Wednesday, March 31, 2010

From Hosanna to Crucify Him

This reflection and prayer from our "Palm Saturday" service followed an exercise where we broke into groups and completed three "stations" of Holy Week.  The Temple (Mark 11:15-18), The Garden (Luke 22:31-34, 54-62), and The Courtyard (Luke 22:36-42).  At each station, prayers were gathered, and then used in this reflection/prayer.

Palm Sunday – the triumphal entry.  This week began with Jesus, hot off the event of raising Lazarus from the dead, entering the city like new royalty, the people lined up and cheering, expectant and jubilant. 
The triumphal entry was the beginning – people were ready to see great things.  But the week unfolded very differently than anyone could have imagined, and five days later the cries of “Hosanna! Save us!” turned to “Crucify him!” 
In between, Jesus journeyed through humanity’s web: relationship, love and betrayal, structures and systems, justice and abuses of power, power dynamics and loyalty, of fear and grief.

The king of all creation who breathed it all into being, and who entered it in flesh and blood to join creation from within it, was about to leave it. And his last week, last act, was to rip off death’s mask - to gasps of surprise and dismay - and expose how insidious and terrible it really is, and all the ways it masquerades in the world.
This was the week that the God-man trampled through the normal, ordinary world like an emotional bull in a china shop, and at every turn tore through facades to reveal death’s stranglehold on life: in injustice, betrayal, fear, in the decorum and respected order, in religion, and our own struggle between who we want to be and who we really are. One last Harrah to uncover the places that hunger for the healing and redemption of the kingdom of God.
The week that began with Hosanna ended with Crucify him exposed every place of dissonance and discord, all ironies and opposites we live with, and cover up, and maintain, and justify.  It rubbed raw and revealed all inconsistencies and contradictions inside ourselves and in the world we’ve shaped, and left them out in the open, awaiting a divine response, while God himself hung dying in their midst. 

And if they hadn’t seen it before then, or if they had been too tangled up with their own desires and preconceptions that they missed what it was really about, that week the disciples saw the very heart of God-with-us: they watched him rage at injustice, they watched him bend down like a slave and wash their feet, they watched him suffer and anguish in pain and fear at coming face to face with death – like most every one of us has done and all of us will do.  They watched him forgive and love in the face of betrayal, and sacrifice his own life for each one of them and all of us. 
If they hadn’t seen it before then, because they thought they knew what Messiah was, or they were clear on God’s agenda for the world, that week flipped them on their heads and left them stripped of all preconceptions and notions about the WAY God IS with us. 

And so as we go into our week, suspended still between the Hosanna! and the Crucify Him! that both live within ourselves, trapped still, so often by death’s grip on our lives, may we see exposed in us and in the world the great contradictions and illusions that make us hunger for the kingdom of God. And may we too be stripped of our preconceptions and expectations, so that we may be surprised anew by the WAY God IS with us.

Let’s pray.

God with us, you are with us, and you walked that week of death in a way that let nothing lay hidden, allowed nothing stay disguised.  We sit here tonight as your people, those loved and claimed by you, and also those in whom deep contradictions and struggles still live. 
We sit here as those who love you and claim you as our God, and yet who, in the face of fear and opposition, find ourselves saying, as Peter, despite he deep love for you, did: “That man? I don’t know him; he’s not one of us.”
God we have often seen that we are not who we thought we were, and we see over and over that we are not who we wish we were, and this leaves us despairing and filled with regret and grief.  In your mercy, Oh God, forgive us…

1(People’s prayers read out from the journal: “I am not who I say I am, forgive me…”)

And yet, in your grace, you continue to call us your own, to free us from fear’s hold, to cleanse us from the deep shadows of our inconsistency with the light of your love, and to nurture in us ever new and full life.  You continue to call us your children, precious to you, and those who share in your life for the world.  Thank you…

2(People’s prayers read out from the journal: “I am a child of God, thank you…”)

And as your children, God, we are so grateful for the ways you draw near to us in suffering, and call us to draw near to each other in our times of pain.  We thank you for calling us not individuals, but your Body, your people, that we may be for one another strength when we are weak, faith when we fear, and hope when we despair. 
Give us courage to stand with those in need in our lives, even when it makes us uncomfortable, or when we think we don’t have anything to offer.  Give us the strength to sit vigil with those we love, especially….

