Are there yet tears?

"Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment.... Then said Jesus, 

Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this." (John 12:3,7)

Are there yet tears?

Imagine then a pavement scored for gaming: counters fit in slots, die is cast; cloak is torn, garments shared out. Shouldering the cross-piece of his death, a condemned man is led, taunted, through the narrow streets of a busy marketplace. The curious stare. The indifferent turn away, or don’t bother. The guards shove the man forward. Stumbling, he drags his sandals up the stones of the street. Twists and turns. There is the city wall, and outside it his fate. And ours.

They lay him flat on a stone, the better to attach him to his engine of destruction. Up and in and down he goes, just another one of thousands, this one in full view of spectators. How long will this one live? More gaming. 

Either side of him, thieves, murderers, rapists - and some are good people. They will all die, one by one, gasping, suspended, a spectacle. And then, the bodies are checked. Thorough work. The soldiers lance his body. They’re sure, and can report.

Down later onto a slab of rock, weeping mother and friends place his violated body, so sweet and precious to them however it appears to the bystander. They prepare it - him - for the tomb, carved in the rock, donated, nearby, perhaps in a garden. 

That’s it for now.

Are there tears yet? Can they still flow? Can we join such sorrow to our own?

We cannot escape it. Shove it down, deny it, however angrily, however numb; it will out. 

And that is why we are here today at the foot of that self-same cross, wanting to touch it, the places of the nails, the binding, the torn and bleeding body. Or feel the sorrow. 

We don’t need to see it; we know it, in our own bones. We too have grieved, will grieve. 

For our world, for ourselves, for strangers and friends. For mothers and fathers, children, hope. 

And that too is why we are here. Because however hopeless and awful this scene of destruction, of humiliation, of death-dealing merchants and military men, the one they sought to kill yet lives. 

Hope there is still, and faith, though all will be taken away. Only love will be left. Only love endures. 

JRL+ 

Passion 2022.

Suzanne Guthrie writes: "In this season, the church encourages her people to grieve and grieve deeply. Why suffering exists in the first place is not the point, at least for now. In Holy Week the church provides the time to grieve, to break open our hearts of stone, to allow shattering and crumbling and the necessary softening to receive the sacred gifts only grieving confers. Hearts of flesh, perhaps. A new life, represented by deep and universal compassion."  http://edgeofenclosure.org/passion2.html

The Arizona Daily Star published a version of this story under the title, “Only love will be left; love endures” on Easter Sunday April 17th 2022 page E3 in the Keeping the Faith feature of the Home + Life section.

the fullness of love

Let me tell you a story - a story of hope. 

There were palm fronds growing by the path and I cut them loose from the tree

when I was done with them I discarded them in the waste ground behind the garden wall

there  they lay

was I in the crowd

oh yes I am in the crowd

I’m always in the crowd

we are right he is the Messiah he is wonderful counselor Almighty God everlasting father prince of peace and he is coming

 as promised 

he arrives on an unridden colt and we cheer 

hosanna save us that’s what hosanna means save us save us anointed one expected one

the palm fronds lay behind the wall drying until the next spring when someone asked for dried palm fronds to reduce to Ash

in Jerusalem six years ago early in the morning I felt I should get up and go and I walked through the town from the Gloria hotel near the Jaffa gate to the church

the church that has two names

one is the church of the holy sepulcher

there was almost no one there

a priest gathered a small group of people at the bottom of a stair and I asked him 

I don’t know what I’m looking at what should I look at and he said

well you want to go up the stairs that’s Calvary

then you want to go over to that little building inside the building that is the chapel with the tomb

later that day I went into the chapel and lay my forehead on the cool marble slab in the inner room

my eyes closed

it was dark so dark

I felt nothing

I lost track of time

then I heard a gasp of breath and I opened my eyes leaned away got up and went out

the attendant said yes Fr.

and I walked out into the larger church which has another name the church of the Resurrection

but not yet not today

we are still at the tomb with our eyes closed waiting for the light to dawn

between then and now we gather at a table and he is there and he says to us as he breaks the bread and passes it around

this is my body broken for you

the true Paschal Lamb offers himself for us

at the end of the meal he takes the cup blesses it giving thanks to God and gives it to us and says

this is my blood the blood of the new covenant remember this

remember this whenever you drink it

and so we remember also the offering Abraham made of his own son

And God reckoned  that faith of Abraham unto him for righteousness

it wasn’t killing his son that saved him it was his faith

and so even today as we without bread or wine in our hands offer our faith as our gift to God 

and it is through that faith that he redeems us 

it is through his act in which we have faith that he has made us whole

* * *

Racism. White supremacy. Sexism. Gun violence. Madness. Human nature. Human condition. Much more for Jesus to bear than a donkey could carry more than David’s heir alone could bear could restore or return to normal. And so we are not at the happy ending yet. No headless chocolate bunny, or flowers, or colored eggs.

Until we come to know

that he came to bear the whole weight of our condition.

We are not marketing a narrative of fear - we tell a story of hope.

God showed hospitality in creating the world. God shows compassion to the world he created. He now shares in our condition. For, though he was in the form of God, he did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Phil 2.6-8

Where is there hope?

