Sermon Notes for Wednesday of Holy Week Mt. 23:37

We cannot  be certain about the chronology of Holy Week. some call Wednesday, the day before Holy thursday, silent Wednesday or Spy Wednesday, where the final plans were laid to arrest Jesus.. Tomorrow we may receive Communion, first inaugurated when jesus was facing his death as surely as the Passover lambs just consumed.Jesus would see two more sunrises  on this day almost 2000 years ago. In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus laments over Jerusalem as part of a long set of teaching in the Temple area in the last days of his life. (apocalyptic images) In some ways, it was a Wednesday, maybe a typical day for the rabbi jesus.

I love this image of Jesus fussing over us like a mother hen. Jesus would die with real regrets. It also shows that Jesus died with regrets, just like we do.Jesus imagines what it would be like for Jerusalem to flick to him, but they do not.

In the Middle Ages, a spiritual practice was to rehearse facing death. How would we spend time if we knew death would be approaching? What could be a fitting prelude to the days that lie before, Holy Thursday, good Friday,Holy saturday? did Jesus’s soul feel like we do when we sense that tornado weather is present in the juiced weather? How do we face the terrors of death, given the promise of Easter? I wonder if he was trying to soak up every bit of experience that Wednesday, or maybe that is how Jesus lived all of the time? Was he struggling to find the words to say goodbye, even to his own life?

After the triumph of Palm Sunday, it could have been a fairly ordinary day for Jesus.Most of our lives lie between the twin towers of Palm sunday spectacle and Good Friday suffering.

Shelter of the wings is a maternal image and made explicit here, see Ps. 17 It is a sweet image, as the mother hen warms the chicks and hides them and chases away some of the other birds, but is quite ineffectual against dangerous predators.  Jesus would be dead on the Sabbath of his people, did he take a Sabbath day as death approached? Did he consider those he had raised from the dead? Did he think about how his disciples would try to manage without him?

Instead very soon Jesus will cry out in abandonment in quoting Ps. 22 my God, my God why have you forsaken me. L A prayer of lament was one of the last words on the lips of jesus. God is open to our communication, including our deepest cries. Praise is not the only music in our lives, or in church.the blues fit most of life better.Jerusalem, Jerusalem.Could that lament be heard in heaven now at the way we conduct our lives? does jesus regret the cross at what we have done with his name?

this is another Wednesday in Holy Week.God sanctifies every single day in our lives.God is with us in the palm sunday peak days and the Holy week sufferings and all the Wednesdays in between.for that matter, I suppose we can see every moment oscillating between triumph and tragedy, every moment tied to the past and expectant of the future.Still, I would ask that we spend some time in prayer and if possible church observance these special days before Easter.We fritter away or ur precious forty days of lenten preparation in a haze of living life as usual. Now for the rest of the week, let us dive into the deep end of the pool and experience the capacious boundless love of God.

March 15 sermon notes on the Incarnation during Lent John 12, Heb. 5

March 22-John 12, Heb. 5:5-10

A man from Indiana calls me routinely. he cannot get in his head that Jesus was a human being. It has always been a looming heresy in the church, but it seems to be a particular issue in America to downplay the humanity of Jesus.Stop and consider for just a moment. God’s own t walked in our steps, took the wilderness walk of humanity in our shoes.  Heb. 5 is a sterling reminderof the humanity of Jesus.Our tradition empahsizes the priestly workofJesus.Here not only does he offer up his very life, he offers up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears, perhaps marks of sincerity in prayer. This could well include the prayerful cry of dereliction, of despair when Jesus quotes Ps. 22 on the cross.

I cannot count how many times I have heard something of this flow. At a funeral home visitation, some says I know what you are going through. At the same time, their response is you do not possibly know what I am going through, Can the Holy One, the Almighty, grasp the human condition? In God’s own being, Jesus’s humanity makes deepens the bond between God and us.John 12::20-33 In John’s gospel jesus often seems like a superhero riding over the concerns of everyday events. Still, this makes the human moments all the more stark and moving. In one of the images of the last century, we had Spock  trying to control his human side and the robot data trying to become more human. We approach the final act and goodbye of the life of Jesus. we do not have Gethsemane in this gospel but we have this moment. Jesus souls is troubled (ch word-tarasso, terrifies, disturbed, in commotion, stirred up, torn up shaken up bridge over troubled water)It frames the baptismal moment of Jesus where God speaks.Notice how the crowd misperceives even the voice of God.Jesus admits his heart is troubled. Still,he feels compelled to continue on.We think of courage at times as the absence of fear. Here it is recognizing the fear and moving through it, as Tom Hanks does when his hand is shaking in Saving Private Ryan.