3(People’s prayers read out from the basket: “With whom in my life am I being called to “stay awake” in their time of need?)

And may we have the courage as well, that you did, to say “I can’t do this alone”, and so to be your Body, and allow others to stand with us.  Give us the strength to ask for others’ to minister to us with their presence, to share in our places of need, especially….

4(People’s prayers read out from the basket: “In what places of need in my own life am I being called to ask someone to “stay awake” with me?)

And by living in your light that exposes all darkness, help us to see the ways we give into the crowd, the mentality that makes us feel less alone in the face of death and so compels us to participate in its very perpetuation, the ways we too cry Crucify Him! when we get uneasy at what the light exposes within ourselves, or reveals the ways we have misrepresented, slandered and offended you in your very name. 
Give us your eyes to see the world and its people in their beauty and complexity, in the love which you have created us for and the wholeness you intend, and may it fill us with your rage, your anger at how it has been warped and damaged, your rage about….

5(People’s prayers read out from the banner: “Over what is God raging today?”

In this time of Holy Week, trapped between the Hosannas we stifle and the Crucify Hims we disguise, Oh God, Let no illusions stand.  Not the illusion of our own loyalty or integrity, not the illusion of religious purity or holiness,
not the illusion that God is distant and unfazed by our struggles, or that we can do it alone, or that things in the world are ok the way they are.   And as we walk towards death and wait for resurrection, thank you Jesus, for walking this way with us. 
Amen.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

The Last Dinner Party





We went back to the house of the dead man for dinner. 
Crazy to be back there again, four days later, the tomb still standing open.  We passed it on the way, still faintly smelling of spices and death. Here we were, back at the place that had turned the tide. Word was the leaders were just annoyed with Jesus before that, found him an oddity, an irritation; some wanted him gone but others thought he was not that big a threat.  But when it happened, some of them were there, they saw it.  And that clinched it.
Lazarus was an upstanding guy, good family, so many had come to pay their respects to the sisters, and really, the whole town was grieving.  And the rumors were circulating – because they had sent word to Jesus days before that Lazarus was sick, and he was only two miles away, and he never came.
This was Lazarus, his friend, brother of Mary and Martha –These were his people.  And he didn’t go.  I didn’t understand it.  I kind of agreed with the rumors, at the time, that he should’ve been there. I had seen him do all kinds of things, surely he could have kept his friend from dying. But we lingered for two more days.  I figured it was because it was a bit dangerous; last time we’d been through there some people had tried to stone him, there were enough folks around that wanted him gone that it was safer to just avoid Bethany. So I didn’t question him. 
But then suddenly he decided we would go, and he got all cryptic and said we were lucky he hadn’t been there earlier because now we’d really have a reason to believe in him, and that Lazarus had fallen asleep and he was going to wake him up.  Somebody, I can’t remember who, helpfully pointed out that sleep might do the fellow some good, he just may be well by the time we arrived. But he looked at us and sighed and then said, “Listen guys, he’s dead, ok? And I am going to him.” Thomas turned to the rest of us, and shrugged, knowing Jesus was walking into a potential minefield and said, “We might as well go along and die with him.”

So we got there, and Lazarus was dead.  And Martha met him on the road and said Jesus could’ve done something sooner and also that she thought he still could.  He told her that her brother would be raised up, and she said she knew that in the very End there was resurrection, and that one day he’d be alive again, but he said he was the resurrection and the life, and everyone who believes in him will actually never die, “Do you believe this?” He asked her.  She said she did, and that she had always known he was the Messiah, the Son of God come into the world, and we all stood there a little astonished and bewildered at this back and forth.  Then she ran and got Mary who came out crying and a bunch of people came with her, also crying, and she ran right up to him, and punched him in the chest and said that if he’d been there Lazarus wouldn’t have died. And she was right. 
It was awful. 