There is hope not because he avoided the human condition but because he took it on. When Jesus healed people he made them whole -

they became fully alive, they shined! And when he raised them from the dead it was not the resuscitation of a corpse: it was resurrection! May we listen with charity and patience. May we comfort where comfort is needed and celebrate where celebration is called for. May we meet challenges with courage compassion competence and commitment. And may we who follow him follow him,

shouldering our own crosses,

as he carries all to the cross and beyond.

And may we in the fullness of life radiate the love of God.

Amen.

Palm Sunday

28 March 2021
Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/HolyWeek/BPalmSun_RCL.html

The Liturgy of the Palms

• Mark 11:1-11
• or John 12:12-16
• Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

The Liturgy of the Word

• Isaiah 50:4-9a
• Philippians 2:5-11
• Mark 15:1-39 
• Psalm 31:9-16

JRL+

"narrative of fear" - Mark Adams, Frontera de Cristo, quoted by Tim Steller in the Arizona Daily Star, March 28th 2021, B5. 

https://iona.org.uk/about-us/prayer/outside-holiness-material-for-holy-week-2021/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrNY-DEWDx0

"Our faith is our gift to God; through it, he redeems us." Keeping the Faith, Arizona Daily Star, April 4th 2021, E3.d

Palm Sunday 2017

When I visited the Holy Land in January 2015, I was among a group of travelers that walked down from the top of the hill just east of Jerusalem toward the valley below.

On the Mount of Olives, in the Dominus Flevit Church at the Garden of Gethsemane, the cross on the altar forms crosshairs like a gunsight, focused on The Rock, the site of the Temple, where Jesus was bound on Palm Sunday.

From the Mount of Olives he rode, descending into the Kidron Valley, and was hailed as he approached the town walls, by a crowd. A crowd of people, celebrating the arrival of the one they hailed as the Messiah, the coming king of the Jews, the promise of ages fulfilled.

Jesus did not disappoint them, that day. He ascended into the Temple precincts atop the giant platform Herod built. He looked all around, at everything (familiar from his yearly family visits) and went out.

Please note that the gospel of Luke tells us (2:41) that these were not strange sights to him (“Now every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the festival of the Passover”) but we see through his eyes the whole set-up of the Temple of the time: the soldiers at the gates, the Fortress not to be missed that overlooked the scene, - handy by bridge or stairs to quell Temple riot or small disturbance, - the courtyards teeming with holiday people, the coffers that ring when pilgrims bring offerings to the God they love. And the Temple authorities, looking on, cooperating, getting along with the Roman Empire and getting enriched by it.

Jesus sees it all and through his eyes we see it - and see it also as it is supposed to be - a house of prayer for all people, together at last in peace to worship one God together.

He goes out. - and returns for days to sit and teach in the Temple compound, the loving God whose peaceable kingdom is on the brink of becoming established.

It is real enough in his followers, his words and deeds, his demonstrations of its power not confined to miracles: for the people sing Hosanna to their king.

This is disturbing, potentially revolutionary, blasphemy! The people who represent the powers that be realize the present dangers of riot, insurrection, overthrow of their established order. Call it - disturbance of the peace, of the Roman peace that is control and profit.

So they plot and worry and one who is as afraid as they are sells him out, tells them where to find him, catch him, on the quiet, isolated from view, and bring him to in-justice.

We see the trial, so-called, acted out - and a very different crowd, Pilate sympathizers, emperor-loyal, coached to cheer the chains they wear, betrayers to a man - they, their livelihooods put at risk by this outsider - they say to Pilate, “Crucify him!” And so Roman justice goes to work “for fear of the Jews” - that is, those Jews who are already on their side, willing to see a man die “for the sake of the nation” - and themselves.

On the Via Dolorosa you begin at Pilate’s palace - or rather, beneath it, where the soldiers played dice, a scorecard scratched in the stone, the prize a prisoner’s clothes.

And then as the path through the marketplace, a busy thoroughfare then as now, twists and turns through the workaday scene, people going about their business as in their midst the soldiers went about theirs, leading a prisoner to the execution place, his shoulders burdened with crosspiece-weight of his own instrument of execution, whipped onward, public spectacle - Don’t Cross Rome, Don’t Even Think to “Question Authority” - and finally up a little hill he is fixed above the ground a little way, shortly, just enough to get his feet clear, but enough to hang - and die.

Eventually we are told the charge against him: This is Jesus, the King of the Jews. Mocking. Truth.

A man whose kingdom was not of this world, the world of an emperor, Augustus, called Son of God, whose own centurion at the last could say, This man truly was the Son of God!”

And they take him down, we are told, two pious men find him a tomb nearby, and women who mourn him begin to prepare the spice that sweeten the corpse - the last duty of devotion.  And night falls early on the scene.

That is where we leave it today, Palm Sunday: a man executed under Pontius Pilate’s orders.

Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday

The Liturgy of the Palms

• Matthew 21:1-11
• Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29

The Liturgy of the Word

• Isaiah 50:4-9a
• Philippians 2:5-11
• Matthew 26:14- 27:66
• or Matthew 27:11-54
• Psalm 31:9-16

http://www.custodia.org/default.asp?id=2738 Dominus Flevit Church