need healing? Does your experience make you want to open your circle or create healing…or does it make you protective and suspicious?
• Think of people in prison. Do you know someone who is or has been imprisoned? In an actual jail, or in an inner torment, or dangerous relationship, or addiction, or trapped by their wealth and stuff? Are you imprisoned by anything? Visualize some of the reasons people are imprisoned. In what ways might your life help to facilitate such imprisonment, or work to free people from it?

It is important to note that Jesus was not speaking to middle class America. Israel was a poor land, occupied by great political powers. There were rich people storing up grain (that would spoil) and other precious goods (that would rust). But most of his hearers were ordinary folks scraping by, just like their ancestors, satisfied by the just-in-time provision of manna. Debt or an expression of anger at the occupying power could land any of them in jail, just like that! Basic shelter, and water, were precious. What would Jesus’ call have sounded like in this situation?

I think the call to feed the hungry would sound more like the widow who gave all the food she had for herself and her son to a traveling prophet, than my buying an extra bag of cans for the food pantry.
This Lent we have been looking at varying ways God’s beautiful, plentiful creation has been broken and scarred by humanity. We’ve looked at the inequalities of hunger, where enough food to feed everyone is grown but isn’t distributed fairly. We’ve looked at the tragedy of homelessness, where basic shelter is out of reach of many people who work. We’ve looked at the ways we abuse and take advantage of the earth that we are called to be stewards and co-creators/re-creators of, and now the ways that we build walls between them and us.

Jesus’ message is that there is no them, there is only us. The common thread, it seems to me, is that it’s in our interest to lose this connection to the whole of God’s family. Mother Teresa said it well: “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

So how do we maintain and renew this connection? Here are some ideas from our community:

Look deeply. When you gather for supper, or come to the communion table, look at the food as given for you and representing all that God has put in place to care for his people – and hear the cries of those who don’t have food or water. When you adjust the thermostat, thank God for the blessing of energy, remember that in many places people have less than their share of energy because we have more than ours – and see those who, even if they have a room instead of a car or a sidewalk, don’t have a home. When you notice your health, pray for those who care for the sick, and think about how you would cope without your knowledge of keeping yourself healthy, and insurance.

Look where you are. We are not called to solve global crises, we are called to live faithfully and mindfully in our families and communities.

Tags: Lenten synchroblog, Lent

Missing the point?

My notes from the teaching moment at Kairos' Palm Sunday gathering at Quakertown Memorial Park:

It’s time to celebrate!  Israel has its king!  God has heard our cries!  God is acting to free us from the terrible power of Rome!  All hail, King Jesus!

Right?

Wrong.

Jesus’ ministry has a lot of great examples of people completely missing his point.  He announces his fulfillment of the prophecies and his hometown neighbors want to kill him – how can a local boy say these things?  Don’t we know him?  He declares himself the bread of heaven and even some of his followers are grossed out at the idea of eating his flesh. He offers freedom and the Jews squabble about never having been physically or financially slaves. 

Here Jesus offers himself to the punishment, to the humiliation, to the execution that he knows is coming, entering the city humbly on an ass, and the people are overjoyed!  Here is our king!  All hail King Jesus!

We’re suckers for a success story, aren’t we?  Theologically, this is known as the theology of glory.  We love it when God rides in and saves the day, wins the war, hits a home run, provides prosperity and material rewards.  We love it when the forces of right sweep evil right off the map.

But this isn’t the way our God works.  Our God’s power is not revealed in his glory, but in weakness.  In the way he attends to the poor and downtrodden.  In the way he uses cracked pots like us to accomplish God’s mission.  But most importantly in the way he overcame our most insidious enemies – sin and death – by taking on sin and submitting to death.  Jesus points us to a theology of the cross, a way of understanding the world in which we don’t simply equate success with God’s favor but look for God’s action even in the weak and broken places and people – even in ourselves.

Jesus takes it so far as to say that, in order to see him, we have to see those who are poor, and sick, and imprisioned, and lame – in his words, “the least of these.”  So its appropriate that we have brought offerings of food for the hungry as our tribute to Jesus today.  But the story doesn’t end here. And it doesn’t jump right to the glory of Easter.

We get to Easter through the cross.  So I invite you this week to spend time with Christ and his passion, in Scripture, in reflection, in prayer and in community.
 

Tags: Lenten synchroblog, Lent

You are salt...

Clipped from The Onion's website today. While it's fun to laugh about "Lutheran hot dogs" (known a couple of them, have you?) this is a great commentary on the tendency of some Christians to want to "brand" everything, and also on the way people react to such proclamations -- "Great, now I can go to hell for eating the wrong salt." Funny, but are we listening? Are we speaking to what really matters to people? Jesus did.