We would see jesus-come and see at the start to the gospel. The hour includes falling letting go holding on has a Zen quality to it the full gift of himself to God and to and for the world.Jesus is trying to open eyes to another world-to move past making absolute the way things are and have been but to a new future-That entails being able to let go of one way of life and embrace another. To hold on to the new way entails release of the old patterns. We tend to cling to the familiar, and we then wonder why we cannot grab hold of the new.  In Zen and in 12 step we use the word detachment so we can more easily await and receive life. Jesus does not coerce-Jesus draws people like a magnet. Notice again the idea of free choice is set aside for this image of  attraction, perhaps a principle of spiriutal attraction ascertain as a magnetic field.No mention of free will is here.

John continues to work with the image of sight/seeing of the revealed jesus, like a new horizon, seeing an oracle into the future, a crystal ball of the gypsy, or the palantir of LOTR or the erised of Harry Potter.

We would see Jesus. We receive Communion this morning. We would see Jesus, be with Jesus. Body and soul, we are with Jesus this morning in an especially deep way..

sermon notes for Palm and Passion Sunday 2015, John 12, Mark 14

Palm/Passion  Sunday 2015 John 12:12-16, Mark 14:27-51, Ps. 31, Is. 50:4-9

Hindsight is 20/20. Even for the earliest Christians, that seems to be the case. Notice that only after the resurrection, only after time and reflection do they re-interpret their experience and their reading of the Hebrew Scriptures and apply them through Jesus. Those who sat at the feet of Jesus took a while to come to grips with the full depth of his life, so maybe we should be a bit easier on ourselves that ti takes a lifetime to grow into the faith.(Mercersburg Th).With today’s liturgy, I am going to let the sermon move from the height of Palm Sunday to the depths of Holy Week with the understanding that the very depth is a spiritual core of the faith.

My tendency is to skip over Palm Sunday and move into the last days of Holy Week. we see Jesus hearing words of Scripture to hail him as a triumphant entrance. Rob Lowe does a series of commercials, and in one he portrays peaked in high school guy. When little chance of seeing another high point comes in life, we try to rest on our laurels, as in the new Christian Laettner commercial. Surely, his spirit was lifted at that acclamation as fully as the palms and clothing thrown at his feet. Some folks see marriage as starting at a peak with the wedding and then being one long downhill slide. some fear retirement as the promise that no more peak experiences are to be had.It is a great sadness not to be able ot point to some high points in a life. It is thrilling to achieve or even exceed a goal, an aspiration.

The high point was to be short lived. Gethsemane is part of the descent into hell,perhaps.there Jesus starts to stare into the face of death. I wonder if Jesus looked back those few short days. We catch a glimpse of the far journey the Son of god is taking into the very heart of death, the place that answers that all is for naught, for nothing, that darkness, not light will prevail. Calvin spoke of it as seeing the face of god in judgment of us all, and Luther spoke of it as a struggle so tremendous that only Jesus could endure it. Forgive me if I have mentioned this before, but in one of my few mystical experiences, my vision was that Jesus saw a parade of evil in the past and into the distant future, the sheer history of what we do to each other-

(Mount of Olives and OT. It was a cemetery for years. it has apocalyptic mention in book of Zechariah with the presence of God.)

This culminating week in the Christian calendar opens a path to spiritual life and imagery. So often, we want to freeze Palm Sunday when things look triumphant, powerful and surging with energy. All of us go through Gethsemane moments. Sometimes that is what turn us to our knees in prayer, or it is precisely the time we abandon prayer life as we feel abandoned by God. In a way, Jesus encapsulates the high and low moments in the last week. Both are fleeting, evanescent, if they are not infused with meaning beyond the actual event. At its best, liturgy seeks to frame experience in life with God. We do not have many extra services in our congregation, but we do offer a number in Holy Week.( I have said before that Good Friday here is as good as liturgy gets. In my frustration with how we view Communion in our Baptist infused American experience, we have a focus entirely on the different levels of the Lord’s Supper this Maundy Thursday, and a new service that looks squarely at crucified, dead, and buried from the Creed)

Points for Week of March 15

Sunday-Ps. 107’s selection for this Sunday (1-3, 17-22) deal gratitude toward god and warn against complaint.complaint is often a dominant feature of our speaking. It seems especially endemic when we speak of those close to us. Why does gratitude come with some many obstacles,but complaint seems to flow easily?

Monday-What is it about rules that puts us on the defensive? Is it because they make us feel like we're not trusted? Or maybe because they make us feel like we're not in control? Rules, of course, dictate how we are supposed to live and act. Though they are meant for good, they can be seen as a billboard for our shortcomings. They reveal to us that no, we are not perfect, we do not have it all together and we most certainly are not in control. And that makes us squirm a little bit—especially when we know we are bound to fail. But, thankfully, that's not where it ends. We, exposed as sinners by the 10 Commandments, are not left to figure it out on our own. For just as the Commandments show us that we are not in control, they reveal to us who is.

