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.

On a hill far away

I just started reading Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure. In the opening scene, young Jude's schoolmaster is leaving town to pursue his dream of attending university and being ordained. When Jude stops to help with the moving, he notices that the current rector of their village has not come to see the teacher off, but has gone away for the day because he hates the sight of change. The other students are standing far off as well, like "certain historic disciples," not wanting to seem to enthusiastic about their teacher.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem, he was surrounded by a curious and adoring crowd. The crowd follows him again on Good Friday, scorning him as he endures trial and execution. Then, when he has died, they want no more of this teacher and return home. Even his friends "stood at a distance, watching these things." (Luke 23:49).

Holy Week is a busy time at the church. There is much to do as we celebrate the high drama and deep symbolism of these great feasts. My prayer as we enter this special time is that we will not let the work of doing church distract us from what Jesus is teaching us. Let us not stand at a distance, watching these things, but come right up to sit at the feet of the master.

Stop. Look. Listen.

I heard an interview with Daniel Menaker, who wrote the book "A Good Talk" about the art of having a conversation. He said that many animals can hear, but humans are unique in our ability to listen. Good conversationalists know how to invite people to speak, not to provide some necessary bit of information, but simply to share whatever they want from their own experiences. In a good talk, we hear a story we've never heard before. We learn something new.

For me, the practice of keeping Lent is about learning to listen. Each day is punctuated by the question: What is God speaking to my heart?

Here is a listening prayer I love. It's from the Terma Collective:

May my feet rest firmly on the ground. May my head touch the sky.
May I see clearly. May I have the capacity to listen.
May I be free to touch. May my words be true. May my heart and mind be open.
May my hands be empty to fill the need.May my arms be open to others.
May my gifts be revealed to me, so I may return that which has been given,
completing the great circle.

Mary's baby boy

When I hear of a death, I so often find myself thinking "This was somebody's baby." The passing of a life reminds me of the joy and protective love someone felt when this child entered the world.

Now, a few days before we commemorate Christ's Passion, I find my imagination turning back to his nativity. Every year, the weeks between Christmas and Easter seem shorter. We welcome the baby Jesus, and then before we know it this child is a grown man setting out to meet his fate in Jerusalem.

Easter connects Jesus' life and death to forces far greater than any one man. He brings rebirth in springtime, just as the natural world is teeming with new life. He conquers death, restores God's vision for human history and makes all creation new. His actions reverberate through the cosmos. And yet, he is not a legend or image. He is a man. Just a man, so recently a baby boy in his parents' arms.