Then he asked to go to the tomb and I have never seen him so emotional. He was devastated, and angry.  Actually he exploded with rage, angry it seemed, at death itself.  He just completely lost it.  He threw his head back and shouted, and then dropped his face in his hands and wept. He absolutely crumpled to the ground and sobbed.  I could hear the whispers around me, some were remarking on how much he had loved Lazarus, and others thought, then why hadn’t he come when he could’ve done something to save him?  And all the while he knelt there bawling, great gasps wracking his body. 
Finally he pulled himself together and walked toward the tomb and told them to roll away the stone.  Martha balked.  “He’s been dead four days already Jesus, the smell will be horrible. Please!” 
She was crying too, by this point most everyone was, - the whole thing was both heartbreaking and a little horrifying -, and Mary was hovering nearby, her face puffy and streaked with tears, trying to comfort Jesus but not wanting to touch him, his anger was so great that he had thrown off her grasp and she hesitated to reach out to him again. 
He said to Martha, “ You said I was the Son of God, now roll it away and see what happens next.”

So she told some men to move it aside, and they did, and it did smell, a great wave of stench rolled out and engulfed us all.  And it seemed to summon out all the remaining rage inside him because Jesus absolutely roared, “Lazarus! Come out!’ 
The whole crowd got silent, we could hear our own breathing, or holding our breath as the case may be.  Nobody moved. And then we heard something. Thump, thump.  And Lazarus came out. He hopped out. He was tied in the grave clothes, his face still covered with a cloth and he came jumping out of the hole.  People screamed and gasped, others laughed with delight, one woman actually fainted.  Jesus yelled for people to go untie him and let him free, so a bunch of people did. 

And that was the turnaround.  Suddenly a bunch of people believed, how couldn’t you? We’d seen this with our own eyes, and the story spread like wildfire – some of the leaders were actually there when it happened, so it couldn‘t be denied.  And now they hated him.  And not sort of friendly kind of hate, hate with jealousy or admiration in the mix- they hated him with that deadly hate that comes from fear.  They feared him and hated him, and decided he must die.
We barely stayed the afternoon and we were off again, but we knew there was no turning back, that nothing had prepared us for the life and death stakes we’d just reached.
They said that the same day the Pharisees and High Priests called a council and decided something had to be done, or before long everyone would believe in him and the Romans would come and strip them of what little power and privilege they had.  And then it is rumored that the Chief Priest Ciaphas spoke up, and said, “Don’t you know anything? Can’t you see that it’s to our advantage that one man dies for the people rather than the whole nation be destroyed?”  And without even realizing what he was saying, he prophesied that Jesus would die to save us all. 

We hid out a few days, in growing apprehension and restlessness. Things had changed, you could feel it in the very air.  It was sharp, tense, everyone knew who he was whenever we set foot in public, and you could practically feel the threat breathing down his neck when you stood close to him.  The whispers had reached us that they were out to capture him, that they wanted to kill him. And the whispers were all around the temple as well, people speculating about whether or not he’d show up in Jerusalem for Passover.  Everyone, it seemed, had heard about Lazarus and the whole world wanted to get their hands on him.

So to kick off the week before Passover, we went back to the home of the dead man. 
It was nearly dark when we passed the tomb and made our way up the road to the house.  They were throwing a dinner party, like dozens of other dinner parties they’d thrown for him, but it felt so strange tonight.  He was tense, anxious, tired.  We’d been growing worried about him in the past few days since we’d last been here, and more than once wondered whether it made sense to come back so soon.  But when we neared the house, the light from the windows throwing squares onto the path, the sound of laughter inside, and the smells of Martha’s cooking filling the air, his demeanor visibly changed.  His shoulders relaxed, his face softened and he seemed, well, relieved.  Mary had seen us coming and she threw open the door and hugged him, waving us in, welcome, welcome!

