Palm Sunday of the Lord's Passion

Today we begin Holy Week. We see the Passion from Jesus' entry into Jerusalem to rolling the stone to seal the tomb. On Monday we rewind to six days before Passover, followed Tuesday and Wednesday with the Passover meal and Jesus' subsequent betrayal by Judas. Holy Thursday is Jesus washing his disciple's feet and telling them "If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet." Good Friday, we, once again, meditate on The Cross.

So today and Friday, we speak of the Lord's passion, of God's love of His creation.

Passion.  The word evokes reckless adventure, impulsive romance, gestures too big to fulfill, and the brief but intense relationship of Romeo and Juliet.  This word places Jesus in the tradition of the foolish Romantics—an itinerant preacher from the margins schooled by his radical cousin (John the Baptist) and led to make one final, dramatic gesture to get his message out: die as a martyr.  But Jesus’ death was unlike the death of many of the martyred faithful to come.  His death wasn't for a cause, but a relationship.  God fell hopelessly in love with humanity and inserted Himself to be with His own creation to deliver this message of healing, love, and forgiveness.  God’s power isn't the power of Zeus with lightning bolts from the heavens, but God’s message is now simply “Return; I love you”.

Throughout Holy Scripture, God has struggled and seemingly failed many times, just as His people have.  It has been an on-and-off-again cosmic love story between the Creator and His creation since humanity was first created and was given a choice not to love God.  This dance between Creator and created culminated in His great and defining act of love: self-sacrifice on the cross.

Today’s gospel reading recounts this journey to the cross with Jesus as God leading the way, experiencing the pain and abandonment of His creation, the physical pain of a gruesome, ignominious death, giving into the abyss of his own uncreated end---all for love.  But in this remarkable journey, he found a few responding with courage: Simon of Cyrene shared some in your suffering, the women who gathered at the foot of the cross and stayed there long after the men had scattered for fear of being arrested, the felon who believed because he, of all people, responded to the suffering of an innocent man, and finally the Roman centurion who saw in this suffering man God’s love.  This is pretty intense stuff

Rather than struggling to believe, many struggle to disbelieve because God’s affirmation of his creation, of saying “yes” to the cross, is the ultimate folly for a world seeking safety over communion.  God as Jesus, crucified, dead and buried.  Stay tuned.

Fourth Sunday of Lent

Seeing is Believing: Living a Transparent Life

                 In today’s gospel reading from John, we have the rather remarkable statement comparing from Jesus “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” suggesting that like Moses’ raised staff, simply by looking at the crucified Jesus, we will be saved; a very compelling theory of atonement that is often overlooked. It reminds me of the devotional response to the elevation of the host after consecration taken from the Apostle Thomas at realizing the body before him was Christ: “My Lord and my God”. 

              Sometimes witnessing a great act of faith can lead us to faith itself; that is why reading Scripture and biographies of holy men and women are equally powerful to strengthen faith, and for some, lead them to the Faith for the first time. Great works like Augustine’s Confessions, Thomas Merton’s The Seven Story Mountain, and other stories of faith are a rich source of illumination and sustenance. Devotions such as Adoration, prayer before icons, or simply being fully present in a beautifully designed sacred space can lead one to a deeper communion with God.

               However, not only the works of others can shine the light of faith into the world, but we ourselves can live in the light of faith when we allow others to witness our failures and also the faith that sustains us in the hope of living in a perfect relationship with God while we are yet sinners; living transparently before God and the world allows the world to witness our humanity in our failings and our relationship with the Divine in the grace we have received. We can live in God’s presence as sinners because through Christ we have been redeemed.

               Perhaps this week we can more fully appreciate our gift of sight as a great source of faith, not only in what we see but live fully in the light so that others may witness not only our crucifixions but also our resurrections. As John says in today’s gospel, “But whoever lives the truth comes to the light,  so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.”

3rd Sunday of Lent

People Don’t Have Loopholes

John Bergsma, a Bible scholar, quipped “Written codes have loopholes, but persons do not “ in response to a very important truth gleaned from today’s readings. He made this observation in comparing the written Law of the Covenant delivered by Moses with the embodiment of the Covenant in the person of Jesus. The evolution of our relationship with God has shifted somewhat from reference to text as the sole authority to referencing relationship. It would be a fundamental error to suppose that Christ abolished the Law, that sacred text is eclipsed by an individual’s perception of the Divine, but in Jesus as the Christ, the Law has been fulfilled. It was fulfilled through his complete obedience to the Father and sealed in his willingness to “accept death, even death on a cross”, and his subsequent resurrection.

What compelled Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t adherence to a code of conduct for saviors, but perfect obedience borne of a perfect love of God, the Father, and humanity.  Love is the spirit undergirding Divine law and animated Christ’s life on earth. Although the money changers in the Temple did not violate the letter of the law, in price gouging and taking advantage of the pilgrims, they violated one of the Commandments to not steal, which is a violation of the higher law of relationship and love.

During Lent, with its fasts and requirements for abstinence, we can let legal requirements eclipse the need to see our discipline as a means to an end; the end being growth in love. Our observance of the letter of the law can lead us, as it did for the money-changers, into violating the higher love embodied in the life of Christ. We can begin with “Thou shall not steal”, but in Christ we grow into giving the one in need of a coat ours, even though the Law does not require it.