Join me for Lent at a new blog

This year, I am inviting the people of Calvary Church to share the prayers, poems, and moments from their lives that have taught them how to trust God. Beginning tomorrow, and for each of the 40 days of Lent, I’ll post thoughts from one or more of our members online at a new blog: calvarytrusts.blogspot.com. I hope you'll join us for the journey.

The beauty of the lilies

Last night, I sat and drank in the sweetness of our love for Jesus. At the children's service, I was fed by the honest curiosity of the children's questions about Jesus and their wide-eyed silence as I blessed their hands. At the later service, the haunting a capella anthems, the rough-voiced eloquence of our preacher's faith, and the understated devotion of a small band of disciples in prayer all brought God close enough to touch. I said with Jesus, "It is finished." It was truly a good Friday.

Through it all, the smell of the Easter lilies filled the church. Even as we said farewell, I could feel Jesus coming. A new day, a new life starts now.

In "April" from his book "A Child's Calendar," John Updike writes:

All things renew.
All things begin.
At church, they bring
the lilies in.

Walking away

In Ursula K. Le Guin's allegorical tale, the people of Omelas live in perfect happiness. When young people come of age, he or she is taken to a dark room to see the one broken individual who suffers for their sake. "This is necessary," the elders say. "Her suffering makes our happiness possible." Once they know the secret cost of their comforts, they are considered adults. Most find a way to live with what they have seen. A few decide that the price of happiness, this constant knowledge that they are the cause of another's pain, is too high to bear. They walk away.

On this holy day, we honor Jesus' loving sacrifice of his life on the cross. We take the time to remember exactly what he endured for his unwavering commitment to the truth of God's love. But I believe that Jesus does not want us just to look at him with tears and gratitude. He wants us to look through him and see in him all the people who hurt in this world. Let our grief and compassion be for them, the ones who endure pain because of our wrong choices and the ones who willingly bear hardships to make our lives better. Let us imagine a better way and change our lives to help create a world they will suffer and sacrifice no more. Let us walk away into the new hope of Easter.

April Fools

On this holy night, the disciples gather to eat the Passover meal. It is a time to celebrate freedom, as they thank God for leading their people out of slavery.

Very soon, however, their own freedom comes to an end. Jesus is arrested. His followers deny him and go into hiding to save themselves.

Sometimes life feels like a series of mean tricks, each success followed by a new crisis. Jesus asks us to believe that the trick is not on us but on the destructive forces of our world. Beyond every harsh reality, there will be an unexpected and beautiful surprise. After arrest, true freedom. After sin, forgiveness and love. After suffering, healing. After despair, boundless hope. After death, everlasting life.

To a cynical world, our faith may seem unrealistic. But it is founded on the deeper truth of God. Following Saint Paul, we are fools, but fools for Christ.

Last days

My model for how to live, and how to die, is my grandfather, Alan Keith-Lucas. In his 86th and last year, he drove himself to a conference of Christian social workers and gave a challenging and inspiring talk. When he died, he had books on some of the newest issues in his field on his desk, waiting for his review. He was active and curious to the end.

This year we're reading our way through Luke, which is the one Gospel that stops to explain what Jesus was doing in between his grand entrance to Jerusalem and his arrest five days later. According to Luke, Jesus teaches daily in the temple, and becomes angry at the moneychangers who work there, earning an income as they help pilgrims make their offerings. Their services are necessary for the workings of the temple, which was an authentic and vital ritual center for the Jewish people. But Jesus wants the temple to be something more. Like other Jewish sects of his time, his followers want to create a small, intensive community that helps people change their lives. He calls for a "house of prayer", a place that meets the people's hunger for a deeper connection with God.

Jesus does not just go to Jerusalem to die. He comes to the city, the political and cultural center of his people's life, to teach and to try to make a change. Even in his last days, he is really living, using every moment to make a difference in the world.

Today's special

In the Mother Goose and Grimm comic strip for March 29, a waitress asks, "Have you heard today's special?" The boxer dog Ralph replies, "Of course today's special. Every day's special if you approach life with the right attitude."

In the middle of my workday, I started wondering what to call this day. Sunday was Palm Sunday, and Thursday will be Maundy Thursday, so today is...? We are between feasts, in a short lull of almost-ordinary time. The liturgical calendar calls it "Tuesday in Holy Week," which is too much of a mouthful. I settled on "Holy Tuesday."

I need my Tuesdays to be made holy. My typical Tuesday is a day of too many little tasks and too much commuting (none of it pleasant in today's driving rain). I seem to be forever between jobs and places, not settled in one place long enough to enjoy it.

I want to see God's presence not just in each part of my life, but also in the times in between, the little moments of waiting or traveling that are so easy to overlook. This, too, is the day that God has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

The choice

One of the most interesting discussions I have had about the Bible was with a group of teens. We read together the story of Judas in Marked, Steve Ross' retelling of the Gospel of Mark as a graphic novel. I asked them: What is the turning point in this story? When does Judas cross over the point of no return? Some thought that, as soon Judas thought about turning Jesus in, he had left the circle of the disciples. His heart had turned, and the love was gone forever. Others insisted that he could have turned back right up to the very end, even at the moment he kissed Jesus in the garden, and made things right again. Then someone asked: was it really wrong for Judas to betray Jesus if that is what God planned for him to do?

The story of Jesus' death and rebirth is so powerful, so central to our faith, that we begin to think that it was all inevitable. Whatever happened was what had to happen.

This way of thinking confuses our judgment. We begin to rationalize away Judas' moral failure, in the same that we convince ourselves that so many great and small injustices are just how the world works, just the way things were meant to be. We lose sight of the reality that Judas made a free choice, and a wrong one.

God was strong enough to create compassion and new life in Jesus despite everything Judas and the others did. God is strong enough to keep creating life despite all the destructive choices we make. But it is up to us whether we will join God in creating goodness or place more obstacles in God's way. We have to choose for ourselves.