Home, they say, is the place that when you have to go there they have to take you in.  I realized in that moment that this was home for him.  He hadn’t had a home as long as I had known him. There were places we were welcomed, certainly, we had met his family and seen him relax and have fun in many settings, but there was something different about Mary, Martha and Lazarus.  They were his home, this was the place where we’d seen him most vulnerable, most comfortable, most human.  He loved them intensely, and they him.  They were family – in the very highest sense of the word.
So he went there and they took him in, and the night began as most of their dinner parties had before.  Drinks and conversation, Martha getting everything organized and prepared, but things felt different.  Like the fog had blown off and we were seeing everything in stark relief.  Like inside this house, right now was different than everywhere else in the whole world. 
I couldn’t stop staring at Lazarus.  He still smelled like the death spices, to be honest.  It had been just four days, and from sun up to sundown, the gawkers found reason to pass by the house for a glimpse of him.  But what about him? I wondered.  What is it to be dead, and be given back your life?  How does a dead man keep living? 
He was quiet that night.  He sat near Jesus and was very quiet.

Just after Martha served the meal, Mary left and came back into the room holding a jar of the death spices, precious, expensive oils. She was pale, and shaking a bit but she seemed focused.  The conversation and laughter kind of dwindled away because she came into the room carrying that jar and she did the strangest thing.

What does it mean to know you’re going to lose someone?  Someone you love?  If you really know it, then nothing else matters.  Mary, somehow Mary had heard what the rest of us had missed or refused to really take in, she had been listening to him.  Somehow she knew.  
She came in and knelt down, between the dead man who was alive and the living man about to die.  She uncorked the bottle and the smell filled the air, mingling with the smell of bread and lamb on the table. 
Then she unbound her hair – as no woman ever does in front of any man she did in a room full of men -  and she began to cry. 
Surely Jesus would stop her, everyone was watching – looking from him to her and back again, surely he would spare her, and himself, further humiliation.  She has already gone too far.  Surely….
But Mary was saying goodbye to the one she loved. She didn’t care if she looked crazy or inappropriate, which she did. Both.  Because when you know this is goodbye then nothing else matters. 
Then she tipped the jar and poured the oil, dumped the whole bottle over his feet, lifted them into her lap carefully, and massaged them, and began wiping them with her hair.  Now the smell was overpowering, staggering.  The room was electric.  We could feel it.  Something was happening here that we did not understand, but the moment, as bizarre and inexplicable as it was, was also holy. 
We couldn’t turn away but could hardly bear to watch.  Nobody dared speak.  Well, almost nobody. 
Suddenly Judas cleared his throat and let out a nervous chuckle. He rolled his eyes and nodded his head towards Mary and said to Jesus, - and the whole room,  - “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It could easily feed a family for a year.”
Jesus didn’t even lift his gaze from Mary.  His eyes also were filled with tears, and he had the strangest expression on his face… Gratitude, I think it was. 
“Leave her alone.” He said quietly. “She’s anticipating and honoring the day of my burial.”  Then he quoted Deuteronomy, where it talks of caring for the poor at every turn, “The poor you will always have with you.” He said.  Then his voice broke, and he continued, “But you will not always have me.”

Funny, now I can’t even remember how the dinner ended after that.  And now, after everything that has happened, I just keep coming back to that night. That moment. 
I don’t know if she really knew what she was doing, or if she was just so full of love that she did what she could – as excessive and unlimited as she knew how – she kept back not a drop of that perfume, she cared not a whit for her dignity, she clung to his feet and wrapped herself, her hair, over them. 
The tenderness and intensity was almost too much to stand, it’s no wonder Judas broke in.  I’ve seen heads anointed plenty of times, in blessing, even in coronation, but feet? Only corpses.  Before any of the rest of us could even begin to fathom what the week was to hold, Mary knew, and was saying goodbye.
But she did more than that.  Because a few days later, on Passover when he stood up from another dinner table, set aside his robe and wrapped an apron around his waist, when he knelt down at our feet, when he wiped them with a towel, I looked down at his head, and at his hands holding my feet in his lap and I saw what he saw, looking down at Mary. I saw his love and devotion – to me – I saw his dignity aside and his heart laid bare.  “Do this for each other,” he had said. Do this like Mary did to me, I heard.