The New Reformation

No, I'm not fasting from technology for Lent, though it may look like it. Len at Next Reformation posted this great quote from Reggie McNeal's "The Present Future," which I read several years ago and helped me get a new picture of not just the church but of my faith journey. This is fascinating. wonder...how well does this resonate with what you/we are living? Which of these many polarities are the most relevant to you? How do you feel being part of a new Reformation? What does his description of the new Reformation say to you?

“The first Reformation was about freeing the church. The new Reformation is about freeing God’s people from the chruch (the institution). The original Reformation decentralized the church. The new Reformation decentralizes ministry. The former Reformation occurred when clergy were no longer willing to take marching orders from the Pope. The current Reformation finds church members no longer willing for clergy to script their personal spiritual ministry journey. The last Reformation moved the church closer to home. The new Reformation is moving the church closer to the world. The historic Reformation distinguished Christians one from the other. The current Reformation is distinguishing followers of Jesus from religious people. The European Reformation assumed the church to be a part of the cultural political order. The Reformation currently underway does not rely on the cultural political order to prop up the church. The initial Reformation was about church. The new Reformation is about mission.”
Reggie McNeal, The Present Future

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Ash Wednesday tweets

Tags: Lenten synchroblog, Lent

Lead us to repentance

Christine Sine posted a beautiful video meditation to start off Lent. Enjoy!

Flying upside-down?

Dallas Willard begins his classic treatise on the spiritual life, “The Divine Conspiracy,” with an anecdote about a pilot who, disoriented, pulls back on the stick to ascend and flies straight into the ground.

“This is a parable of human existence in our times … most of us as individuals, and world society as a whole, live at high speed, and often with no clue to whether we are flying upside-down or right side up. Indeed, we are haunted by a strong suspicion that there may be no difference…” (2)

Life today feels similarly out of control. Many of our old assumptions no longer hold water. Its hard to know if course corrections will launch us into the clear, trigger a “Mayday!” or auger directly into the ground.

But maybe it has always been this way. In today’s Gospel, Jesus warns the disciples who are busy dividing the spoils of His victory and vying for pride of place in the kingdom that what looks like the head of the line is really the end. ‘Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.’ (Mark 9:35)

The first must be last. Leaders must serve. Little children have the keys to the deepest insights. Jesus tells us here that seeing is not believing, that there is a deeper and truer reality that lies beyond what our senses tell us is real. This is the same reality that, the prophet Isaiah tells us, levels the mountains and raises up the low places, the reality that Mary sees filling the hungry and sending the rich away empty. And with our solid ideas about security, well-being, risk and reward cracking a bit, if we listen closely we can hear rumblings of this “great reversal” around us.

That’s why Lent is an important part of the life of faith. No matter how certain we are of our beliefs, how comfortable we are with our actions, we need times when we can check our bearings and reset our instruments to be sure we are on the right path.

Popularly, Lent has been for many people a time of self-denial through giving up little pleasures – chocolate, perhaps, or TV or blogging, or dropping our spare change in a charity box. But giving up only gets part of the blessing of Lent. Its fullest expression comes when we give to – give to others, and give to our relationship with God.

My hope and prayer is to use this Lenten season to clear away some of the unnecessary clutter in my life and to focus on who God is calling me to be. In these coming weeks I plan to:

• Balance my reading and thinking about faith with more listening to God and receiving his love.
• Engage more deeply in the brokenness in my neighborhood and pay more attention to the signs of hope that are blossoming there.
• Focus on overcoming inertia and comfort to join in the work God is doin around me all the time.

Tomorrow I will receive a cross of ashes on my forehead with my community, remember that I am dust, and hear the important message of repentance. And as I am turning from the blurred focus, disorientation, and upside-down flying caused by this high-speed life, I will try to keep my focus on the goal I am called to pursue:

So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
‘At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you.’
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! (2 Cor 5:20-6:2)

Tags: Lenten synchroblog, Lent

The inner child

Mark 9:30-37

The disciples come across as so “human” in this story. First they are so confused by what Jesus is saying about his fate that they don’t even raise a question for fear of looking stupid, an emotion all school children relate to (and many of us adults). Then they are arguing among themselves about which one is the greatest! — like a group of children choosing leaders for a game they aren’t sure how to play. When Jesus calls them on it — you’d think they would know by now that he knows the inner secrets of people’s hearts! — you can see them looking down and keeping their mouths shut, like children caught doing something they know they shouldn’t.

It’s fascinating, then, that Jesus brings a child into their midst and welcomes the child. Jesus is chiding them for their all-too-human need to be “first,” but he is also welcoming them as they are — as children. We try so hard to look smart (or just not look stupid), to be the greatest, and Jesus knows it. In fact it is just these tendencies — knowledge, power and control — that cause so much trouble in “religion,” as Jesus often points out to the religious authorities.

Can you hear yourself welcomed by Jesus despite what you don’t know and your desire to be “first”?