Tuesday-In Dennis, Shelia, and Matthew Linn’s book, “Healing the Purpose of Your Life” they talk about the importance of finding one’s “sealed orders.” Sealed orders are the special word(s) or phrase that perfectly sums up your distinct, God-infused, way of giving and receiving love—your unique way of being in the world. At this moment, the best way I've found to describe my life, my sealed orders, and what it means for me to be a monk in the world is to be a cultivator.

Wednesday-"Going through Lent is a listening.When we listen to the word,we hear where we are so blatantly unliving.If we listen to the word, and hallow it into our lives, we hear how we can so abundantly live again." (by Ann Weems from "Kneeling in Jerusalem")

Thursday-A good sleep is grace and so are good dreams.  The smell of rain is grace.  Somebody loving you is grace.  Loving somebody is grace.  Have you ever tried to love somebody?A crucial eccentricity of the Christian faith is the assertion that people are saved by grace.  There's nothing you have to do.  There's nothing you have to do.  There's nothing you have to do. The grace of God means something like: Here is your life.  You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn't have been complete without you.  Here is the world.  Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don't be afraid.  I am with you.  Nothing can ever separate us.  It's for you I created the universe.  I love you.

Friday-I visited the Sept. 11 memorial for the first time. The memorial has a peaceful yet commanding presence. It serves as both an aching reminder of what stood there before and an overwhelming tribute to those who lost their lives on that day. One of the things that struck me most at the memorial was the Survivor Tree. The tree was discovered about a month after the attacks, severely damaged with snapped roots and burned and broken branches. Today it stands with multiple ties stabilizing it and a barrier around it so it is not disturbed as it heals. As one of the only living things to survive at Ground Zero, it is a beautiful reminder that life can (and indeed does) come out of death. You may not look quite the same as you did going in, but alas, life, hope and faith can find you again

Saturday-Augustine -"Human beings go out and gaze in astonishment at high mountains, the huge waves of the sea, the broad reaches of rivers, the ocean that encircles the world, or the stars in their courses, but they pay no attention to themselves"

Column for Holy Week

I walked by a flashing church sign that proclaimed “He Is Risen” for their Easter service before Holy Week has even started. Holy Week starts with Palm Sunday in the Christian tradition. It assumes that people either go to church on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday or involve themselves in deep consideration of the last days of the life of Jesus. In reality, those who do attend church move from one high point to another, Palm Sunday and Easter in all likelihood. At the same time, I notice that National Geographic is planning a special entitled Killing Jesus, based on the popular series of books by the TV personality Bill O’Reilly. Along with watching the program, perhaps we could re-read the four accounts of the last days of Jesus in the gospels.

Can we appreciate the enormity of the resurrection without moving through the depths of Holy Week? Increasingly, the events of Holy Week seem too difficult, too painful, so churches shy away from engagement with them. We follow American culture and seek the “positive” to celebrate. Holy Week encapsulates the life of Jesus in sharp focus. A high point on Sunday, normal life for a few days, and the descent into the angst of approaching doom. So Jesus lives with us, identifies with us, in the ebb and flow of human life. The Incarnate One faces death as all do.

One of the recurring images in American culture is the person who peaked in high school rob Lowe does a version of it in his commercials, and John Updike made high art of it in his Rabbit novels. Life rarely goes from one high point to another. I just saw the new comedy at the St Louis Repertory Theater where the main characters look back on their lives with regrets as they cannot find high points at all.

In the various Palm Sunday accounts Jesus enters Jerusalem in a triumphal procession where he hears shouts of acclamation. John Dominic Crossan wonders if two different marches were going on simultaneously. One was a Roman force swaggering in behind banners and swords. The other may have been a small side event where Jesus enters by a different route. Imagine it as a liturgical procession more than a parade. The gospels note the cheers and slide back to Zechariah 9, where Jesus merges with the vision of a future ruler riding into town on a symbol of peace. The crowd shouts Hosanna, hurrah, but its meaning is save us, save us. Jesus would see four more sunrises.

Few accounts show the fickleness of crowds more starkly than this. It is entirely possible that some of the same people cheering Jesus were the same ones to shout crucify him. Some years ago, we had a church delegation to the Congo, where after being cheered, our delegation of church folks was threatened and had to be airlifted to safety. Think of how cheers turn to jeers at sporting events.

Suffering can demonstrate strength in some, and it can threaten to destroy others. Meaningless suffering compounds the cruelty of suffering. In the face of the torture and death of Jesus as a young man, the church was faced with the task of finding some meaning in his death. What does it mean in 2015 to say that Jesus died for us?

I was working on Holy Week material with our talented organist, Greg Fletcher. He recounted some family history of his grandmother growing up in Fidelity, IL. It gets a flood of mail around Valentine’s Day. Holy week is a sign of fidelity of Jesus to human life. Go back over the marital vows. Holy Week brings them into focus as a lens into the life of Jesus. Even death does not prove a barrier to the unswerving love of God in Jesus.