I can’t help wishing I were a little more like Mary.  She didn’t know.  I mean, she knew more than the rest of us, but she had no more than an inkling, really.  But she followed anyway, always, with her whole heart.  And it is easy to look back and say Judas just said that because he was going to betray Jesus, but actually, Judas only said something most of us were thinking at some level, anyway. Why are you wasting all of that precious resource on a frivolous act?  Why not use it for something that really matters? 
But I see now that nothing mattered more.  And I admire Mary.  She wasn’t afraid to live into a reality she had only just begun to grasp, to act without knowing the significance of her actions, only someday to realize how profound and meaningful they really were.[1]

The morning after the dinner party he rode into Jerusalem on that donkey.  That next morning the crowds screamed and clawed their way to catch site of him, the man who had raised Lazarus from the dead.  The man who threatened to tear a nation in two.
The very next day he rode into the center of it all and the meaning of Mary’s prophesy began to unfold.  That was six days before he died. 

So I keep coming back to that night.  
The dinner at the home of the dead man.  
The room where the rules of time and space didn’t apply.  
I keep reliving the night when Mary knelt, 
with the future and the now, 
the very End and the already, 
right there on either side of her, 
the resurrected one 
and the Resurrection. 




 Rev. Kara K Root 
Lake Nokomis Presbyterian Church
Last Sunday of Lent
March 21, 2010

[1] I’m grateful to Matt Skinner in conversation on Sermon Brainwave, for this insight



Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The unanswerable question, and its counterpart


A few weeks ago, Patheos contacted me and asked if I would write an answer to the question, Who or What is God? (In 100 words or less) for a piece they were putting together. 
Inside myself I said, "Sure, no problem." 
And then I began to think about my answer.  I thought about it walking the dogs. I thought about it in the shower. I thought about it putting my kids to bed and writing sermons.  
I wanted to answer their question. I intended to answer their question. But I couldn't do it.  Others did, and you should check out their answers and add your own, if you wish.  I, for one, will be thinking about it for some time.  Maybe I could answer it in 100 words a week? 100 words a day? Can it ever really be answered?

Having failed at the first question, here is my answer to a different one. 
Who or what ISN'T God?  
And I have found, in writing this one, that the pieces are loosening up so that perhaps an answer will come to the first question after all.  As my theologian husband tells me often when I am stuck in a sermon, "If you can't get at it, try getting at its opposite."

Who or what isn't God (in 100 words or less)





I am not God. 
Not my thoughts, feelings, opinions, beliefs, strengths or fears.
God is quite apart from me.
You are not God either.

God isn’t “right” or “good” or “truth” – though these things point to God.
God isn't a man.
Or a woman. 
But being men, and being women show us something about God,
whose image is reflected therein.

The bible isn’t God, though scripture is part of God’s unfolding story with humanity.

The church isn’t God, thank God.

Because God communicates, embodies, Godself to humanity in Jesus,
God is never removed from the suffering or powerless.  
God is…


Patheos has a follow up piece with more responses here

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Simulating Spring

Daylight savings time changed today, and it is 60 degrees outside.
60 degrees.
If you are not a Minnesotan, you can't appreciate the significance of this in our lives.  March's snowfall is second only to December's, and we still have a good month and a half of winter left. But suddenly two feet of snow is gone in just over a week, and the kids are dogs are splashing through the muddy yard and it smells like spring.
Going outside in shirt sleeves makes us giddy, but it creates a strange anxiety when it is this beautiful out this early in the season.  We are a hardy people, strong and flexible. We can take whatever Mother Nature throws at us.  Two feet of snow on Halloween? No problem!  Two weeks of sub-zero temperatures?  We can handle it!  But teasing us about Spring - that is something that could bring these marathoners to our knees.  The way to make it through winter - especially in these last months when the rest of the country is posting pictures of their budding tulips on facebook - is to hang on through the ups and downs of our winter and not even hope for spring yet, which comes as April turns to May.  "Keep your head down and your right arm pumping" as they say.
We don't know what to do with this weather.  There truly is a pit in my stomach, an anxious roller coaster of emotions as I throw open my windows to let the breeze into a house that has been closed up for 4 months and hear my husband say to the neighbor (because we stand around and "visit" with our neighbors when the weather turns nice), that he is "trying not to get his hopes up."  I want to go right now and buy seeds for my garden, I want to box up the winter coats and pull out the spring clothes. I want to make smoothies and salads and grilled meats for dinner, and tuck the chili and pot roast recipes deep into the recipe box and forget about them for a while.
But I have been a Minnesotan for the better part of three decades, and I know that even though it looks like spring is coming, we are still in winter.  Quit playing with us, world. I don't think my heart can take it.
But seeing my children squealing in the sunshine, and my husband chatting with the neighbor, hearing cacophony of birds at my window, and smelling the deep earthy scent of mud, I've decided that, for today, I am going to surrender to the brutal charade and play along.  I'll mop up the pieces of my broken, melted heart when the next snowfall comes.
Fire up the BBQ and pull out the potato salad.
We're playing Spring!