(From our Kairos online scripture discussion)

Question

Why is the church more concerned about people who are 'spiritual but not religious' than those who are 'religious but not spiritual'?

Where was God?

Just 10 days ago a friend sent me an email titled "What really happened on the Hudson" containing just this image:

The image of God's presence in the near-miraculous landing of the plane in the river, with no loss of life and no serious injuries, barely registered with me. It angered a good friend who also received the email, but didn't know how to respond. Then when Flight 3407 fell from the sky over Buffalo Thursday night, she said to me: "People were quick to see God's role in saving that plane in the Hudson. Where will they say God was in Buffalo?"

While people are quick to assign God credit for the good things that happen to us -- heroic and skillful pilots, the ability to score a touchdown, the ability to earn a good living -- most of us are not quick to look for God's wrath in tragedies. There are some, of course, who see God's direct action there -- who think that God aimed Katrina at "wicked" New Orleans, that the poor somehow deserve to be poor, etc. What's more common is the view that our health, wealth and comfort, our relative safety, and American power are signs of God's special favor.

This is an old theological problem. Martin Luther criticized the "theologians of glory" who discerned God's presence in victory and blessing yet diminished the the importance of Christ's suffering both for and with us. Luther knew that a theology of glory would justify those looking to their own power and victory, but a theology of the cross, a recognition that God's true strength is revealed in vulnerability and even death, is truly good news to all of us who are weak and struggling, as St. Paul put it, with being unable to do the good we want to, and doing the evil we hope not to do.

It's easier to assume that outward blessings are signs of God's favor, and that sickness, poverty and disaster indicate God's displeasure. Years ago I talked with a hospital chaplain who told the story of her work with a mother whose young daughter was gravely ill. The mother belonged to a church whose theology preached that such sickness was a sign of sin, and the people of the church - including the pastor - seemed uncomfortable visiting and comforting her. Jesus confronted this attitude when he met the man born blind in John 9.

His disciples asked, "Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?" (9:2, MSG)

This is not just a misperception by the religious establishment; the question is asked not by the Pharisees but by his followers. Christ turns the question on its head, challenging them to look beyond the outward manifestations of our well being that we attribute to God's glory into what God is able to do (which is headed, ultimately, to the cross).

Jesus said, "You're asking the wrong question. You're looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world's Light." (9:3-5, MSG)

Sadly the "cause-effect" Jesus negates is very much alive for us. Just Thursday night at our Kairos book group were were noting that sometimes the people with the most passionate faith are those whose lives are transformed from the depths of loss, addiction, poverty and rejection. The most passionate conversions may be among those who start out farthest from the church and faith. As Lynette said, "when things are going well, who has need of a savior?" We had some discussion around Suzanne's suggestion that Christians sometimes still look more at a person's works than their faith. We sometimes see God's presence more clearly in healing one person than in accompanying another through illness and death. We may find God less able to work through "unrepentant" homosexuals than through those who choose to gossip. Jesus' claim that he came for those who are sick not just those who are well sounds as strange to us as it did in his day.

When we rely too much on God's glory, we are looking for God to act as we do; to value and reward what is important to us. We desire to be rich, to be healthy, to avoid suffering, so of course that is how God would show favor. And those things are blessings. But if we want to get at who God loves, we have to look beyond glory to the cross, specifically to the foot of the cross, where we gather with all God's people -- the sick and the healthy, the poor and the rich, the afflicted and the comfortable -- who cry out to him for peace.

So where was God in Buffalo? I believe God was in and under Capt. Sullenberger's coolness and skill passing over optional landing zones for the receptive surface of the Hudson, and with the flight crew of Flight 3407 as they struggled to right their rolling craft without time to utter a "Mayday!" I believe God both weeps with that families of the 49 who died Thursday night and celebrates the gift of life for the 155 who walked off of Flight 1549.

Since this question is often asked in the face of tragedy, I raised the question to some friends on Facebook and Twitter. Here's some of what they said:

• Stuart said that "Because obviously 'God loved those people more' wasn't really helpful...I think someone called that 'sloppy theology.'"
• Maggie noted that some taunted Jesus with this belief as he was dying: "If you are God's Son, come down off that cross and save yourself"...
• Christine acknowledged that "we are rather selective in where we see God - only when good things happen. We cannot imagine God in the midst of pain suffering and grieving with us. Only see God when we are rescued from our pain."
• @Somecomic said that "god is with the families. not a preventer of tragedy but a bearer of pain and a giver of strength."
• @ReverendAndo said that "God was where expected: with the people on the plane. Cross isn't about personal safety it's about God holding us in the worst."

Who says you can't proclaim the Gospel in 140 characters or less!

Oh, and how do we share the cross with people who are only looking for glory? @Somecomic to the rescue:

Somecomic @adiaphora i like to ask hem how thats going for them... :)