Mostly quotes for Week of March 29

Sunday-Ps. 31 has a mixture of anguish of body, heart, and soul. It fits Holy week well, indeed, we could apply the tortures of Jesus to it easily. . it also fits any time we are in real distress. I also think it fits the fragility of age with particular force. Do such lament prayers come easily to you? Why is that do you think?

Monday-Paul points out to the Ephesians that Christ invites us to partner in God's redeeming work in the world. It's not up to us alone to save, nor are we given an extra star on our heavenly deeds chart for the good we do. Each of us was particularly equipped by the Spirit to serve our neighbor, and through faith we trust that God works in, despite and through us. Lord, today help me let go. Amen.

Tuesday-"Our soul is so specially loved of Him that is highest, that it overpasseth the knowing of all creatures: that is to say, there is no creature that is made that may know how much and how sweetly and how tenderly our Maker loveth us."— St. Juliana of Norwich

Wednesday-Ideally, a human life should be a constant pilgrimage of discovery.  The most exciting discoveries happen at the frontiers.  When you come to know something new, you come closer to yourself and to the world.  Discovery enlarges and refines your sensibility.  When you discover something, you transfigure some of the forsakenness of the world. John O'Donohue, Eternal Echoes

Thursday-A Prayer for your Life Journey ....May the light of your soul guide you.May the light of your soul bless the work that you do/with the secret love and warmth of your heart./May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul./May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light/and renewal to those who work with you/and to those who see and receive your work./May your work never weary you./May it release within you wellsprings of/refreshment, inspiration and excitement./May you be present in what you do./May you never become lost in bland absences./May the day never burden./May dawn find you awake and alert,/approaching your new day with dreams, /possibilities and promises./May evening find you gracious and fulfilled./May you go into the night blessed, sheltered and protected./May your soul calm, console and renew you. Amen

Friday-Remember God, I am often so sloppy or lazy at my prayers, or, even worse, my prayers are lovely and pure and the next sixteen and a half hours are a mess.I do not pray to become holy,but simply this: to remember.To be mindful of your goodness,to remember that you are here, to be present in the moment you grant me,to look around me, to listen...to remember. Amen.From Unfolding Light by Steve Garnaas-Holmes,

Saturday-Is. 50:4-9- For the shamed, the disgraced, it has to be a word more than, "Be a good person." It has to be a word that says, "I am with you; you are mine." To think that God would stand and be present with us—disgraced, shamed, ugly—then maybe we're not so ugly and profane after all. Maybe we are worthy. We stand forgiven, and we can stand with confidence alongside the almighty God. God our helper, you stand with us when no one would stand with us—profane to the world. Thank you for reminding us who we are and who we belong to. Amen.Aaron Fuller

Devotional Pts-Week of March 22

Sunday-Ps. 51 is one of the great penitential psalms. Look at its context as it is presented as a prayer of David when his terrible sins over the Bathseba affair became evident. When are we heartbroken over sins? when do we demonstrate a cavalier attitude to certain sins but not to others?  Should our corporate prayers of confession evince such contrition?

Monday-”Silence isn't just the absence of sound, but a form of human consciousness. This silence of the heart is a profound place of moving beyond ego, judgments, and dualistic thinking to witness the presence of the divine. In silence, we can experience a sense of inner expansiveness which makes more room for God's presence.”

Tuesday-Ps 104-hold these words in your heart as you go out in the world to receive images in response. As you walk be ready to see what is revealed to you as a visual expression of your prayer.You can share images you already have which illuminate the theme, but I encourage you also to go for a walk with the theme in mind and see what you discover.

Wednesday-"Sometimes the pages won't turn in our book of dreams,and we are left clinging to a life we never lived...just wanted to.Stuck in the stark reality of unlived dreams,we sniffle and tread water, or we go in search of the Holy One who will wipe the tears from our eyes and offer to us the only dream that lives." (by Ann Weems, "Kneeling in Jerusalem")

Thursday-"The body takes the shape of the soul," said an anonymous medieval monk. It might also be said, "The soul takes the shape of the body." Your body is "a temple of the Holy Spirit within you," says St. Paul (I Corinthians 6:19). How does this interaction work within your experience?

Friday-Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22 -I am a world-class complainer. I can vent, steam and stew with the best of them. When done unconstructively, my complaining ways beget more complaining and lead to a miserable existence in which I am, as Martin Luther deemed it, "turned inward on myself." And don't you know I'll try to drag you down with me! Saturday-”To be awakened to the divinity of the one unending present moment in which our lives unfold is the grace. To be once again awakened is the grace that carries within it the riddle of our forgetfulness.”  How does worship touch on this quote? How do you rate yourself on a wakefulness scale?