 March 2, 2007
                                                                                                       April 1, 2009

Friday, March 5, 2010

Martha Stewart vs. God




I’m sheepish to admit that I went through my “aspiring to be like Martha Stewart” phase. I love to cook, (and mostly bake) lovely and delicious things,
and welcome people to my home and table. Except that my home has two big dogs and two little children and one introvert, and Martha doesn’t talk about how to make handmade centerpieces when the kids are crying and the dogs are running off with your supplies dangling out of their mouths, and the husband is dreading the impending house full of people.
The most extravagant meal I ever hosted was a five course dinner with a table full of eminent theologians, including Douglas John Hall. We had moved into our house just a few months earlier, and had not yet built our new, spacious kitchen, which was mapped out with blue tape on the floor of an empty room. The cramped kitchen had no dishwasher, almost no counter space, and room for two people to stand back to back, and was so small that our refrigerator was in the living room. I cooked for two days in this kitchen, running to the living room for ingredients and washing all the dishes by hand.  The day of the dinner I bought a new tablecloth, sent the kids and dogs to separate babysitters and set out the nice china. The evening was a blur, the food was delicious, and to make the joy of hosting complete, Douglas Hall told me, "That was the best cup of coffee I've had in America.” I spent three hours cleaning up after that meal, with stacks of dishes precariously towered around the tiny kitchen, but what an evening it had been.
Hospitality. I use to think it was Martha. Clean house, detail-oriented, Miss Manners perfection. And while I desired to offer that, not only was it an impossibility which I could never achieve, it also turned my stomach a bit, to be completely honest. For me that is too formal, too flawless. Flavor is in the chaos, the humanity and the humor. Seeing these famous and respected theologians holding wine glasses and chatting while standing on top of my blue tape counter tops and cupboards, or sitting with their hor dourves balanced on their knees, candles flickering light on their faces and reflecting off the refrigerator next to them is part of what made that evening so delightful. The laughter, stories and sharing, the meeting and knowing one another, leaving different than you arrived… Hospitality isn’t at all about Martha’s perfect details. It is much deeper, much more elemental and powerful than that. It is opening ourselves, our lives, our very being to others, authentically, mutually. And we can do this because God welcomes us to the table, turning strangers into friends, drawing us into the life of generosity and love that exists within the Trinity.
We are on a journey to deepen and discover anew hospitality in the life of our congregation. It is changing us and shaping us, making us see differently, feel differently, talk and think differently. Hospitality is transforming us: That we may welcome others as they are, and share our real selves with them, that we may embrace our flaws and delight in the texture they bring to the encounter, that we may know the reality of being welcomed with open arms and heart into the love and life of God, and extend that experience to others.
"Hospitality is salvation." Come to the table!

I love how Diana Butler Bass talks about it in this video clip.


image at top of post by Jan Richardson, www.janrichardsonimages.com, used with permission.

How to Repent (It's not how you think)

Psalm 46 ,  Jeremiah 31:31-34 When I was in college, I spent the large part of one summer sleeping on a 3-foot round papason chair cushion o...